|
Branding for dummies
By Gerry McGovern
People call me a Luddite. People say I hate design.
People say I’ve no understanding of branding. People say
I don’t ‘get’ the Web. And all because I wrote
about Web designers being much more concerned about what their
mates in the pub think than their customers; designing websites
that are cool but useless.
One irate reader of my last column berated me
for small-mindedness. I was informed that broadband was ‘just
around the corner”. Another barked at me that it’s the
job of designers to stretch the technology, to experiment.
Sorry boys, for they mainly are boys, that’s
not your job. First and foremost, your job is to create a website
that achieves the objectives of the organization that is paying
for it. Experimentation is what made boo.com the laughing stock
of the world. Experiments should be done in a lab environment.
If I come to your website I am not there as some ‘lab rat’
to test out your latest fixation.
Five years ago I heard that “broadband was
just around the corner”. What I wasn’t told was that
the corner was miles and miles and miles off in the distance.
Anyone designing broadband websites today when the vast majority
of customers still have limited bandwidth should be fired. Not
alone is it a waste of time and money; it’s a guaranteed
way to insult and lose customers.
People who champion the importance of branding
on the Web usually don’t have a clue what they’re talking
about. Managers beware. If you get a lecture on Web branding,
start getting suspicious.
I’m into branding. I studied it. Since the
Web emerged in 1993 I’ve had a keen interest in how branding
would evolve in the new medium. Done right, you can build or enhance
a brand using the Web. Done wrong, it’s a joke.
In the attention economy, brands scream for attention.
On the Web, brands are supposed to *give* attention. The difference
is between night and day. You walk into a newsagent. 200 brands
call out to you – colorful, teasing, provocative. They yearn
for you to pick them up.
What’s the first thing you do when you want
to go to a website? You type in the brand! (www.yahoo.com, www.microsoft.com,
www.napster.com, www.ibm.com, www.aol.com, www.ebay.com) The brand
has already got your attention. You go to the website to do something.
The last thing you want is a big swirling logo. Go to the above
websites. See how little space on the page the logo takes up.
You brand on the Web with content. Yahoo didn’t
spend a penny on advertising before it went public. Viral ‘word
of mouth’ marketing spread its brand. Yahoo became a huge
brand not through traditional visual-driven marketing, but because
it was a great place to find stuff.
The same with Napster. Napster is a music website.
How come when you go to Napster you don’t see and hear Limp
Bizkit screaming over riffing guitars: “Napster rules! So
Cool! Whow! Download music now!”? Because it would be a totally
stupid thing to do. The Napster website is purely functional.
It’s logo looks like it was designed on the back of a beer
mat. The website won’t win any design awards. But is Napster
a brand?
Sorry boys. Wash your brains of MTV. The Web
is boring, boring, boring. You think you know branding but on
the Web you’re clueless. Managers, keep it simple, functional
and focused on what your customer needs to do on your website.
Back
To Resources
|
