Building a Powerful Online Brand? or Building a Powerful Brand Online? By, Kim Anderson Building a powerful online brand is different from building a powerful brand online. The Internet is seen as a new marketing model, especially for direct marketing. Although it offers exciting potential for marketing communications (MarCom), it can rarely stand alone as a brand-building tool just as direct marketing cannot. Companies should utilize the Internet as a marketing mechanism, not the marketing mechanism, and strategically fit it into the overall MarCom mix. Many marketers are separating the Internet from the MarCom mix, forming independent e-marketing or e-communications divisions and/or strategies. MarCom guru, Don Schultz, refers to this as "disintegration" and sees it as a grave mistake . Schultz urges Marketers to integrate instead of isolate the Internet as a marketing communications medium.The Internet alone doesn't build mass brand awareness. It simply can't match the impact of the other mediums that reach millions of people at the same time like a 30-second commercial during the Super Bowl. Of course, it doesn't cost nearly as much either. It is also hard to establish a universal meaning for a brand on the Internet, like GE's "We Bring Good Things to Life." Why? Web advertising is still low in quality and impact. Current technology makes the Web limited in format, which constrains the quality of Web advertising, and the ads are too easily ignorable. Still, making the ads larger and more entertaining in hopes of greater impact can have a negative effect because they often annoy consumers. Keeping in mind that Web marketing entails placing ads on other companies' sites, consumers may find it infringing to see ads on the hosting site they're viewing. Web ads must be carefully balanced to entice consumers and not annoy them. At the company's site is where gre...
