Conference Chronicles Companies' Strategies in Cyberspace
LOS ANGELES - For Kleenex, the distinct brand value is only a sneeze away. But branding Kleenex - or any other non-technology product - on the Web is a tricky proposition. Why should a customer ever bother to go to http://www.kleenex.com? And what should Kleenex deliver to them when they do?
One key to successfully migrating your brand to the Internet, says Mary Tesluk, creative director at Intuit [INTU], is to provide customers with an online experience that reinforces their off-line connection to your company. "What do you want your customers to feel online?"
Tesluk spoke last week at the Direct Marketing Association's "net.marketing Conference and Exhibition" which took on the ongoing tug-of-war in finding unique ways to brand products and services online.
The fun, colorful Lego brand, for instance, demands a fun, colorful, easy-to-navigate Web presence. By contrast, visitors to http://www.Nordstroms.com would feel as though they'd wandered into Sears [S] by mistake if the Web site photos and script did not evoke and elegant experience.
Ikea has translated the experience of browsing through its vast showroom of assemble-it-yourself furnishings to its Web site. Visitors discover online the same bright color scheme and the same ability to browse through sample kitchens, bedrooms and living rooms as they do in their stores.
Some companies fall into a trap of mistaking consistency for cohesiveness, says Tesluk, demanding that their Web designers adhere to the same bind full of rigid brand rules that govern print branding. "You need to redefine your print graphic standards for translation to the Web," she says.
"Branding online is not a visual game but a satisfying use experience," says Mark Hurst, president of Web consulting firm CreativeGood. "Remember, switching to your competition is instantaneous and it's free."
On the flip side, the majority of Americans, and an even greater percentage of consumers worldwide, still are shopping exclusively on the Internet. "Build your Internet brand into your traditional stores," says Melissa Bane, program manager for Internet market strategies, The Yankee Group. "Sell [your Net brand] to them now so they still come to you when they do migrate to the Web."
The most important difference between branding offline and on, says Hurst, is that on the Web you need to show who you are - not just tell. "Be sure you can back it up" because customers can find out immediately if you are telling the truth, he said.
Barnes and Noble, for instance, included on their site the tagline "If we don't have it, no one does."
Shoppers in a brick and mortar store would have exert quite a bit of effort to disprove their claim.
Online, however, it only took Hurst a minute to find that a book which http://www.barnesandnoble.com did not have was available at amazon.com.