Branding for dummies: March 19, 2001 issue of New Thinking

March 19, 2001 New Thinking:
Boring is beautiful in Web design

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March 19, 2001

Branding for dummies

By Gerry McGovern

People call me a Luddite. People say I hate design. People say I’ve no understanding of branding. People say I don’t ‘get’ the Web. And all because I wrote about Web designers being much more concerned about what their mates in the pub think than their customers; designing websites that are cool but useless.

One irate reader of my last column berated me for small-mindedness. I was informed that broadband was ‘just around the corner”. Another barked at me that it’s the job of designers to stretch the technology, to experiment.

Sorry boys, for they mainly are boys, that’s not your job. First and foremost, your job is to create a website that achieves the objectives of the organization that is paying for it. Experimentation is what made boo.com the laughing stock of the world. Experiments should be done in a lab environment. If I come to your website I am not there as some ‘lab rat’ to test out your latest fixation.

Five years ago I heard that “broadband was just around the corner”. What I wasn’t told was that the corner was miles and miles and miles off in the distance. Anyone designing broadband websites today when the vast majority of customers still have limited bandwidth should be fired. Not alone is it a waste of time and money; it’s a guaranteed way to insult and lose customers.

People who champion the importance of branding on the Web usually don’t have a clue what they’re talking about. Managers beware. If you get a lecture on Web branding, start getting suspicious.

I’m into branding. I studied it. Since the Web emerged in 1993 I’ve had a keen interest in how branding would evolve in the new medium. Done right, you can build or enhance a brand using the Web. Done wrong, it’s a joke.

In the attention economy, brands scream for attention. On the Web, brands are supposed to *give* attention. The difference is between night and day. You walk into a newsagent. 200 brands call out to you – colorful, teasing, provocative. They yearn for you to pick them up.

What’s the first thing you do when you want to go to a website? You type in the brand! (www.yahoo.com, www.microsoft.com, www.napster.com, www.ibm.com, www.aol.com, www.ebay.com) The brand has already got your attention. You go to the website to do something. The last thing you want is a big swirling logo. Go to the above websites. See how little space on the page the logo takes up.

You brand on the Web with content. Yahoo didn’t spend a penny on advertising before it went public. Viral ‘word of mouth’ marketing spread its brand. Yahoo became a huge brand not through traditional visual-driven marketing, but because it was a great place to find stuff.

The same with Napster. Napster is a music website. How come when you go to Napster you don’t see and hear Limp Bizkit screaming over riffing guitars: “Napster rules! So Cool! Whow! Download music now!”? Because it would be a totally stupid thing to do. The Napster website is purely functional. It’s logo looks like it was designed on the back of a beer mat. The website won’t win any design awards. But is Napster a brand?

Sorry boys. Wash your brains of MTV. The Web is boring, boring, boring. You think you know branding but on the Web you’re clueless. Managers, keep it simple, functional and focused on what your customer needs to do on your website.

Gerry McGovern

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In the attention economy, brands scream for attention. On the Web, brands are supposed to *give* attention.

You brand on the Web with content.