Going Internet For the Brand Makeover

Brandweek, June 19, 2000 by David Kiley, Gerry Khermouch

Myra Allen, 36, a mother of three in Ann Arbor, Mich., recently went to Yahoo.com and typed in "stain removal" to see what she could find on getting candle wax out of a linen tablecloth. She found the answer by linking to Tide.com and its "Stain Detective."

Exciting stuff? Maybe not to Hugh Hefner. OK, maybe not to Allen, either. But for people who have to get their own stains out of tablecloths and are trying to feed three kids, a husband and a dog every night while holding down a day job, the Net can add value to a brand's communications even if the product in question is as mundane as laundry detergent.

But for those mundane brands that may hold only a little or very occasional relevance to peoples' lives-especially to younger people's lives-is that the limit of what the Internet can be counted on to do? Put another way, is it realistic to view the Net as a way of injecting instant relevance and cachet into a brand that may be struggling to find a voice with a new generation of consumers?

The answer from marketing veterans is, probably not. No question the Web should be viewed as a vital marketing tool, but there has to be realism on what it can accomplish for some classes of brands.

"You have to look at the Web as a main-stream communications tool these days," said Will Waggaman, a veteran Evian water marketer who just joined Computer Sciences Corp., Wilton, Conn., as principal on the "e-inventions" team. "I don't know if it can necessarily be the savior of a brand, but it can be a very integrated part of revitalizing it."

"To the extent you can be hip on the Internet, that's definitely where young people are going these days," said John Bissell, managing partner at Gundersen Partners, a consulting/executive recruitment firm in Bloomfield Hills, Mich. "But you have to do it in a way that is genuinely contemporary. And if you have a really old-fogey brand image, it's very hard to change that perception."

The trick, argue Waggaman, Bissell and others, is for the Internet activities not to strain the reach and heft of the brand--a lesson that Procter & Gamble, among others, already has had a chance to learn from its experimentation across its various brands.

"The Net looks like a reach for a lot of products and brands," said Bob Lieber, CEO of direct marketing agency Lieber Levett Koenig Farese Babcock, N.Y. "But it makes sense and will give you good return in a lot of cases if you merchandise what you are doing properly [ldots]not just banners, but at point-of sale, in advertising, packaging, etc."

At P&G, efforts to build thriving communities around such mundane products as detergent generated a disappointing return on expectations that the company now recognizes to have been unrealistic for certain brands.

"We've had a lot of trial and error, sometimes painful," said one high-level P&G marketing exec. "It's not a medium that makes sense for all of our brands.[ldots]In the time you're going to spend on the computer, you don't want to talk about laundry. There are lots of better things to do out there."

Some of those better things do involve P&G brands--not low-involvement household brands like detergent but rather higher-involvement brands in such categories as cosmetics, feminine protection and deodorant, he said.

Marketers are finding the Internet, if not the shot of caffeine to a brand that Internet advocates have been selling, to at least be a good place to nurture brand loyalty and reach customers in ways that aren't practical through other means. Whether that can actually change their buying habits, particularly in more commodity-like categories, is questionable.

Asked if she was a Tide brand user before she was directed to the brand's Web site for her stain-removal answer, Allen said, "I'd have to say I bought Tide a lot, but not always. I'd switch around on deals. But I will say that no other brand of detergent has actually solved a problem for me before."

That's far from saying an Internet site can't be vitally important to a brand's success. At Danone, Waggaman said, the Net proved crucial for energizing Evian, particularly among a hard-to-reach younger female cohort.

Execs started with the recognition that the Net "is not the place they'd go to check out peanut butter or a bottle of water. You've got to overcome the challenge of packaged goods and build on a database," identifying users and reaching out to them via e-mail and other techniques. In Evian's case, that meant establishing the site as a reliable source of party invitations, inside dish on hot new clubs, and sweepstakes offering trips to France. "You can't assume they'll be just visiting the site every day," Waggaman said.

What was crucial, he added, was that since Evian is a high-image, on-premise brand derived from a source in the French Alps, those were all relevant considerations. The trick, he said, "is to entertain them, but tell them just one thing about the brand."

At Miller Brewing, a well-thought-out Internet promotion seems to have provided a much-needed spark to a flagship Miller Lite brand that has been groping toward an effective positioning and ad strategy for several years. With wholesalers returning from this spring's national sales meeting disappointed that the company still had not solved the ad quandary Miller was able to get a quick shot of relevance among the young male target with a summer promo tied directly to the burgeoning popularity of online auctions.