Digital Branding

Published forBy the author of Leveraging the Corporate BrandJames R. Gregory, CEO Corporate Branding, LLC

A perspective for building & leveraging online brands

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Digital Branding

The digital revolution meets the real world

For the past few years, the more seasoned financial communityobservers have examined the explosive development of the Internet in the US—and the seemingly limitless profusion of dot-comenterprises—and counseled caution. Despite claims that a newtechnology and global medium were rewriting stock valuationfundamentals, many observers knew that a shakeout was coming.The only question was how long it would take to arrive.

The lesson to investors was clear enough: Even a revolutionarytechnology shift can’t alter the fundamental relationship of price to value. Not, at least, in the long run.

The fundamentals still apply. What can brand-builders learn from this shakeout? Simply that the medium may be different, but the fundamentals still apply: Strong brands are not boughtovernight—they’re built one experience at a time.

A strategic branding framework for senior management. As with any other core business function, online brand-buildingactivities must proceed from a clear, well-defined strategicperspective. They must serve clear objectives. They must promiseand deliver value. Above all, they must support and reinforce thebrand images and messages delivered to customers in print,broadcast, and other media.

The goal of this brochure is to provide management with a sensible,realistic framework, based on proven methodologies, for successfulbranding online.

The medium may be different but the

fundamentals still apply.

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Get used to it: On the Internet, the customer calls the shots

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Digital Branding

The Internet: What it is and what it can meanfor your company and your brand

Brand—or else. It’s precisely in this highly competitiveenvironment, employing a relatively new medium of extraordinarypromise, that thoughtful branding decisions become criticallyimportant. Such decisions lay the foundation for more effectivecommunications, behavior, and operations—which collectivelyhave direct bearing on a company’s bottom line.

Defying definition. An elusive and often misunderstood concept,the Internet is the biggest thing to hit the business communitysince the PC. The amazing thing about the Internet is not what it is, but rather what it does. A new medium as well as an inter-related community, the Internet democratizes access, promotescommunication, opens new channels for marketing and distribution,makes available new sources of knowledge, levels the businessplaying field, and provides a pulpit as well as a sounding board—among other countless benefits.

The Web was made for branding. The speed, breadth, depth,and efficiency of the Internet clearly represent the present and thefuture of business, both in consumer and business-to-businessmarkets. Because the Internet enables companies to manageaudience experiences in a more controlled and meaningful way, ithas the potential to make brands more relevant and more impactfulto customers—resulting in stronger one-to-one relationships andenhanced customer loyalty.

Differentiation: The key to a successful business. Pulling awayfrom the pack is more important than ever. In many industries,digital technology and the Internet have spurred the developmentof new business models and new operating structures. But the new medium has also brought about a great deal of confusion—precisely at a time when global competition has intensified andfinancial markets are becoming more discriminating. As a result,companies are finding it more important than ever to distinguishthemselves from their competitors to enhance customer loyaltyand build shareholder value.

Digital democratization. There may have been a time—whencommunications and distribution channels were limited andrelatively few in number—that large companies could dominate ageographic region or control the communications environment byflooding it with dollars and messages. If those halcyon days everexisted, the democratizing technology of the Internet hasbanished them for good.

A challenging online environment for businesses. Today’sInternet customers have access to more information, makingthem more aware of and more sophisticated about many things—not least, business issues. A range of choices—one that no real-world shopping mall can match—is available instantly, any day, atany hour. And with minimal costs of entry, companies large andsmall are providing these customers with an ever-expandingnumber of alternatives, making competition increasingly intense,and only a click away.

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Digital Branding

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Why customer

centricity?

In this environment—one of unprecedented freedom, choice, andopportunity—strategic branding decisions play a critical role in a company’s ability to build strong relationships with customers,relationships that create, develop, and enhance loyalty.

Attitude and deep pockets alone can’t build strong brands

more important over the short term to fledgling companies thanstrategy development.

It’s the experience, stupid. When people hear the word ‘brand,’they think ‘logo,’ ‘tagline,’ even ‘advertising.’ But a brand is muchmore than that. A brand is not a logo or a tagline—it’s the collectiveperception of a product or company based on experience.

Every brand is based on individual experience. Customersexperience a brand by reading an ad, by using a product or service,by visiting a Web site, or in countless other ways. The aggregate of those experiences, accumulated across all audiences over time,creates a collective perception. This perception generates a set ofexpectations which the brand must live up to each and every time.Needless to say, a brand can become a tremendously valuableasset which a company can leverage in order to deliver trulysubstantial business results.

The brand is the need, and the need is the brand. The key to managing each experience is simple: First, project a clear,identifiable, and accurate representation of your company. Second,focus on resolving customer need. The most successful onlinebrands enjoy outstanding resonance in the marketplace because they are able to accomplish both of these things seamlessly.

Most dot-coms have a way to go. Whatever the virtues of theirproducts or services, most dot-com companies simply haven’texisted long enough, conducted enough business, or built sufficientfavorability to be considered strong brands. In short, they haven’tcontinually and consistently met customer expectations. The factthat most of these enterprises lack a fundamental strategicunderpinning—which might address head-on the challenges ofbeing a start-up enterprise—only compounds the problem.

Connectedness

Numerous alternatives

Zero distance

Freedom to choose

Companies such as America Online, Yahoo!, Amazon, and Netscapehave built strong, well-defined online brands in a relatively shortperiod of time. These companies realized long ago that building abrand is about continually and consistently managing the customerexperience. But for every AOL or Yahoo!, there are scores ofcompanies convinced that they can successfully build brands withdeep pockets and mass media exposure alone.

In-your-face has had its day. Preference for the in-your-faceapproach is understandable. After all, in addition to selling productsand services, many dot-com companies must also sell potentialcustomers on Internet commerce itself. Not only that: Being first tomarket and generating customer trial—often through offline advertisingthat’s long on attitude and short on hard facts or benefits—can seem

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Digital Branding

Your Web site is an absolute reflection of your brand

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Developing a CoreBrand™ platform

A Web site isn’t just a marketing tool or a distribution channel. It’s an absolute reflection of everything the brand and companyrepresent. It’s where everything—including products and services,customer support, overall attitude, and voice—comes together.Design, text, navigation, and functionality should support andreinforce a distinctive brand experience.

Every aspect of a company’s Web site should flow logically from asound brand strategy. If the Web site is already up and functioning,that strategy can serve as a filter or standard against which tomeasure existing work—one that also can guide the developmentof the site.

There are two basic steps to building distinctiveness on a Web site:

Step 1: Define the strategic underpinnings of the brand.These underpinnings constitute the strategic backbone of the brand—whatwe call a CoreBrand™ strategy. The strategy articulates, among otherthings, the brand’s reason for being, what it delivers, what its core focus is,and the voice it uses to communicate.

Step 2: Execute the strategy. Once the strategy is articulated and understood, it’s possible to execute it in communicative, navigational, and functional terms: How the site looksand feels to the user, the messages it conveys, the ease of movementfrom one part of the site to another, the types of e-commerce solutions thesite offers, and the built-in banners and links it contains.

A sensible, two-step

approach:

A brand needs a core focus and set of strategic underpinnings togrow and succeed. A CoreBrand platform provides just that.

An indispensible management tool. A brand platform provides a succinct definition of who and what a company is, what it does,and how it behaves. It is a snapshot of what the brand representsand why it is important in the marketplace. With an agreed-uponplatform in place, decision-making can proceed in a logical,disciplined, and—above all—efficient fashion. The platform definesthe brand in a way that employees can understand and use as aguide to action.

A must for every online brand. Brands must be clearlycommunicated to a company’s various audiences. As keyconstituents, these individuals must be able to grasp the company’sessence and purpose. As a central point of communication, acompany Web site must speak to and resonate with a diverse arrayof audiences. The brand platform becomes the basis for everyelement of the Web site, including design, copy, navigation, andfunctionality. It also becomes a central point of guidance forrepresenting the brand in every other online environment.

Building holistic brands. The brand platform guides more thanjust the company’s Web site. It is a strategy that draws from andpermeates every facet of the company’s existence—the way itcommunicates and conducts business. One company, one business,one brand, one strategy, one voice.

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Leveraging the CoreBrand

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Digital Branding

Brand strategy is business strategy. The two strategies feedoff of one another. In the end, brands succeed not because ofwhat companies say about themselves, but because of what theydo, how they function, and how successfully they meet customers’needs and expectations.

There are three things to keep in mind when defining your brand:

Make it differentiating.Why should a customer choose your company, your brand, your product orservice, rather than another? If your strategy doesn’t answer this questionin a clear, unique, and compelling way, your brand is unlikely to succeed ina crowded and very competitive marketplace.

Make it relevant. Remember, you’re competing for a very fickle commodity—your customers’attention. If your brand doesn’t matter—if it doesn’t seem important ornecessary to a customer’s way of life or way of doing business—it’s justanother distraction. Make your brand relevant and you make it matter to the people and/or companies who need what your brand offers.

Make it credible. Your brand promise may be compelling, but if it does not reflect what the company can deliver, you risk the development of distrust among your customers.

Defining the brand—

three musts:

Reflect and influence. A corporate brand strategy isn’t hot air. It isn’t a set of platitudes designed to represent a company assomething other than what it is. Properly conceived and developed,a brand strategy both reflects a company’s essence and influencesevery aspect of its behavior—in its operations, in the way itspeople relate to others both within and outside the company, andin the way it communicates to all audiences.

Consistent representation is key. While a brand strategy maybe communicated in different ways to different audiences—internalversus external; international versus national—the core elementsthat underlie it are unchanging and consistently presented. And that consistency doesn’t apply only to a company’s advertising; italso must be reflected in the company’s nomenclature, in itsproduct and service offerings, and in its co-branding activities andsponsorships.

Remember that audiences don’t just buy brands—they experiencethem—and those experiences may take place in myriad formatsand settings. Here is where the CoreBrand strategy is especiallyuseful, providing guidance in managing these experiences in a waythat promotes consistency—and consistently positive experienceswith the brand.

CoreBrand strategy and the Web. First, because a companyWeb site represents everything a brand is and does, it has a logicalrole as a company’s central communications resource. On the Web,a company can convey not only its brand voice, but its identity and its reason for being.

Shareholders

Employees

Customers

Local Communities

Prospects

Financial Community

Partners MediaCoreBrand™

C O M M U N I C A T I O N S

BU

SI N

E S S P R O C E S SE

S

B E H A V I O R S

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Second, aside from its marketing, promotion, and public relationsvalue, a Web site enables the development of efficient, relevantbusiness processes, from e-commerce to information-sharing. It can also have a profound effect on internal operations such asdistribution, human resources, and inventory management.

Third, Web sites and Intranet sites allow a company to create and/or enhance a distinctive internal culture, one that instills orreinforces a shared sense of purpose and a common set of behaviors. Perhaps most importantly, it draws a company and itspeople closer together—a critical component of recruiting andretaining valuable employees.

The branding experience

Establishing and reinforcing the brand experience online

Properly conceived and developed, a brand strategy both reflects a company’s

essence and influences every aspect of its business—its operations, the way

its people relate to others both within and outside the company, and the way

it communicates to all audiences, especially employees.

A haven from digital noise. Though you may think of it in morecomplex terms, to your customers your Web site is like a trusted,protected space—a haven from the relentless onslaught of digitalnoise bombarding them every day.

When customers log on to your company’s Web site, they shouldfeel a part of this trusted, protected space—by the look and feelof the site, its voice, and its ability to provide them with whatthey’re looking for.

This experience should be distinctive and differentiating, yetabsolutely relevant to your customers’ needs.

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Digital Branding

The goal is to keep them coming back. Customer loyaltydoesn’t develop overnight. Nor is it won through “attitude” orextravagant promises, flashy images or gimmicky design. Loyaltydevelops through a succession of positive experiences customershave with the brand. To your customers, each experience should be satisfying and reassuring. But even more important, eachexperience should build momentum in customers’ minds, reinforcingyour brand as their preferred choice.

Experiences make promises. As experiences accumulate andexpectations develop in customers’ minds, your brand makes animplicit promise: That it will perform against those expectations.And the more the brand meets and perhaps even surpasses theseexpectations, the stronger it becomes and the more able it is todefend against competitive alternatives.

This loyalty, at base, is an emotional bond between the customerand the brand. Once it’s established, an isolated failure to deliver on customers’ expectations will not disrupt brand momentum.

Seeing the site through your customer’s eyes. Maintaining positive brand momentum means understanding the customer’sperspective. It means managing the customers’ experience so thatthey never feel alienated—so that they never feel they’ve made the wrong choice and must seek alternatives.

While loyal customers may tolerate an occasional lapse orinconvenience, they must never be allowed to doubt the wisdom of having chosen your brand. That won’t happen if you make aconsistent attempt to see the brand and the site through yourcustomer’s eyes.

If customer loyalty

were the topic

of a focus group,

ideal respondent

comments would

probably resemble

these:

Trust. I know this brand and this Web site. They have performed for me consistently.”

Convenience. This site simplifies my life/work; it’s quick and easy to use.”

Service. This site supports my way of life/way of doing business. It has never failed to respond to my needs in the way I expect.”

“

“

“

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Digital Branding

Developing tactics for online brand expression

Critical as it is to the success of your brand, a brand platform is only a theoretical snapshot of your company and brand at a specificpoint in time—a statement indicating how the brand’s essence willbe conveyed to various audiences through experience. What remainsis to translate that strategy into tactics—to bring the brand to life.

Meeting the needs of multiple audiences. It may seemimpossible to satisfy every member of every audience you hopeto attract to your site. But the most successful sites are thosethat, within reason, make every attempt to do just that.

Whether it’s a dispenser of information or the enabler of atransaction—or, perhaps, both—a company’s Web site mustaddress diverse needs, interests, and issues.

Navigation & functionality The structure of the site, its human logic and user-friendliness, and what it enables the user to do

Design, look & feel The site’s overall appearance—its color palette and vocabulary of images; its typography, graphics, and use of symbols and icons

ImageryThe photos and graphic devices used to elicit a variety of emotionalresponses about the company, the brand, the product or service, or the site itself

E-commerce solutions Functions that support online transactions

Content Literally, the stuff of the site—information, messages, and tonality that inform, influence, and persuade—adding specificity and depth to the more abstract messages conveyed through imagery

LinksDigital bridges to other Web sites

Architecture A graphic representation, electronically conveyed, of brand hierarchies—how brands represent themselves to their audiences and how they relate to each other

Nomenclature The names used to describe corporate, product, or service brands

AdvertisingPromotional messages for the brand placed in print, broadcast, orelectronic media

Co-brandingThe graphic expression of a relationship between two brands—a joint venture, for example

Information sourceTrusted partnerProfessional toolReliable providerIndustry enthusiastCustomer advocateSocially conscious corporate citizen

Web-specific

considerations:

Key branding

considerations:

Here are only

some of the roles

your site must be

prepared to fill:

Digital Branding

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Measuring ROI

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Every interaction provides an opportunity. Make every onlineinteraction meaningful. However trivial or complicated the inquiry,your company’s Web site must satisfy the user’s needs. Satisfactionmay mean providing a very specific piece of information—orconveying a more complex framework within which a particular event, situation, or process can be understood.

Whatever the purpose of their visit, users of your company’s siteshould feel a sense of completion and resolution. They can’t beallowed to feel that their time invested was time wasted. That canbring brand momentum to an abrupt halt. Following are the types of responses your site should elicit from visitors:

“I left the site with exactly the infor mation I waslooking for — and it didn’t take me forever to find it, either.”

“Not only was it easy to find what I was looking for; buying

it was just as easy—and fast.”

Investment for business impact. When Andy Grove, former CEOof Intel, was asked about his company’s ROI on its e-commerceinvestment, he replied, “This is Columbus in the New World. Whatwas his ROI?” Grove makes an important point. Despite thelightning-fast adoption of Web technology worldwide, despite thevalue the Internet already provides companies and individuals,despite its obvious promise, there are few if any precedents to go on in assessing its bottom-line impact. Few if any traditionalbusiness measures apply in each and every case. However,corporate management can’t be expected to pour endless dollarsinto the void. There must be a way to measure how an Internetinvestment pays off.

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Digital Branding

The four-step approach to measure value and return. Thefollowing four-step approach not only helps to pinpoint return oninvestment, it also measures the not-strictly-bottom-line value anInternet investment returns.

The four steps are:

Understand your Internet investment’s effect on:Brand power—How familiar the marketplace is with your brand and thefavorability attached to your brand nameWeb site hitsRevenuesStock priceSpecific indicators relevant to your businesses

Step 3: Identify the basis on which you measure your company’ssuccess and determine the effect of the variables listed in Step 2 on thatsuccess. What, in other words, are your goals for your company? What isyour idea of the ideal business situation?

Step 4: Compare the cost of the variables listed in Step 2 to thebenefit associated with reaching your goals for your company. The key is to optimize the relationships between variables. When these variables areoptimized, a company can begin to understand the impact of an Internetinvestment on the bottom line.

Benchmarking and tracking for the long term. Ongoingmeasures of ROI can help a company to modulate the level andfocus of their Internet investments to fit business realities andneeds, consumer or business-to-business.

Step 1: Understand which expenditures you can control in the shortterm. How, in other words, can your Internet investment be leveraged tosupport your investment in other media?

Advertising, online and offline

Co-branding, online and offline

Other promotion and sponsorship activities

Partnerships and ventures

Web site development—Front-end interface design/functionality andback-end technical enablement and support

Step 2: Determine how these expenditures affect key performanceindicators. Every company has a set of performance indicators—variables whose ups and downs reveal its current situation, point to specificproblems or opportunities, and indicate trends to be watched.

Some of the performance indicators listed at the top of the next page mayprovide a wealth of useful information; others may be fairly static, and stillothers too erratic to provide consistently reliable information. Once youselect which of these indicators is most revealing, most reliably, you can then begin to track the impact and the value of your Internet investment.

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Digital Branding

BusinessWeek helps to build e-brands

Advertising for the future. While advertising can be a criticalcomponent of any brand-building effort, it is often approached withcarelessness. Instead of wasting precious dollars on advertising injust any information source, the most forward-looking companieshave always advertised with BusinessWeek—because they knowthat doing so is an excellent way to build their brands.

Placement makes all the difference. Advertising spendingmeans little without the right placement. To generate real brandmomentum, ads must target potential consumers and those who might influence corporate reputation. Who are those people, and where are they likely to see the ads that you carefully create and support with hard-earned, and sometimes scarce,marketing dollars?

Communicate with your target audience. Obviously, corporateadvertisers need to communicate with corporate decision-makers—those individuals in top management who make the buying decisions.These are the people who turn to BusinessWeek. Simply put,BusinessWeek is trusted by more business professionals than anyother business publication in the world. That makes it an excellentplace to start building a digital brand through corporate advertising.

For further information about advertising in BusinessWeek, please contact Connie Bennett, SVP/Associate Publisher, at (212) 512-6945 or connie_bennett@businessweek.com.

© 2000 Corporate Branding, LLC, Stamford, CT 06902

Jim Gregory

Based in Stamford, Connecticut, Corporate Branding, LLC, is a highly specialized globalcommunications consultancy that works with advertisers and agencies to measureand leverage companies’ corporate brands with key audiences. Their breakthroughwork in analyzing the return-on-investment (ROI) for corporate advertising is changingthe perception of advertising by senior management of companies around the world.Once thought of as an expense, corporate advertising is now considered an investmentthat can have predictable returns.

Jim Gregory, founder and CEO of Corporate Branding, has authored two books onthe subject of corporate advertising, Marketing Corporate Image and Leveragingthe Corporate Brand. He is currently working on a third book on the subject,Branding Across Borders.

He has also authored numerous published studies on corporate branding, includingThe Impact of Advertising on Stock Performance, published by the Associationof American Advertising Agencies (AAAA), Trends in Corporate Advertising, publishedby the Association of National Advertisers (ANA), and his company’s publication,Q&A on Corporate Branding: Answers to the CEO’s Toughest Questions.

Digital Branding is the fifth in a series of brochures by Business Week and JimGregory. The other brochures in the series are entitled The Impact of Advertising on Brand Momentum, The Impact of Advertising on Brand Power, The Impactof Advertising to the Financial Community, and Branding the Merger, Mergingthe Brands. If you need additional information on this series, or would like extracopies of any of the brochures, please contact Connie Bennett, SVP/AssociatePublisher, at (212) 512-6945 or connie_bennett @businessweek.com.