Brand Building’s Strongest Link
Perhaps the most powerful role the Internet can play in brand-building programs is that of integrator. It has the potential to provide a unifying link among the totality of communication efforts that surround a brand. Moreover, the medium can do this both internally and externally, helping the company improve its brand marketing and sales efforts while galvanizing support in the consumer marketplace. Internally Web provides a single place in which all the firm’s brand-building programs can appear. When one or more of these programs is off strategy in presentation or in content, the departure can be observed and all understood by senior executives. The medium becomes a version of the big wall on which companies and their ad agencies used to attach and view the entirety of a brand’s visual representation (i.e., ads, packaging, product designs, and brochures) in order to observe inconsistencies.
Externally, the Internet site has the potential to play an integrating role similar to that of an “event store,” the way Niketown does for Nike. Niketown provides a total brand experience, with the full scope of brand portrayed in a controlled context. Such a use of retail stores (the outdoor equipment retailers REI and L.L Bean also employs them) portrays a brand in all its richness to an important segment of consumers, who get to see the brand as a whole, in an on-brand context, rather than in bits and pieces.
A well designed Website performs a comparable function, integrating disparate business units and communications programs into a coherent and cohesive narrative. The Martha Stewart site for example, brings together a wide spectrum of business units on a single site that effectively communicates the core identity of the brand-improve the quality of living in the home, elevate homemaking, and encourage do-it yourself ingenuity. The Martha Stewart signature section of the site details collections of coordinated decorator fabrics (sold through fabric retailers) and paints (sold exclusively through Sherwin-Williams Stores). Visitors clicking on Martha Stewart everyday are linked to Kmart’s site, where the housewares presented with a design characteristic of Martha Stewart, despite being on a different site. Martha shop, the online version of the Martha catalouge, sells a variety of cookware and gardening tools. Ms Stewart uses on her TV shows, as well as such on-brand products as craft kits and holidays-themed decorations. Visitors can preview the content Martha Stewart Living Magazine, check out the TV program line up, and order transcripts of radio spots.
Successful Internet builders have a core target group on which to focus. They don’t try to service a broad audience.