News

It's a Branded New World

Branding online seems to be the antithesis of what everyone has been promoting about advertising online. The promise of tracking and accountability has long been the Holy Grail, but most of the money being spent is by the large brands more interested in different metrics. As the audience was told, brand equity convinces people to "buy 30 gallon tubs of Hellman's mayonnaise at Costco." The panel spoke about breaking through the clutter online to get the brand message out to the consumer and drive brand preference.

Frank Vial, a branding expert from Vial Associates opened by explaining that his consultancy is using an online strategy of shifting to stories people tell about the brand, and less of a billboard style of branding. Kalie Kimball-Malone continued by saying that her digital agency, Worktank, helps clients tell stories online. Ed Kim of Slim-Fast, Unilever continued the theme by saying that they ask "how do we engage with consumers so that they become brand loyals?"

Moderator Kenneth Kassar of Nielsen//NetRatings asked the panel to comment on the skepticism that an Internet ad is not able to impact as effectively or emotionally as television. Frank disagreed wholeheartedly, pointing out that the potential of the internet is more dimensional than the "black box" of TV, noting that engagement comes from interaction which is one of the strengths of the Internet. Kalie added that the "rich, deep involvement" with customers is what makes the Internet useful. Ed said that TV is the start of the conversation, and that he is blown away by the work done online compared to anything done on TV. Catherine Smith from Second Life's Linden Labs talked about community. The Internet does something that can't be done through television - bring people together around common interests.

There was some good back and forth on the topic of interaction and control by consumers and user generated content. Frank said that consumers are shaping the message. Ed countered that he was concerned that users have control, saying that consumers do not shape the message. Brands should listen and use the feedback, but they must maintain the brand message. Kenneth commented that historically the marketer has had a degree of control, where Ed responded that while we have the ability of individual communication the control has not gone away and is still with the brand marketer. Catherine said that you can give consumers control, but the advertisers have to be "brave enough to write the first half of the story and let consumers take over" in constant feedback loop.

Talking about agency-client relationships, Ed likened them to a marriage "except one of the partners gets paid" and when the relationship gets rocky they should take a step back and "stick with each other." His biggest frustration was when an agency does not understand the brand.

Kenneth felt compelled to ask a measurement question. He wanted to know if cheap and quick surveys are a good thing? Is it dangerous to such immediate information? Frank jumped in saying that building brand equity is a long term proposition. Catherine added that one should not put real world metrics to Second Life brand experiments. Frank said that measuring the impact of trust and value is in the early days, and Kalie countered by asking how you can track value. She said that tracking wikis, forums, and blog posts are some great ways to see what the consumers are saying about your brand. Ed finished up this question by saying that marketing did not change in 1994 with the advent of the Web. Marketers still want to recruit and retain loyal customers.

An audience question centered on social networking on a brand's site. Ed warned not to "get hung up on the buzzwords of today" as they have had "user generated content" on their site for seven years - success stories sent in by customers.

When asked by an audience member about the big bucks being spent, but not much online, they asked if this was because they could not get such a big reach online, saying with TV "you can millions cry", but online you may only get 10,000. Kalie answered that those thousands have chosen to be there, asking back "why randomly talk to one million when they are not expecting it instead of having them come to you?" The original questioner reiterated that only 6% of the ad spend is online, whereupon Ed said that will change. He projected thatg in 5 years Joost will be the #1 TV network and AppleTV the #2. He said that the consumer will not see the difference between networks, TV and digital soon enough as it will all be on the same screen, just delivered differently. Kenneth added in that the reach of the Internet is not as small as many think. there are campaigns getting 120 million impressions per day on one site - not an immaterial reach.