Dot what?

30/10 2009

When it comes to digital brand management one element that is often over looked and abused is the URL. If you have never been to a leading brands website before, chances are that you will most probably try to guess the URL via a combination of brand name and locality, for example www.brand.com or www.brand.se. If that did not take you to the site you were after, then it is over to Google. For less well know brands Google might well be the first point of call. This is even the case for returning visitors. People will often try to guess the site name instead of using a bookmark or their browser’s history list. Therefore developing a clear and simple URL strategy for your brand is a must.

The dot com problem

For leading brands placing a dot com at the end of your brand has become the standard and most desired domain to acquire. The problem now is when the major brands have localized their web presence, without taking real consideration for how they treat their dot com’s. Take a look around at a range of leading brands dot com sites and I am sure you will find that the majority of them fall into one of these three categories:

1.    A filter page asking you what country you are in and what language you speak.
2.    Confusing mess of corporate/investor/consumer information.
3.    A North American version of the site.

This issue is compounded even more when a brand stretches across a range of services.

Please sniff me

Sony is doing a better job of controlling whom they send where and what they put where. If you type in www.sony.com then you are taken to, admittedly, a boring page, but look again. Sony are obviously doing the same as apple, by retaining their dot com address for their north American audience. But they have gone one-step further and implemented IP sniffer technology, which means they are able to tell that I am surfing to their site from Sweden. So they ask me, in both Swedish and English, if I want to go to my regional site (which of course is www.sony.se) or continue to the American version. They also managed to treat their global corporate and investor information in a clean manner by placing all such information under the www.sony.net domain.

Sony could improve the design of this dot com landing page, but nonetheless adding this a simple function shows that Sony understands the issues.

Whatadowedowithourcampaignsites.com

Another issue is what URL to use when launching a campaign? There is no right or wrong decision to be made here. www.mybrand.com/campaigntitle or www.campaigntitle.se the choice depends on the campaigns purpose, media placement plus a range of other factors. However whichever route you take it should be based on a solid URL strategy. It is all to convenient to place a campaign on its own URL but the results of that can be ineffective if the wider picture is on your main site.

Social shorts

Further confusion of a brands URL is now taking place though the shortening of URL’s to recommend sites in the social media. One of more popular of these services is Bit.ly who, being a purely digital company, have seamlessly integrated their brand and URL by using Libya’s country domain suffix ‘.ly’. On a typical day Bit.ly is used to create 5 to 7 million shortened URLs each day, and it handles 25 million requests to expand them.

The data that can be accessed from bit.ly and other services like it is fast becoming and gold mine of measurability and search. However URL shorteners add a new step to the process of retrieving a web page. Even clicking on a regular URL involves a leap of faith. Not being able to see the true URL destination, because it’s hidden in a shorter encoded URL, makes that leap even longer. More and more people are turning from Google and Yahoo to search the social web for real-time information, and as this happens the challenge is going to be to connect people to the websites they want to reach and keeping their clicks out of the hands of spammers and phishes.

Get it right

A clear URL strategy is a must for all brands large or small, the larger the brand the clearer it must be. The general guidelines are, if your site uses English and is international in its content and user base, get a ‘.com’ domain. If your site uses any other language, use the appropriate country domain. If your site has local appeal, covers mainly local issues, or sells mainly local products, use the country domain no matter what language is used on the site. Spread the information, make use of the variety of domain names that are available, you don’t need to place it all under one domain. Failure to follow these guidelines could have you relying more on Google than you would like to.

As I write this, plans to allow people who use the non-Latin languages to enter web addresses in their own language are being made. It is likely the majority of first non-Latin net addresses to be approved will be in Chinese, Arabic and Cyrillic scripts. This will be the biggest change to the way the Internet works since it was created 40 years ago

Finally, the social web is forcing brands to be more ubiquitous and become part of the conversation rather than requested media. This may well mean that over time the importance of a simple and clear URL might be diminished. I would argue that ubiquity only increases the need to make the church of the brand even easier to find.

Steinar Danielsen

Steinar Danielsen is the co-founder and Creative Director of Supernative, a digital communication agency based in Stockholm. He works with providing analysis, online strategies, creative concepts and digital identities, for a range of international brands.

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The One Thing Your Brand Should Focus On

21/10 2009

As somebody working in marketing it is very likely that you are drowning in everyday problems. And if you’re like most other companies, it’s also very likely that the solutions you’re working on deal with yesterday’s problems rather than capturing the opportunities of tomorrow.

Things hardly get easier as solutions are plentiful. You don’t have to look further than down this page to be bombarded with the latest fixes that will make your brand better. But how do you know what’s the right remedy for your brand’s competitiveness?

For simplicity’s sake there’s one thing your brand can focus on: Creating momentum.

Momentum is what psychologists call the smallest unit of time perceivable by humans. It lasts about 0.06 seconds. In physics, momentum is the product of two physical entities – mass and speed – and means ”directed thrust”.

Momentum can also occur in marketing communications, at the point of contact between people and a brand. For example, the time it takes for a person to look at an ad is 1.7 seconds.

Contrary to what  most people think, the point is not to turn the 1.7 seconds into 2.7 seconds with your brand. It’s about turning the 1.7 seconds to  something much stronger: a lasting experience. From this respect, the 1.7 seconds is not that different from love at first sight.

Creating a lasting experience from what used to be low brand involvement has become harder, however. Brands of today are increasingly being judged by what they do, not what they say. Brands therefore have to appeal not only to senses but create new the ways for people to both think and act.

When thinking about innovative solutions for your brand, think about what made the Trojan horse successful. As you might remember from history class, the Greeks tried to enter Troy for over a decade with massive brute force but without accomplishing anything. The effective solution became a wooden horse that the Trojans instantly let inside. The rest is history.

In a world where conventional brand building fails, momentum is the force a superbrand needs, and the best tool for creating it is unconventional creativity – powered by powerful insights about how to turn something inside people’s heads, rather than just turning heads. Make this happen, create your own Trojan horse.

Leon Phang

Leon Phang is a Planner at Jung von Matt Stockholm, an advertising agency. He is the current chair of Account Planning Group in Sweden, an organisation that develops the interests of Swedish account planners. He also blogs about advertising and branding on The Planning Lab and has worked with several superbrands.

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A Superbrand is Invaluable

14/10 2009

Too many companies, and their managements, are still unaware of the fact that their brands are their main task and responsibility – even if their brands are their main source of profit.

A couple of years ago the research project, Brand Orientation Index, very clearly proved the link between brand orientation and profitability. This was clear in all lines of business and in companies of all sizes.The brand-orientated companies had approximately twice the profit of the companies which did not focus on their brands.

To be more exact, the brand-orientated companies had an average operating margin of 14 per cent, while the other companies only reached an average of eight per cent. It was quite revealing, though, to note that publicly listed companies were under-represented among the most brand-orientated companies. Brand building takes consistency and long-term views, rather than focus on the next quarterly report.

The conclusion is obvious: The brand is the very essence of the business and should be governed by the board on a very long-term basis. The brand is far too fundamental an asset to be handed over to a marketing or advertising manager. And it’s too important to be the subject of short term and varying advertising campaigns. Positioning and core values are not to be discussed and decided upon by an advertising manager together with an advertising agency. The brand strategy must be carefully discussed, decided on and firmly formulated by the company board and handed over to the managing director to keep as a guiding star for every step on the road forward. And no deviation is to be accepted. Every single staff member is to be informed of, and instructed on, these core values and must realize they are very important representatives and ambassadors of the brand.

When the entire organization really is aware of their role in living and communicating the brand, you are on your way to building a superbrand.

Carin Fredlund

Carin Fredlund is a journalist, author and columnist specializing in monitoring and analyzing marketing and branding. She has covered the marketing industry for 26 years and for 20 years as publisher of the trade magazine Quo Vadis. She has also been awarded “The Bengt Hanser Stipendium” from the Swedish Advertising Association and the prize “Marketing Book of the Year” by the Swedish Marketing Association.

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All Your Brands Belongs To Us

7/10 2009

Back in 2000 a flash based message containing the phrase ‘All your base are belong to us’ spreadlike wildfire through emails and internet forums. Back then most of you had probably not heard about viral marketing, Web 2.0 and social networks. Facebook and Twitter were still 6 years away from being established and most brands didn’t bother too much about digital marketing.

However, at the same time Nike took it’s first stumbling steps towards a digital brand strategy. Back then Nike would probably not know that their global strategy would be a virally driven online content strategy but the first step taken with Nikefootball.com, that I personally took part in initiating, was a clear step in that direction.

Now, 9 years later when internet, web 2.0 and social media are well established, Facebook has got +300 million members and Twitter is reckoned to be one of the most important conversation
platforms when it comes people driven brand impact, we can all agree that the world has changed and so has brand strategies although most companies don’t really get it yet.

So, the title ‘All your brands are belong to us’ has a double meaning cause back then in 2000 when that wildfire started it also marked the day you lost control of your brand. Today that fire is burning
faster than ever and there’s really nothing you can do to stop it but getting used to being burned.

It’s time to move. In order for you to continue to build your brand value in the future you’ve gotta revamp your strategies and adapt them to the future of communication.

Here are 10 strategies you’ve got to adapt to the next couple of years if you’re planning for your brand to stay on top!

1. From Brand Promise to Brand Fulfillment
You might have set out to deliver services and products that create some sort of value for a large consumer base. All of your branding activities focus on telling your story. What makes your brand unique, what’s your unique, emotional and even archetype selling points. Shortly. What’s your brand promise?

Now in a world where all information is accessible on the fly. Consumers share experiences on comparison sites like Pricerunner, social networks like Facebook and Twitter, Personal blogs and Getsatisfaction. People even post sites about brands they like and dislike.

In this world there’s no more room for brand promises only brand fulfillment. Honesty comes first. Do what you say and you shall be the one.

2. From Offer to Interactivity
If you’re one of those brands that still spend tons of time drawing up strategies on how to approach the market with new offers, new products and services then you’ll see your brand fall within the
next couple of years.

Instead, learn from brands like Starbucks, Dell and not the least Zappos. These brands have moved into the future of product development.

What Dell has done with Ideastorm.com and Starbucks with Mystarbucksidea.com has not only turned their brand around but also enabled them to deliver products and services they know their customers want. After all they’re the one that have suggested them. Zappos strategy in moving from a shoe store online to simply deliver better services, or ‘Power by Services’ as they say, has earned
them an unmatched loyalty. Zappos CEO Tony Hseih has got more than 1.4 million followers on Twitter!

These brands understand they’re not owning a one way channel straight into the heart of consumers. Love goes both ways!

3. From Control to Transparency
About the same time that viral flash video was circling the web I also started a website called Kaminsky.com. It was sort of an early version of YouTube but it focused on movie trailers and advertising. However after only 8 month we had to close the site down cause we were being threatened to be sued by Brindfors, at the time one of Sweden’s leading advertising agencies. Why? Well, the reason was cause someone had uploaded a TV commercial Brindfors had created for Scandinavian Airlines. Can you imagine something like this happen today?

In another example Pepsi gets a beating on Twitter by @christinelu for posting an ad in German magazines.

When Pepsi pulls back their advertising immediately as a response to what @christinelu Tweets it’s a clear sight these large brands have understood the power of asynchron networks like Twitter
where information spreads faster than ever before.

You simply cannot ignore conversations that regard your brand anymore. Dominos Pizza obviously has taken this into account when they’re speeding up the process of replying to a consumer called
@interactiveamy on Twitter. Amy Corrin who had some problems with her Pizza Delivery earlier this year got answered within 24 hours. A video apology from @Ramon_DeLeon quickly solved the
situation.

So where does your brand stand in all this? You ready for transparency or still believe hiding information is the way to go? Do you know what people are saying about your brand?

4. From Stability to Adaption
Open Source and democratization of technology is turning the world upside down. The music and travel industry has already been hit bad. Traditional mobile companies like Sony Ericsson, Nokia
and Motorola are all getting beaten by Apple, Google and soon Microsoft. 3D printers is available today from $14.000. Within 5 years time you’ll be able to print LEGO in your home for the cost of
a printed paper. If LEGO owns the 3D model or not remains to be seen.

When it comes to systems development we’re seeing tons of new applications and webservices that are based on Open Source platforms. Wordpress for bloggers, Joomla for communities, Magento for
e-commerce and Drupal for overall site building are only a few examples. PHP and MySQL is driving change in a speed we’ve never seen before.

The brands of tomorrow will be all about adaption. So companies that turns change into status Q are the brands that will live. Brands that spend their time protecting existing products will be passed by
smaller, more agile and more innovative brands. Brands that change will stand the test of times.

5. From Monopoly to Creative Execution
Nothing can be owned. The only competitive edge you’ll have in the future is creative execution. Consumers of tomorrow might try out relations because of monopoly. However, it’s a very risky position to take as we’ll be open to switch the second a new player comes along. And as I stated above – the democratization of technology will drive change, so staying ahead will be harder and harder. Instead focus on building fans through your creative execution. How do you package your products and services. How do you communicate. How do you entertain us. How do you stay fun to be with. How can you make our day better. Focus on the values that makes us talk about your brand – in a positive way.

6. From Brand Positioning to Perceived Brand Positioning
Following transparency is our perceived view of your brand. This means when we search for a brand, and that’s what +80% does before entering a relation with a brand, our point of view is primarily based on what other people say about your brand – not what you say.

Brian Solis social flower. Is your Brand out there yet?

You can spend as many millions you want on positioning your brand through traditional media. But if you don’t engage in conversations, provide us with distributed marketing, content and applications your brand will be positioned through the voices of millions of people online – and they’re not paid to position your brand the way you want. They position you any way they like.

So. Start question if you really ought to spend all that money on traditional media and instead think about moving it over to digital presence. Then we might do you right!

7. From Product Development to Fan Based Innovations
Threadless.com. They’re selling T-shirts online. All T-shirts are made by their visitors. Their selling like hell. Yamaha have already tried out fan based industrial design. As we learned above Dell and
Starbucks asks their fans – What shall we do? And all of these brands do it in the open.

Reach out and deliver tools that let the fans you have create your future products and services. Believe me – you’ll be amazed how many people are prepared to help you.

8. From Structural Bindings to Trust
Bankers and Telco’s all talk about how to structurally bind clients to their products and services. What they’re saying is basically “Our product is so shitty so once we’ve sold it we’ve gotta glue people to it, otherwise they’ll leave”.

Future brands are built on relations, trust and loyalty. If you do bad you deserve bad. If you do good you’ll deserve good.

9. From Marketing to Entertainment

Tick tock tick tock tick tock. Can you sense it?

The pure thought of a time makes people stressed. Time is the most precious thing we have and yet brands are wasting it.

In a recent global study I was involved in we identified four factors that matters to guys and girls in the age-span 18-25. The study was performed in so called style cities – New York, Rio De Janeiro,
Stockholm, Berlin, London, Tokyo, Hong Kong etc.

Innovation, entertainment, interactivity and creativity. The two that stood out the most was entertainment and innovation. One kid said – “I’m bored so if I’m supposed to choose a brand I choose the one that entertains me and add something to my life” A guy in Tokyo said – “If I’m supposed to show up with a pair of new sneakers to school I’d like them to be different than anyone else’s.”

Your brand has to stay on it’s toes. If your into making cars you’re not only competing with other car manufactures, you’re competing with time to. If I am to interact with any kind of communication coming out from your company it better live up my day. If not I’ll go somewhere else!

10. From Customers to Followers
I’m not your customer. I’m temporarily following you. The second you show me disrespect I’ll follow someone else. Cause change is only a click away. In the pursuit for new customers Banks, Electricity Companies, Telcos, Car Dealers and many more have all made switching brand easy. A phone call and the Bank take care of the entire process.

However today we’re seeing this being moved over to digital. Head into Compricer and compare your bank, insurance company or Telco provider and you can change faster than your bank man says ‘Ho ho’.

In this world you have to start respecting your clients for what they are – temporary followers that will stay on as long as their relation to you is good. The second it turns bad they’ll leave without saying good byes – case we all hate good bye’s don’t we?

Your Future Brand Value then?
To sum this post up. What you’re looking at is a brand new world where information flows free. Whatever you do will become transparent. You’re loosing the competitive edge based on physical innovations and ideas, intelligence and innovation will prosper. Loyalty is no longer based on structural bindings and price. The consumer of tomorrow values sustainability, freedom of choice and humbleness.

What ever you do you can expect a global competitor that can deliver their products and services from anywhere in the world. Personally I use a computer I bought from the states. My mobile was
bought in Hong Kong. My software’s are all bought online from abroad. My backup service is located in the States. Hell, even my notebook was ordered from abroad.

Brands that can translate these changes in how people consume information are the winners. Brands that try to protect what they have, not opening up and milking every last penny out of that old cow
of yours will be the losers.

If you don’t adapt – All your brands are belong to us!

Johan Ronnestam
ronnestam.com

Johan Ronnestam is widely regarded as one of Swedenʼs leading authority in the field of future creative and conceptual thinking, and skill of innovating brands and communication. He took part in founding Foreign – one of Europeʼs most successful digital communication agencies, awarded in Cannes Lions, Epica, Clio, New York Advertising Festival, London International Advertising Awards, DA&D and more, voted DI Gasell after the first 4 years. Today Johan runs his own creative and strategy shop called ronnestam.com. His blog has been voted Swedenʼs first blog on digital communication, trends and technology.

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