The Web’s Place in Brand Building

Later in this book we will analyze how marketers communicate their messages through a variety of vehicles including television, radio, print advertising, direct mail, and roadside billboards. Each has pros and cons, including price, reach, and an ability or inability to be targeted to a specific audience. Marketers set their strategies by mixing and matching the marketing vehicles that they expect will be the most effective in communicating their brand to the desired audience for the budget they have available.

Despite the differences between traditional methods, most share two key similarities:

• Promotional efforts are finite; that is, their messages are in some way limited. A 30-second TV commercial can tell a story for only 30 seconds, an 8.5 × 11-inch print ad can say only as much as can be printed on the page.

• Promotional efforts speak to consumers as a group, not as individuals.

Neither of these characteristics is true of the Web because the Web is not just another traditional marketing tool. The Web is a hybrid medium, in that it is both something to advertise for (marketers will often use advertising to drive people to a site) as well as something to advertise on (sites, especially B2B sites, are often used as advertising vehicles in and of themselves, with companies using their pages to promote their products and services, etc.). To understand how the Web plays into the branding picture, we must examine the Web as an isolated entity, offering both increased channels and challenges to the brand-building effort.