In a presentation laced with both television spots and Internet banner ads, Ogilvy & Mather’s Chairman and CEO Rochelle B. Lazarus and Ogilvy Interactive Worldwide President Michael Windsor demonstrated links between interactive marketing and brand building. The presentation, “Building Brands in an E-Business World,” was given yesterday at a lunch hosted by the Direct Marketing Idea Exchange.
New technology such as the Web does not change the fundamentals of a brand, and how the brand manager deals with the public, according to Lazarus. What it does offer is the opportunity to immediately engage the consumer with the brand, as opposed to waiting for the consumer to put down a magazine, turn away from the TV, or lower the volume of the radio in order to respond. “We can now gather real people and respond to them on a one-to-one basis,” said Lazarus.
The benefit to a strong brand is that it is a barrier to competition that is difficult to overcome, said Lazarus. Any soft drink can quench a consumer’s thirst; to drink a Coke is to have an experience. The red-and-white label on the can conveys a great deal of data to the consumer.
Windsor demonstrated the Ford Motor Co.’s site, which serves as a gate for owners and shoppers to all of Ford’s brands. The site takes a lifetime-value approach, selling the right brand to people at the right age. People who bought Mustang convertibles in their 20’s, for example, would buy minivans in their 30s, Jaguars in their 40s and Mustang convertibles [again] in their 50s. But the site also provides a mechanism in its “Owner Connection” page for Ford to proactively contact customers. Static Web sites, said Windsor, quoting his grade-school age daughter, are “so 20th century.
“Windsor also presented a banner ad for Vespa that, through a simple maze game, reinforced the idea of the scooter as “fun” — and then allowed customers to click-through for more information.
One trap brand managers fell into in the early days of Web sites was to abandon a proven image and, in deference to the medium, go with a glitzy site, without regard for how that image would fit in with the rest of the brand. “The Greenwich, CT, matron on TV can’t be a Soho hipster on the Internet,” said Lazarus.
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