www.chinwag.com - uk-netmarketing - roundup

Get this weekly digest, plus other useful info via email. [Subscribe]

Branding E-style
UK-Netmarketing Weekly Round-up - March 23, 2001

For those that got carried away, the extravagant sums spent on creating and marketing brands online seem to be coming home to roost about now. So, what is the best way to go about creating a strong brand?

Anu Upadhya asked for some help on his dissertation covering this area, "I have been on the newsletter round for about a week and it seems like a pretty good network. I am doing one of them horrible MBAs at a uni in London and it has come to the part of the course we all try and avoid, THE DISSERTATION! I am intending to research the relatively new area of e-branding, i-branding or as some call it e-tailing. I haven't yet decided if it will be based on the B2C or B2B side. ...I would be most grateful if you anyone could suggest any information, research, journal articles or web sites, etc."

Claire Kerr replied, "A colleague of mine recently attended an Economist conference, where one of the speakers (Glyn Britton, although I'm not sure from which company) talked about 'Interactive Branding'. One of the most interesting points was when he showed a number of different corporate websites, with all logos and company names removed. The collective audience was unable to tell what brands they were for (and they were global brands) with the exception of the Coca Cola website. The idea was that, even the well-known off-line brands were failing to successfully brand themselves online."

Graham Humphreys added some information, writing, "Glyn Britton works for Interbrand Newell & Sorrell last I heard - I saw him present a very similar presentation last summer... I don't know if Glyn would agree, but the key points I would interpret from the notes below is that (digital) branding is about creating a (digital) brand experience which fulfils certain consumer needs. An effective (digital) marketer will focus on managing this consumer/customer experience, from first awareness through to later stages of brand commitment. But how can brand commitment be increased and measured online? For a retailer, it's relatively simple - through creating excellent online purchasing/servicing experience, repeat purchases, cross- and up- sell can be seen to result. What does brand commitment mean for FMCG brands? How can it be generated and measured?

Ray Taylor wasn't too keen on Anu's buzzwords, "If it were down to me... then I would automatically fail you or anyone else who used any of those three non-words in the title for a piece of academic work. If, however, you were thinking of writing a dissertation on how a brand could be created and maintained using interactive digital media only, or can be enhanced using interactive digital media only, then I would think this a worthwhile exercise. You would of course have to find, or develop, a method for measuring brand effect in order to validate any claims you made."

Ashley Pomeroy added, "This seems superficially interesting, but the more I think about it the more pointless it seems. What worthwhile point is the lecturer expressing, other than that removing the logo and company name from a website makes it hard for people to tell who made it? Should Pepsi design the text on their website to look like the Pepsi logo, or should they have a large sign on their website saying 'PEP - SEE'? Or a streaming MIDI file of the Pepsi corporate anthem? How does this help? If a site consisted entirely of a logo and a company name, by the above rules it would be rendered blank! I'm sort-of-being silly-serious here. I mean, think about it - what point is being made?"

James Gordon-MacIntosh suggested some resources, "Despite it's being a paid-for service, the World Advertising Research Centre www.warc.com has normally come up with the goods on research/academic view of marketing. The Market Research Society's 'Market Leader' magazine/journal is a good place to start on all matters brand building. If you're looking for people to talk to, www.britart.com have built themselves a strong presence in a short period through some clever viral work -- I think that Mother came up with the goods on that one."

Anu thanked uk-netmarketing for their help and added, "thanks for your postings... from the stuff i have been reading, your comments [re:] e-branding are spot on with [reference] to branding on the net, i think the following elements are also worth noting:

satisfaction & loyalty (thereby perhaps ensuring future revenue)
brand reputation & loyalty"

James Neill suggested another resource, "Avenue A in The States have published some work on this...

http://www.avenuea.com/showcase/onlineAdsWork.asp

I do have problems with some of their conclusions but the interesting thing is that they have measured against a control group, which gives it some academic credibility! ;)"

Trouble at the Top

Last week, the BBC2 show 'Trouble at the Top' followed the highs and lows of teen-entrepreneur Benjamin Cohen. After launching sojewish.co.uk, he sold it to TotallyJewish, which then closed it down. Now he's moved on to launch CyberBritain and Hunt4Porn.com.

Richard Longhurst commented, "The final scenes showed our hero inking a deal with Affinity Internet which, Cohen told investors in his company (daddy and family friends who had stumped up nigh-on £200K), would propel CyberBritain Group from being the 10th-biggest UK search engine to the 4th. Traffic that had costs the likes of Lycos £35m would have been achieved with a burn rate of only a few thousand per month. Having looked at www.CyberBritain.co.uk and www.Hunt4Porn.com , I'm left wondering what CyberBritain can deliver that Affinity couldn't have got for free from the Open Directory Project which seems to be the sum total of content on CyberBritain and Hunt4Porn (which is just the pervy bit of the Open Directory)....

CyberBritain currently has a message saying that it has 'experienced extraordinary levels of traffic' since last night's programme, and that 'This may slow down some services temporarily.' Funnily enough, www.dmoz.org is down at the moment as well. If your children want to be dotcom stars, buy them a decent domain name and then head over to www.digitalwindmill.com for the magic code that makes the Open Directory on any Web page... for free."

Mike Butcher emailed, "My favourite quip from the little tyke was 'Money has no morality' and (to a conscience-panged employee) 'You can work for free if you like'. Such a nice boy."

Martin Lloyd asked, "Is this show being repeated anywhere? Sounds like I should have seen it. Incidentally if you follow the stories on The Register back from http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/23/17662.html you get a lovely retrospective on the guys career. One day HR staff will routinely check the web for this kind of thing I'm sure."

LINKS OF NOTE:
A quick round up of interesting, funny, useful and other links gleaned from the uk-netmarketing list, office gossip and other nefarious sources...we take no responsibility should you chose to click...basically, it's not our fault. Enjoy:

receive uk-netmarketing-roundup by email, every week
Just pop your email address in the form below and receive the uk-netmarketing roundup via email each week. You'll receive an email with details on how to confirm your subscription.

return to top