To mark the beginning of my blog I decided to introduce a currently relevant subject: the importance of online as a communications medium and its influence on brand building. My question is does the future of brands lie online or will offline communication channels still play the dominant part in brand building?
What are the particular benefits of online? Probably the main attraction for companies adopting this medium is cost as online campaigns have the potential to generate high financial returns from a relatively small investment. Furthermore, the interaction potential of digital brings brands closer to their customers, communicating directly to them and creating a uniquely interactive and far more intimate experience that offline media can. Online marketing represents a direct path to learning valuable information about the target market and to empower the consumer by participating in initiatives such as content creation (e.g. customer reviews).
In my research I came across numerous cases in which online was the main communications medium, secondarily supported by offline initiatives. To offer you an example, in 2005 in Canada Monster was loosing ground to competitors despite being a technology leader in its field. Nonetheless Monster realised through customer research that people placed high significance on their relationship with their boss and that this was one of the main factors affecting job satisfaction. This led to a brilliant idea –that of introducing a “rate your boss” application on the Monster.ca website.
Through an online viral campaign people could rate their boss based on various categories of characteristics and could invite others to rate their own bosses. People who scored low were encouraged to look for a new job while the names of the best bosses nominated the best in Canada were published in leading publications and on the radio. The campaign was supported by TV, print and radio advertising however offline channels played a supportive role. The online campaign had a huge success generating much traffic to the Monster website while sales rose by 61% in that year alone!
Could the success of Monster’s (and other brands’) online initiative be an indication that the future of brands is likely to be online or does it demonstrate that offline activities will continue to have a significant impact on brand building?
Note: My main sources of inspiration for this post were:
“Using online as a leading medium” by Peter Field,
“ad:tech New York: the digital strategies of Obama, Lenova, Shreddies, Capri Sun, Luis Vuitton and IBM” by Geoffrey Precourt
“Monster.ca –Monster Success” by Bos Agency
All available from www.warc.com –Digital
Further case studies are available on WARC; however access to this service is not free.
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