July 29, 1996
Building the Brand
By Bob O'Donnell
I've finally discovered the one indisputable truth about the Internet: There are no
indisputable truths. As I attend more Internet-related conferences and hear more
well-educated and well-reasoned, but deeply divided arguments about what the Internet is,
what it means, and how sites can best take advantage of the new medium, I grow more
convinced that nobody really knows. Instead, it's becoming painfully obvious that lots of
people are slogging away, trying to make the most of what many are convinced is a
potential gold mine of opportunity, but without any kind of clear map marking the way.
Despite this confusion, however, some relatively important points are becoming clear.
One of them is that the best way to build a sense of value for a Web site is to build off
a company's existing assets. In other words, if you already have a core of information and
identity materials, you should use them as the basis for your site. For example, if you're
a member of the vendor community, the marketing materials and other information you've
created for customers should be repurposed for your site. If you're an IS manager setting
up a company or workgroup's intranet, you ought to use information and materials already
available to you.
Although I realize this seems incredibly obvious, many people feel there needs to be
something new created just for the Internet (or even for some intranets). As a result,
great deals of money are being spent to generate new content. Admittedly, money will need
to be spent to "reformat" the material for the Web, but many vendors are now
developing products and technologies for easing the content transition. Microsoft's demos
of upcoming versions of FrontPage, Internet Explorer, and Office, for example, show how
they're going to allow existing Word, Excel and PowerPoint data to be "reused"
on the Internet and corporate intranets with essentially no translation whatsoever.
The argument for using a company's existing assets is also valid for sites based on
content from print or broadcast media, such as InfoWorld Electric. Our core asset is the
entire InfoWorld editorial staff, yet until recently, the work on Electric was
being done by a small dedicated group. (Some organizations intentionally divide their
print and online products -- such as Wired and HotWired -- but the result is that
there is little connection, or synergy, between the two.) To help build a stronger sense
of synergy and community between the print and online products -- and, in fact, to
strengthen the InfoWorld brand -- we recently decided to integrate Electric with
the existing print departments. As a result, the entire editorial team is now contributing
to both InfoWorld print and InfoWorld Electric; that's a huge benefit for Electric
and its readers. In addition, most of the departments on the business side of InfoWorld,
including circulation, marketing, research, and ad production are also lending their
particular expertise to the venture. The end result, we believe, will be an even stronger
Web site and a better integrated company.
Other than a few changes on the masthead and a few moves around the office, there
aren't many tangible signs of this important strategic step yet, but we know that it will
help us tremendously as we move forward through the uncharted territory of the World Wide
Web.
©
Copyright 1996, by InfoWorld Publishing Corp., a
subsidiary of IDG Communications, Inc. Reprinted from InfoWorld,
155 Bovet Road, San Mateo, CA 94402. Further reproduction is prohibited.
