March 2000 

Online Branding  Building Brands Beyond the Banner

By Marc Phillips

For the better part of 1999, I've been recommends that all major brand companies should develop a determined online marketing strategy that looks beyond the popular banner advertisement. This strategy should envelop a broader range of branding techniques in order to maximise the return on investment. In recent months, companies such as Charles Schwab and Dell Computers have reduced their level of banner advertising in favour of other branding techniques that they believe are more effective in reaching consumers.

I have detailed some recommendations with examples on how to achieve this:

Use strategic alliances to leverage your brand with existing market leaders

It is recommended that e-commerce pureplays leverage their brands with existing market leaders  both offline and online. This will effectively increase the saliency of the brand and build credibility among target consumers.

In a recent example Bluefly.com, a US based online shopping site, teamed up with Sony Music to attack the college student market. The companies joined forces to launch a "Decorate Your Dorm Room" sweepstakes. The promotion will be advertised on both websites as well as major portals to gain awareness and traffic. Contestants are then directed to the Bluefly homepage and to a co-branded shop hosted by Bluefly. The strategic aim is to drive traffic to the website and strengthen the company's brand presence by taking advantage of Sony. s aspirational standing with the college student market.

Similarly, start up companies can link their brand with online market leaders to leverage their brand and gain credibility and awareness. Musicmaker.com has recently joined forces with the AOL family of brands in order to establish and building awareness of its own brand. In a three year strategic alliance the company will offer custom CD's and downloadable music across AOL websites and cross-promote the service through advertising, links and other marketing initiatives. The alliance also includes a number of co-branded websites, which will ultimately increase Musicmaker. s reach to millions of AOL customers.

I strongly encourage companies who are considering a future float on the stock exchange to consider this strategy prior to any release of shares. When E*TRADE and ANZ announced a co-branding alliance at the end of September, the gradual decline of E*TRADE stock prices was halted and prices have steadily grown since. The below chart illustrates the recent moves in the E*TRADE Australia share price.

Source: E*Trade Australia

Develop an Interactive brand relationship with your target market

Many consumers often fail to recognise the parent company that owns a brand and become frustrated when they have to search to find product information. At the same time, many traditional brand companies are currently uncertain as to how the Internet can be used to build a relationship between their brand and consumers. In a study conducted by APT Strategies in July 1999, 100 of the top 350 Australian brands failed to have any Internet presence at all.

Therefore, I recommend that traditional marketers follow the lead of companies such as Toyota and develop a branded website to alleviate consumer frustration and build a relationship with their target market. Toyota have just developed a branded website focusing on the Echo subcompact, the Celica sports coupe and the MR2 Spyder roadster, in an attempt to build an interactive relationship with younger consumers. This website is backed with a multimillion-dollar advertising campaign designed to reach younger buyers and build the Toyota brand and sub-brands with them early on.

Levi Strauss Australia has recently adopted a similar strategy with a website based on a brand slogan. The website www.originalsin.com.au creates an interactive experience for their core market and attempts to reposition Levis as an aspirational brand. Such a campaign achieved huge click through success and is a leading example of how offline companies should use a website to build or reposition their brand.

Develop a brand character or personality to raise awareness

I also recommend the use of a character or personality to help consumers identify with  a brand. Particularly, for pure play companies that have to evolve their brand from zero brand equity, the use of cartoon characters or people can quickly develop attributes and associations that appeal to the target consumer. Just as Pillsbury adopted the . Pillsbury Doughboy. , and Marlboro adopted the . Marlboro man. companies such as MTV online are unveiling a cartoon character to enhance the online experience and help their users to better interact with their website. This type of marketing initiative is a good example of how online companies can apply and improve offline marketing techniques and move away from a reliance on banner advertising.

Utilise the Internet's targeting ability to maximise Marketing ROI

I believe that marketers should become familiar with the Internet and adopt its key functions into marketing strategy. In a recent survey conducted by economic research group PricewaterhouseCoopers , email has taken over as the primary activity for using the internet in the US. This is a very clear indication that marketers can target more consumers directly through email marketing techniques. Companies such as Yesmail.com offer a specifically targeted set of consumers who are interested in emails from marketers of certain product categories and brands.

This kind of initiative, while offering a direct link between the brand and consumer also allows marketers to track and analyse the effectiveness of different campaigns. The targeting and tracking ability of the Internet is perfect for marketers who whish to improve the efficiency of offline techniques. I foresee a major uptake of direct email, internet communities and vertical portals by Fast Moving Consumer Goods companies to provide a more targeted approach product sampling and new product trials. For example, instead of using traditional methods to blanket mail consumers with new shampoo samples, Proctor and Gamble can use the internet to highlight their core target market by demographic, geographic, lifestyle or product usage. Then through email, co-branding or promotion they can reach a specific group of consumers who are interested in sampling the product.

Sponsor Online Events and Core Customer Websites

I  believe that for new and developing brands it is essential to maintain a refreshing approach to keep consumer interest in an increasingly cluttered environment. New internet marketing and sales techniques are evolving almost as quickly as the internet itself and successful marketers will need to stay on top of these new techniques if they are to remain competitive.  For Example Worldspy.com is soon to unveil a free Internet Service Provider (ISP) model that offers consumers free time online while using a branded browser page. This means that marketers can sponsor a branded ISP browser that consumers can actively browse the Internet with. Such a model can potentially provide an alternative to banner advertisements as marketers can target certain browsers within the ISP and have their brand and website continually in front of the consumer.  Depending on the take-up and usage of free ISPs brand sponsorship may become a viable targeting alternative to banner advertisements.

Flycast offers a similar branding technique for its network affiliates with the Valet service. At Flycast, participating websites drive their own traffic to a portal-like area that's specifically branded to them. Their visitors can then conduct product searches, read product reviews and participate in auctions and classified ads. The idea involves continually having your brand in front of the consumer and not losing them to another branded website.

I also feel that there is a potential branding opportunity in download time. Netzip software has created an InfoWindow that launches during the download process. This window can be used to display branded content, advertisements or any other HTML information. For companies and websites that involve a large degree of downloading, this is a perfect marketing technique to maximise branding exposure while consumers are online. 

Don't Disregard Banners Altogether

Although I've been advocating the use of new and creative branding techniques, it is important not to disregard banner advertising altogether. In fact, the banner is still an extremely effective method for generating awareness and traffic of your brand and website. As companies enhance the accountability and measurement of banner ads, the technique will prove to be a staple in the cross media marketing mix.

At the same time APT Strategies urges advertising agencies and media companies to come up with new and innovative ways to advertise on the internet. Previously we mentioned the use of download time as advertising space to maximise the branding effect while consumers are online. In a similar fashion, NetGravity has unveiled a solution that allows online marketers to advertise on electronic bills and statements. This new service  will deliver targeted advertisements and marketing offers to e-bills and statements over the internet. This is the type of ingenuity that is needed in the Australian Internet Industry if the credibility standing of Internet advertising is to be improved.

Overall, more and more marketers are starting to recognise the effectiveness of the Internet as a brand building platform. However I urge companies to look further than just the banner. New marketing techniques are evolving just as quickly as the Internet itself and in an increasingly cluttered environment it is essential that marketers be innovative to remain competitive.

Website References

Bluefly             http://www.bluefly.com

Flycast            http://www.flycast.com

MTV Online    http://www.mtv.com

Musicmaker   http://www.musicmaker.com

Netgravity       http://www.netgravity.com

Netzip                         http://www.netzip.com

Sonymusic     http://www.sonymusic.com

Amoeba Interactive   www.amoeba.com.sg

SilkAir                         www.silkair.net

Yesmail          http://www.yesmail.com

CASE STUDY:  Email Advertisement Campaigns - Silk Air . Singapore

The below case study is an excerpt from the soon to be released "The World's Best Online Advertising Campaigns"  by Marc Phillips[Bookman Press].

Silk Air used a carefully planned website strategy to launch their . Friend-Introduce-Friend. customer loyalty program to build their online database. The three-month campaign attracted 90,000 website visitors, and resulted in 20,000 actively registered customers, at a cost per customer acquisition rate of SGD$0.10 . an excellent result!

First Website Campaign Draws 100,000 Users

The Silk Air website, online strategy and advertising campaign was handled by Singapore based Amoeba Interactive. The website launched on 1 July 1998 and was accompanied by a four-month banner ad campaign.

Amoeba decided that the audience for Singapore Press Holdings. Asia One website was closely matched to Silk Air. s prospective customer base. Silk Air. s banner ads appeared in the Straits Times Interactive and Asia One . Video Wall. for the duration of the first campaign.

1.5% click through rate delivers customers at 35 cents per person

The banner ads delivered a total of 42,000 users to Silk Air. s website in four months. These banner ads achieved a 1.5% click-through rate, which exceeded the average click-through rate of 0.5% for ads placed on the Asia One portal.

The website was visited by a total of 82,000 users during the four months when the advertisements were running. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the average monthly user visits dropped to half once the banner ad campaign ceased.

Silk Air spent an estimated SGD 35,000, which translates into a cost per customer acquisition rate of SGD0.35, which was an excellent result for a debut campaign. (See Table _ for details)

Table __ : Silk Air Website User Statistics . July - December 1998

Revamped Website Recruits Customers with Contest

At the conclusion of the initial banner ad campaign, Amoeba persuaded Silk Air to revamp their website to include more interactive content to attract more visitors. The new content would be used to capture more detailed customer data, and to establish a pool of registered users who actively sought Silk Air product information.

A key feature of the new website was . Lucky Draw. , which had proved very popular with users of the previous Silk Air website. Users had to register their details in order to be in the running for the free flights offered as prizes.

Email recommendation strategy provides viral marketing affect

To qualify for the Lucky Draw, contestants had to sign-up with Silk Air. s . Friend-Introduce-Friend. , which effectively doubled Silk Air. s customer reach. It was compulsory for users to recommend at least one friend by providing their email address, and could recommend up to five friends. If recommending more than 1 friend, users received a bonus draw point for each additional friend recommended. This strategy was used to generate website traffic at an exponential rate.

Once registered, notification emails were automatically sent to the user and their nominated friends. The initial user was informed about their registration and how many bonus draw points they have received.

Their friends were told who actually recommended them to the Silk Air website to register for a Lucky Draw. Each email featured a direct link to the Silk Air website, along with relevant links for those users who decide to opt-out of the mailing list.

Silk Air Makes . Friends. with 20,000 Users in Three Months

The Friend-Introduce-Friend strategy was responsible for most of the increased traffic, with each user who registered with Silk Air recommending at least three other friends on average, who subsequently visited the website. By the end of January 1999, Silk Air had built up a database of 3,000 registered users.

From there on, the database grew at an incremental rate. By February, there were about 8,000 registered users. By March, Silk Air reached their projected database target range of 20,000 registered users.

Between February - March, Amoeba Interactive staged another banner ad campaign for Silk Air at two of Asia One. s online publications, at a cost of less than SGD 10,000.

The number of monthly website visits also grew from 20,000 in Jan 1999 to almost 30,000 in February. By the end of March, the number of website visits reached 40,000.

This can be attributed to the direct marketing email strategy used by Amoeba.

Conclusion

While Silk Air. s Friend-Introduce-Friend campaign provided excellent returns through its low cost-per-customer acquisition rate, its real value to the client is the procurement of an online database of effectively targeted customers that have expressed an interest in the brand's products and services. This provides brands with excellent repeat selling opportunities to proven sales prospects.

For further information contact APT Strategies at info@aptstrategies.com.au