the biggest
the most famous
the most popular
 

Forbes Magazine
 forbes.com/sites/caroltice/2014/01/09/who-won-the-web-the-14-best-loved-brands-online/#292201cb6b0a 
- based on a survey of customers

internetworldstats.com/top10.htm 

Siegel cautions that in the "customer-led future, company brands will weaken significantly because companies will be pulled apart by their customer divisions, they should plan on restructuring and promoting product or even division brands"

A 2007 Explorer starts at $40,699 for the 4.0 litre XLT package 
and can rise to $52,199 for the limted edition

Range Rover HSE starts at $99,900 with the supercharged edition running you $118,900
 

• a brief introduction to the concept of brand building
• the value of a strong brand to the producer
• the value of a strong brand to the consumer
• brands and trustworthiness
• brand equity
• global brands
• the benefits of two-way branding
• the increase in the interest in the individualism of communication (which could also fit in the CRM - Customer Relationship Management section of IEC)

This subject has developed in response to the trend for people to be less and less loyal to popular media and advertising. While the amount of TV we watch has increased from 15 to more than 25 hours a week (on average) the amount of times we flick channels has increased very sharply - meaning, simpy, we are avoiding long drawn commercial segments by watching two or three shows concurrently on different channels. As a consequence, we are effectively ignoring the TV commercials and the message is less and less effective.

Therefore, the large advertising agencies have been hopefully looking to the Internet as a medium in which advertising can be done in such a way as to have more individual contact with the viewer and therefore have a greater impact, which would eventually lead to a purchasing decision.

Companies who are going through a corporate reengineering process should recognize the opportunities available in online promotional and advertising and forgo some of the situations they have in traditional advertising, which have proven to be ineffective related to the cost involved.

"Marketers are attempting to create and maintain brands on the web by using rational branding. Companies that use rational branding offer to help web users is some way in exchange for viewing an ad.
Examples of Rational Branding include the free email service that yahoo;com and excite.com give people - which can only be utilized after vieiwng the ads.
 

. Global Millennia Marketing is a division of Internet  Merchandising Systems Inc

www.globalmilleniamarketing.com has a site on which there is a very good article by John Shenton about branding and internet products - this discussed the role that price plays in making a decision.

John Shenton says "The Internet and its promise of instant profitability is potentially the biggest problem in the coming years for many businesses in the retail and  hospitality industries.

Revenue managers want to use the Internet as a distribution channel to sell more product or in the case of hotels, put more heads in beds, yet at the same time an over reliance on the Internet could actually have the opposite affect, eroding already faltering profits. The fact is that by aggressively competing on features and price, it’s difficult for your business to create meaningful and lasting differences from your competitors. 

Your customers benefit from price wars by saving money, but also get confused when choice is confined to price. In many instances the customer is in effect buying a commodity and has no sense of brand loyalty because little is known about the company making the product or  about service after the sale."

As such, branding has never become more important, and its time your Internet pricing models need to be addressed. There is a danger of your product or hotel being perceived as a commodity. In the Internet world, if you can make your product different from a commodity you can get the pricing differentiation.

Branding should therefore be a key aspect of every business Web site, but remember your brand is not just your logo, tagline, packaging or the "look and feel" of your ads and your website. These are all graphical parts of your brand identity and are often narrowly, and incorrectly,  referred to as "branding”.  Your brand resides within the hearts and minds of your customers and prospects. It is the sum total of their  experiences and perceptions of your product, company and service, some of which you can influence, and some you cannot. "
John Shenton - November, 2002
 www.globalmilleniamarketing.com/../article_branding_on_the_internet.htm
A note on the globalmilleniamarketing.com  site says "Articles and Reports written by us may be printed or displayed on your website providing they are kept intact and a link/attribution to this website or Internet Merchandising Systems plus authorship is displayed."

Guarav explains
"When I was reading you notes for next class I took an interest in the section about branding and how marketing and creating a brand image in todays day and age is very different then before.  With the use of facebook and twitter brands are becoming more global and are able to reach a larger demographic in a shorter time span.  In this email I am focusing mainly on twitter and how it allows companies to listen easily to ideas that consumers have to enhance their current products or create new ones.

This video is very interesting on how certain brands are using twitter to strengthen their image:  youtube.com/watch?v=BgT1LzMvy7o As you can see there is more to twitter than just updating a status.  By listening, and correctly timing tweets brands are able to build customer rapport."

WTGR replies
"Thanks Guarav, looked at the video, it is useful, basically, it shows an interview with Hollis Thomases, CEO of WebAdvantage.net about Twitter. Thomases discusses Twitter and its social media applications at SES NY 2009."

 

KEY POINTS

why segment? because most people believe that when they put text and images up on their web site, they are therefore communicating with everybody in the globe - this is not true. There should be a specific effort to target the material to a demographic which best fits your "perfect customer profile". You should do "target market segmentation" online just as you would do it offline in a traditional marketing situation.

examples

"The ability to create special effects in HTML, such as those afforded by the use of wallpapers, may create readability or recognition problems when used alongside your company logo or wordmark" 

Click on this screen capture to review the material in the unit on Domain Names

Snapple can also use the online site to gather specific name and address information of loyal customers which they will use in "direct mail" campaigns in ensure

At the I AM website,
 http://www.iam.ca/touts/iam.ghtml
people can get an email address such as joe@iam.ca or joe@onlycanadian.com or joe@canadianrocks.com 

The questionnaire which you fill out to get the free email includes the statement
"we are always trying to learn more about you and your interests in order to provide the best and relevant community for Canadian beer drinkers..."

Such customer profiling techniques were done by the American cigarette companies in the 1980's in order to develop long-term brand insistence - however it was expensive to do that then due to the amount of free merchandize you had to give away - "kewl" web sites allow this customer profiling to be less costly and you can create communities of customers that in turn create a dynamic that can be very exciting

The National Post picked up on this story of Molson and their I AM CANADIAN ad and accompanying web site and ran a story by Jonathon Gatehouse on the patriotic fervor created
 http://www.nationalpost.com/home.asp?f=000414/259024