The Marketleap Report
Volume II, Issue #3 - March 5th, 2002

Brand on the Run
Delivering Promises Sustains Brand, Not Impressions
by Keith Boswell

The Super Bowl dot com ad glut from a few years ago left everyone wondering what in the nether region was going on. How had a new interstellar class of online businesses stepped into the economy, and within a year captured the imagination and momentum of nearly everyone backing the stock markets? Irreverence, bad taste, anything that could shock was employed to capture "mindshare" in a moment that felt like a bit of capital euphoria.

The burning hull of the dot com implosion gives insight into why advertising alone can't build a successful brand. Taking the example of many of the dot com's who poured millions, sometimes up to half of their funding into a Super Bowl ad, demonstrates that brand is not a term to toss about lightly like cotton candy or pop rocks.

Brand too often is a word that makes businesspersons ears turn sharply like a curious dog. It can elicit groans, moans and an eye-rolling that would convince anyone that zombies really do inhabit corporate America.

In the dot com gold rush, building brand was an urgent task meant to draw traffic to a website and new business concept. The short sighted nature of the exercise demonstrates a fundamental error in brand thinking. Just go read f**kedcompany.com for a little while to see the smoldering ashes of online brand disasters.

If you don't believe that advertising can be mistaken for brand, even by market leaders, look at the whole "mLife" debacle that AT&T Wireless just threw themselves into. mLife is the new brand name for AT&T Wireless, but you wouldn't know it from their ads. The ads are vague, with people growing, getting together, mysterious but promises of a better future.

Because the ads are vague and elusive, many Americans are turning to MetLife.com to find out more, not mlife.com. Oops! When mlife.com advertised during the Super Bowl, people still went to metlife.com. (Be sure check out mdeath.com before visiting mlife.com for a comparison after this reading)

Brand is value. Plain and simple. It is a promise of value, but most importantly it is the delivery of that promised value in a consistent manner. If you don't deliver, the promise is hollow and empty. Empty promises means mdeath.com. Success is putting your heart on your sleeve and wearing it like a sweaty bandana.

Too often, brand is associated with the marketing department. All manner of companies assume that the marketing department's sole job is the long-term piloting of their wondrous brand. They put out the ads, they keep up the message, and the rest of the company focuses on delivery and water cooler chat. Allowing brand to live in that magical kingdom, where few inhabitants actively participate, distances a company from its message and values.

How much did you realize you loved Coke once New Coke was introduced? Why does Apple continue to sell computers and software even though they are predicted to evaporate like a bad Nostradamus quatrain every other year? How has IBM maintained a successful position in the computer industry for decades? Value, consistency, and delivery helped each of these companies ensure their brands were a real part of their customer's world.

Each of the examples above also shows us that brands can stumble and still recover. There is a misconception that strong brands aren't allowed to make mistakes. Mistakes often lead to innovation, if taken and explored in the proper light.

Coke quickly released Coke Classic because of the backlash to New Coke. Coke had to quell a suddenly passionate user base. Apple weathered many storms and naysayers, but held a loyal course leading them into innovative product and software design. IBM slipped in the operating system market and quickly lost out to Microsoft. IBM held fast in hardware, software, consulting services, and focus on delivering success to their clients.

Delivering brand online is a difficult proposition. In Christopher Locke's phenomenal book Gonzo Marketing, Locke reminds us all that companies don't have a heart. Not a real one anyway. The employees do. Your reliable products and services keep customers hearts enamored.

Offline, face to face, brand is about people, customer service, advertising, targeting, and tangible delivery. Successful web businesses and marketers have to develop a truly value enabled system in order to effectively create a sense of brand awareness online. They must exist as an offline brand in an online world.

Who's doing it right? Take a look at Netflix.com. DVD player sales started an epic rise at about the same time as the dot com boom. Created as a service that anyone would appreciate, Netflix.com currently serves over 500,000 customers and adds 15,000 new subscribers every month.

The premise is simple. A member can check out 4 DVD's at a time for $19.95 a month and there is never a late fee. The user can return the movies by mail as soon as they are finished and can then either order new movies to be delivered, or have them automatically sent from a wish list they keep online.

Netflix.com has surpassed Blockbuster as the #1 bulk buyer of DVD's from movie distributors. The convenience, price point, and service all combine to make it one of the best services and business models online. Netflix.com built brand on a promise of value combined with consistent and successful delivery. If you love movies, have a DVD player and haven't been here, you really need to check it out.

EasyDNS.com is another example of a company that is building a brand online by delivering value. It's something you don't notice until it isn't working. That simple tagline says it all for EasyDNS.com.

Every domain name, web site address, and email address on the Internet requires Domain Name Service (DNS) to make it work. EasyDNS.com's service provides a suite of domain name management solutions for businesses that want to outsource this critical function.

They are currently adding more than a thousand domain names per week to their systems.

They are making it easy for businesses to take control of the management of their domains at a fraction of the cost they would incur to maintain these services in-house. They took an opportunity, defined value, delivered tools, and created a business model that did not exist before. Their quality and value, not a large advertising budget, is building their business.

Companies have to speak to their customers and innovate on behalf of them. Delivering value to those you serve now means being better suited to current customers and future prospects. Branding is more than burning your name into the flesh of another and hoping everyone will click through.

report@marketleap.com.