Internet Branding
The question rises: "How come most companies, be it small or multinationals, are not able to extend their brand image properly on the Internet?"
Interesting enough we can state that the budget obviously plays the minor role in implementing the brand properly online. Properly means loyal to the brand personality, brand image and brand message.
The first web site that pops up in my mind as an example of proper online branding is Hewlett-Packard. The HP network treats its brand with respect and very professional. Their differences of the global HP network web sites involves the choice of color for the campaign area which is allowed and even necessary due to demographic preferences. USA with neon blue and Germany with Christmas tree green but all have the branding elements and navigation throughout the global network of sites in the same place.
Inconsistency is the most made mistake and less serious as jeopardizing the brand personality when taking a brand online.
I show you here an example of brand inconsistency:
SONY
Throughout nice, clean lay out with Flash presentations of their newest products.
Excellent Support module throughout all sites. So what should be improved from a branding point of view?
Europe Lay-out is presented on hand of the German web site.
Sony Thailand
Sony Australia
Sony Brazil
Head Offices abroad have their own marketing budgets and work accordingly and they have their own ideas which they want seen realized.
All Europe sites look the same except for the Flash movie that displays the latest campaign, so we can assume that the Europe has it's own brand management.
Australia - South America have their own Head Offices and handle their own branding and so does Thailand.
So all Continents have more or less their own idea how to reach their targets best.
The danger is that this way of handling branding will drift more and more apart until not only inconsistencies appear, but also the brand personality as such will be jeopardized as we showed on our web site in the module Multinationals Online on the web site review page.
Black logo on white, white logo on metallic blue, dark gray logo on light gray - all acceptable - all nice but the extreme differences in the lay out do not create a consistent brand image.
What could be done to improve the inconsistency?
We would recommend to have the top navigation bar consistent throughout all continents with the Global Home button and then the country name, like it is displayed on the Australian web site. This would present Sony as a true global player.
The layout should be delivered to each continent as templates. Each region then can fill in the area for their campaigns as it is required to hit the taste of the demographic region.
This is in fact the only way to go when brand consistency is guarded properly.
Having the European sites differ in such a degree from the rest of the online presence is not strengthening the brand but is it weakening it then? Or what about the Australian site with a remarkable difference in lay out and resolution.
We could argue Germans surf the German site, Thai the Thai site and Brazilians choose the Brazilian web site etc. - so the users got no idea what other sites of Sony look like. So what is the big deal?
There are many nationalities present, living and working in Germany, or Thailand, or Australia and this fact is mostly ignored when branding is taken online, the world is in fact a quite small place and why would you make your company look smaller than it actually is, is our second reason.
Most important however is that a brand is more than the logo. The brand should be one message and one look and feel.
If you want to know more about internet branding and online marketing then you are invited to visit our web site. | 
Article Details