By Tim Giles
As published in Marketing Magazine's Online Survival Guide 2007

Of course it is. There are endless opportunities to plaster cyberspace with your brand message and ideals. My point is not that the web is a poor branding tool but that if you are focusing on branding as the core reason for spending dollars here you are missing the point.

The web is not just an advertising medium it is a fulfillment channel. Whenever anyone sees a brand online they are potentially only one click away from engaging directly with the brand. This is the area in any discussion about web branding that annoys me. Why waste money on an intangible outcome when you can have a real one with a little more thought?

Branding is about repeatedly banging people over the head with your key messages and looking to associate the brand with key emotive reactions like trust, quality and value. This is equally important online as well however every viewing opportunity online is also a point of sale. I get irritated by attempts by tired agencies to use online as another excuse to act out film-maker fantasies at client expense.

The classic example is the hype around web 2.0. It is like people have forgotten completely the lessons of web 1.0. I love MySpace and YouTube and their various clones and spin-offs. But the actual commercial success stories from these channels are few and far between and the misses many. People trot out the Dove videos on YouTube all the time as an example of successful online branding, but isn’t this really just a TVC uploaded to a media server. If you burn it onto a CD and put it in an envelope does it then make it a direct mail campaign, if you attach it to an email is it e-marketing?

By all means go ahead and make a funky TVC and then re-cut and upload it onto YouTube in the hope of getting a wider audience. Just don’t pretend that this is online branding. It is merely another outlet for offline creative. If you are shooting hours of footage only for online use then chances are it will end in tears. My bug bear is when the term “branding” is used to disguise inefficiencies.

For effective use of the web for marketing purposes (including branding) I would suggest the following guidelines.
o Try and include direct calls to action and clickable links to areas where a customer can directly engage with the brand (eg. Download, register, buy, find a store, send an enquiry etc). Just because you are branding doesn’t mean you should ignore opportunities to sell.
o Don’t be blinkered into thinking that you have to use rich media for branding. The most cost effective and efficient means to brand online is via content syndication. For the price of one video shoot you could set up RSS syndication and push your message out daily to hundreds of contextually relevant sites with the added bonus of search engine longevity and back links directly to your core website areas.
o Optimise your site for search engines and consider paid search ads as part of any campaign spend. If you cannot be found in search engines under your key brand and main keywords then any online branding campaign will under deliver. Unless your are in the fortunate position of having a great generic keyword descriptive domain name (eg. Carsales.com.au or Realestate.com.au) then it is very difficult to brand a URL. It is more likely that customers will partially remember it or just the key issues/selling points. This is where search engines play a vital role.

In many ways the web is the most effective branding medium as it can deliver a degree of accountability unattainable offline.