How to damage your online brand in a few easy steps

NETIMPERATIVE - 01 December 2004

ANALYSIS: When’s the last time you got truly irritated by an advert? Last month? Last week? An hour ago? 10 seconds ago? Chances are it was the last time you went online.

For me it was when I saw that quivering, hovering, and intrusive AOL ad which has run on a number of sites lately. It did make me click on it, which no doubt proves that it is ‘effective’, but it did not make me feel particularly warm and friendly towards the brand. So when will online marketers stop using click-throughs as their only yardstick? Or should both advertisers and media owners be working harder to find ways of balancing brand building with response?

The recent and very welcome growth in digital marketing has brought an explosion in creativity in this sector, with an ever-increasing range of ad formats. Banners and buttons have become old hat with pop-ups, pop-unders, animations, video clips and viral marketing, all competing frantically for our attention. Standard digital advertising is rapidly turning into visual wallpaper, so creative teams are having to work harder to grab eyeballs and generate the response levels their clients demand.

To do this, the less principled are turning to aggressive and intrusive techniques first used in the online porn and gambling sectors. Full page blockers, interruptive messaging and elusive exit buttons are sadly still common, leading to artificially inflated response figures, which risk brand damage and do not necessarily guarantee bottom-line impact.

Unfortunately few product or service categories can compete with the emotive appeal of sex and gambling online, and that ‘go on you know you want to’ messaging style (except perhaps for the fantastic award winning Trojan Games campaign – see www.creativeshowcase.net ). The clear implication is that mainstream marketers need to tread carefully when using these techniques. It is interesting to note that when true hardball marketers finally get you to their site, they make quite sure that there are no competing advertising messages to distract you from the main task of spending your hard earned money.

What about the media owner’s responsibility to support the quest for a more rewarding online experience? Take handbag.com as an example. More often than not a visit to this site involves an online experience which is frequently interrupted by ads directly overlaid onto content – from a diverse range of brands such as Remington, biotherm, and the worst case example of Archer’s peach schnapps, featured on the pregnancy/ baby page no less. These force the reader to close them to reveal the very content they went there to see. While saturating the site with ads may generate increased ad revenue, what is this saying to the audience about their brand? Not a media strategy, which would cut any ice in the more mature market for offline media.

On a more positive note, the current campaign for the NSPCC is running in the relationship section of handbag.com and on itv.com (amongst other sites). This refreshingly excellent example of creative shows how strong executions can create impact and cut through a crowded media space. It highlights the problem of child abuse by showing young children walking uncertainly across the page, and turning to look at the viewer – supported in one example by the slogan: ‘Every week at least one child is killed by their parent or carer – don’t wait another day to donate’. The children then fade away to reveal a collecting box. Content is still visible behind the ad, which manages to achieve strong brand impact as well as good response figures, without irritating the site user (see the IAB’s www.creativeshowcase.net to see the campaign).

Online marketers face fantastic opportunities to increase their share of voice, but significant challenges if they are not to damage the very brands they seek to serve. To quote a recent article by John Hegarty in Media Guardian entitled: ‘The trouble with viral campaigns’;

‘Brand building is not just about recognition and notoriety, it is about building empathy and respect’. 

This is just as true in the online world as it is offline. Online marketers and media owners alike need to learn fast how to balance brand building with response, if the medium is to fulfil its potential and take its place as a key ingredient in any self-respecting media schedule.