Branding on the Web:

A real revolution?
Received (in revised form): 11th June, 2001

NICHOLAS IND
heads the consultancy team at FutureBrand’s office in Stockholm. Previously he worked for Icon Medialab in
Sweden. He has written six books on branding, the latest of which is ‘Living the Brand’ (2001).

MARIA CHIARA RIONDINO

studied marketing at Kingston Business School after completing a degree in politics. She currently lives in Rome,
where she works as a consultant for Accenture’s Italian office.

Abstract
Although much has been written about the marketing implications and opportunities of the
‘interactive revolution’, with particular emphasis on e-commerce and online advertising, the effect
that this may have on the practice and theory of brand management has to date gone unexplored.
To contribute to a better understanding, a series of one-to-one qualitative interviews was undertaken
with companies in the UK and Italy, including traditional companies, dot.coms and brand
consultancies. In this paper, differences in corporate attitudes to the Web are discussed and
conclusions as to the way in which branding practice and theory are affected by the new
technology are drawn. Finally, an updated model of brand management is suggested.

INTRODUCTION place a different emphasis on it. Overall

Nicholas Ind
Consultant, Futurebrand Sweden,
Box 844, Stockholm S-101 36,
Sweden
Tel: ⫹46 70 375 9121;
Fax: ⫹46 8 58 89 9099; E-mail:
nind@futurebrand.com
The impact of the Web on brands and
vice versa has been much discussed
in journals and magazines over the
last couple of years. The tone of
these writings has varied between the
euphoric and the deeply pessimistic.
The authors’ feeling is that neither
extreme is reflective of the real changes
taking place. To understand what
is going on, a series of one-to-
one qualitative interviews was con-
ducted with traditional companies,
dot.coms and consultancies. To try to
assess the influence of the speed
of consumer adoption of the Web
on corporate attitudes, the interviews
covered the UK (relatively fast adop-
tion) and Italy (relatively slower). The
research not only demonstrates the
difference in attitude to the Web in the
two countries, but also indicates that
dot.coms and traditional businesses
the findings demonstrate the French
adage ‘plus ça change, plus c’est la même
chose’. The essence of the argument is
that at one level the Web has changed
everything for brands. Although brand
charts have traditionally placed the
customer at the centre, this has often
been an ideal which has not been
carried through into reality. The Web,
because of its interactivity and com-
munity-building potential, gives the
customer far greater power and extends
the influence that customers have over
each other. In any purchase decision of
importance, customers are searching
after the truth — deconstructing or-
ganisational messages, seeking inde-
pendent views, looking at fellow
consumers and sampling the product, if
they can. Nowadays, the Web enables
people to obtain the views of many, by
e-mailing a trusted authority, taking

8 䉷 HENRY STEWART PUBLICATIONS 1350-231X BRAND MANAGEMENT VOL. 9, NO. 1, 8–9 SEPTEMBER 2001

part in a chat-room discussion or
looking at peer reviews. This is the
Web as a social network and as a guide
to decision making — an anxiety
reducer.
The question for brand owners is the
degree to which they can and should
control the customer dialogue. The
authors’ sense is that companies tend to
like control, and that the autonomy
granted by the Web is uncomfortable.
For example, should a company allow
positive and negative criticism of itself
on its own site. The preference is to
filter out the negatives, but invariably
the proximity of alternative sources of
information means the negatives just
move elsewhere. The opportunity is
for companies to have the courage to
engage all their publics in a dialogue.
This has several positive aspects. First,
the potential for criticism is a spur
to delivering better customer service.
Secondly, CRM and other mechanisms
that allow information to filter back
into the organisation enable the or-
ganisation to learn and adapt —
quickly. Thirdly, it puts employees
more directly in touch with customers
and thus enables a more overt customer
focus. The last is particularly valuable
because while research by Opinion
Research Corporation (ORC) shows
that, among large organisations, 38 per
cent have a value related to cus-
tomer service/care/satisfaction, the oft-
cited problem is that customer-focused
values remain an abstraction for large
numbers of employees.1 As a result of
the potential benefits of more Web-
enabled interaction between customer
and employees, these interviews show
that dot.coms place particular emphasis
on engaging employees with the idea
of their brands.
The Web has already had a radical
䉷 HENRY STEWART PUBLICATIONS 1350-231X BRAND MANAGEMENT VOL. 9, NO. 1, 8–19 SEPTEMBER 2001
BRANDING ON THE WEB: A REAL REVOLUTION?
impact on our lives. Go back ten
years and think of the working en-
vironment, and one can see how the
structure, nature and speed of work
has been transformed. For some of
us, some of the time, the process
of purchasing products and services
has also changed. However, the im-
pact has sometimes been less significant
than expected. The Web has not be-
come the universal substitute for real
world media and product consump-
tion, rather, it co-exists. The Web
and other forms of digital communica-
tion have not yet reached the stage
of intuition (for consumers at least),
where rather like how electricity is
used, people cease to make the deci-
sion conscious. Until the Web reaches
this stage, no one will truly know its
impact. However, what can be ob-
served is that for an organisation to use
the Web successfully, it needs to un-
derstand that while the technology is
transformational, the way people be-
have is not changing in a fundamen-
tal way. Maslow’s hierarchy of needs
still rules. People have the same needs
for safety and security, society and
self-actualisation they have always had.
Companies such as Yahoo and Amazon
that have found new ways to meet
these needs have generated large cus-
tomer bases in a relatively short space
of time. Of course, this ability to listen,
understand and act is not confined to
pure-play Web companies. The best
brands have always done this. The
advantage of the Web is it encourages
this in a seamless and immediate way.
TRADITIONAL AND DOT.COM BRANDS
In general, traditional companies attach
greater importance and meaning to
their corporate brands compared
9
IND AND RIONDINO
to online businesses. These re-
search findings suggest that among
dot.com companies the brand is a
fairly underused and under-recognised
resource. The main reason for this
under-utilisation is the speed of growth
and the apparent ease with which
businesses have been established. This
has prevented these companies from
developing a structured brand idea.
Indeed, Internet companies do not
seem to have developed a structured
methodology for managing internal
and external communications, let alone
a model of brand management. The
whole strategy tends to be driven by
the business needs on an ad hoc basis.
It is worth noting that despite the
fact that none of the dot.com com-
panies interviewed has deliberately
pursued a planned brand management
activity, they were nevertheless able to
describe their brand proposition. This
ability to define themselves seems to
have enabled these online businesses to
follow — even though at a more
intuitive level than more brand-focused
organisations — a consistent marketing
strategy.
It must be stressed, however, that
the dot.coms interviewed were par-
ticularly successful organisations, and
therefore may not be entirely repre-
sentative of the sector. In fact, many
brand management consultants stated
that, according to their experience,
these companies generally fail to show
a true understanding of the branding
concept, often confusing it with the
basic elements of the name and the
logo.
Marketing communications seem to
have played a paramount role in
building name recognition for dot.com
companies and, in particular, PR has
proven to be a very efficient and
10 䉷 HENRY STEWART PUBLICATIONS 1350-231X BRAND MANAGEMENT VOL. 9, NO. 1, 8–9 SEPTEMBER 2001
cost-effective way to promote brand
awareness. One of the elements that
contributed to Lastminute.com’s famili-
arity, for example, was having a highly
‘promotable’ management team. Brent
Hoberman and Martha Lane Fox, the
young successful entrepreneurs, repre-
sented the brand but also epitomised in
some way a new identity for Britain.
However, it may be argued that this
well-orchestrated PR strategy, which
worked extremely well in the UK,
could fail to achieve the same result in
other markets due to the specifically
‘British appeal’ of the founders.
Moreover, name awareness alone
cannot be the determining factor in
building a strong brand, as the recent
crises of the major Internet companies
have shown. The fact that Yahoo, one
of the most popular Web-based brands,
has experienced a serious profit crisis
which led to the departure of chief
executive Tim Koogle should induce
some caution about the sustainability of
a business model which is not sup-
ported by a strongly integrated business
strategy, including all aspects of brand
management from the brand idea
to the selling proposition and from
marketing strategy to CRM. Indeed,
one of the criticisms of Yahoo is that
the company has users rather than
customers.
ITALIAN AND UK COMPANIES
It is interesting to note that the re-
search has led to different results in the
two markets concerning issues related
to both the general branding activity
and the role of the Web.
It was found that businesses in the
UK market (but, importantly, also
Italian companies with a global scope,
eg Ford Italy and SAP) were more

familiar with concepts and theories of
brand management, whereas com-
panies with a more specific Italian
focus tended to consider structured
and all-encompassing methodologies
too theoretical to help the company
develop an effective brand strategy, and
preferred to deal with the different
elements of branding separately and
with a more inductive approach.
Most of the brand consultants inter-
viewed have expressed some concern
about the fact that many companies,
especially in Italy, seem to fail to un-
derstand the full benefit of having a
website. It was suggested that because
the website has become a ‘must have’,
often organisations decide to create one
just for the sake of it, without being
clear as to what purpose it should
serve.
The question of the role of the
Web in the overall business strategy
has generated different answers from
UK or global organisations and com-
panies which operate predominantly in
the Italian market. Indeed, whereas in
the first case the Internet is already
widely accepted as a channel for both
communication and commerce, in the
second it was argued that the market is
not ready for a full implementation of
the Web as a marketing medium. This
reflects the fact that in Italy there is
a much lower Internet culture than
in the UK, with one of the lowest
Internet penetration rates in Europe
despite having, together with Spain,
the lowest connectivity costs.
In particular, the main sector in
which Italy seems to be lagging behind
is the business-to-consumer (B2C)
area. This is partly due to the poor
penetration rate of private PCs, but
also to the peculiar structure of the
Italian market, with low product
䉷 HENRY STEWART PUBLICATIONS 1350-231X BRAND MANAGEMENT VOL. 9, NO. 1, 8–19 SEPTEMBER 2001
BRANDING ON THE WEB: A REAL REVOLUTION?
standardisation and a very diverse small
manufacturer offering.
It is not surprising, therefore, that
Zivago, the first important Italian
dot.com failure, was a B2C site. The
book and CD e-tailer founded in
March 1999 was forced to close down
in early 2001 despite the good sales
registered over the Christmas period.
One of the main reasons for Zivago’s
demise was customer dissatisfaction
with the fulfilment stage, with repeated
delivery delays and poor customer care.
In fact, with good distribution of
physical book and CD outlets, Italian
consumers found it inconvenient to
wait for more than a week to get the
item they needed.
BRAND MANAGEMENT ON THE WEB
The research in both countries iden-
tified two main kinds of problems for
Web brand managers. The first issue is
that sometimes companies seem to
believe that they need to create a
totally new identity for the Web which
reflects the dynamic and innovative
characteristics of the medium but is not
linked to the brand values of the
organisation offline. On the other
hand, the opposite danger exists: com-
panies assume they can simply put their
corporate brochures and catalogues
online, without elaborating a specific
Web strategy. In general, most of the
interviewees agreed that the right
attitude lies somewhere in between,
and suggested that if it is true that a
website should embody an organisa-
tion’s distinctive identity guidelines, it
is also equally important that the
language and the strategy chosen are
suitable for the medium. In other
words, an organisation’s website should
be consistent with the whole brand
11
IND AND RIONDINO
presentation, but at the same time the
Web presence should be conceived in
a way that is sympathetic to the
technology and the environment.
Whereas traditional companies,
when endorsing their presence on the
Web, are conditioned by an identity
and a personality which already exist
and which they need to preserve,
dot.coms — which are born and grow
up in the cyberspace — are free from
these kind of considerations and can
build their Web presence in the way
that suits them best.
Importantly, research supports the
view that online companies seem to
have developed a common style and
feel which tends to be influenced by
the Web environment and which
differentiates these companies from
traditional businesses. In particular, it
was observed that generally these
companies present a higher degree of
informality and dynamism, reflecting
the characteristics of the medium.
However, even in these cases where
the Web experience is most important,
the issue of consistency should be
emphasised to ensure that all the
various elements — such as the
shopping experience, the delivery sys-
tem, the customer service and the
marketing communications — work in
harmony successfully to contribute to
the creation of the brand experience as
a whole.
Some of the interviewees suggested
that it is possible to achieve consistency
throughout all forms of communica-
tion, including the website, by focusing
on the brand idea. All the main ele-
ments of the brand, such as the visual
style, the tone of voice, the personality,
the characteristics and the brand values,
need to come through the Web as
strongly as they come through any
12 䉷 HENRY STEWART PUBLICATIONS 1350-231X BRAND MANAGEMENT VOL. 9, NO. 1, 8–9 SEPTEMBER 2001
other communication channel. This is
similar to what an established cor-
porate identity consultancy defines as
the ‘brand drivers’. A brand driver, in
fact, is ‘a unique, compelling insight
which drives and unites all aspects of
brand expression, which can underpin
the development of an entire branding
programme’ (www.landor.com).
WEBSITES: THE RIGHT LOOK AND
FEEL
As far as the specific characteristics
of websites are concerned, most of
the interviewees agreed that consis-
tency, content and technical features
are crucial. In general, they felt that
a website should be dynamic, up to
date and continuously enriched with
new content. It should embody an
organisation’s personality and display
consistency in terms of both visual cues
and content. It should orient visitors
and provide easy-to-use navigation to
help move people from one area to
another. Most of the interviewees ex-
pressed their concern about the danger
of using too many technical effects,
which often bear no relation to what
the website is actually trying to com-
municate and can inhibit download
times and ease of use.
In particular, the website should be
instantly recognisable, meaning that it
should always enable visitors, from the
moment they arrive to the moment
they leave, to recognise and understand
immediately that they are on the site of
a specific organisation. Most of the
interviewees agreed that visual consis-
tency is very important and that the
logo of the brand must be clearly
visible in every section of the website
in order to make it clearly recognisable
and to reinforce the brand identity.

However, due to technical limitations
— such as the limited number of type
fonts and colours available for the Web,
and the fact that sometimes sites read in
different ways on different monitors —
it is often very difficult to ensure
absolute consistency between the visual
identity of the company online and
offline.
INTERACTIVITY: EXPLOITING THE
MEDIUM’S POTENTIAL
Increasingly, the Internet is accepted as
one of the channels organisations can
use for their communications, interac-
tions and transactions. In this perspec-
tive, the Web is perceived as merely an
additional medium in a company’s
communication or distribution strategy
which does not contradict or under-
mine the fundamental rules and basic
concepts of running a business. How-
ever, there are some characteristics
which are specific to the medium and
which are likely to have important
implications for the brand management
process.
One of the major attributes of the
Internet is that it is an interactive
technology. Research findings show
that, in general, the interactive nature
of the Internet impacts greatly on
some aspects of brand management,
such as an organisation’s ability to
gather stakeholders’ feedback as well as
relationship building.
This research found that the Web
enables companies to engage in a more
immediate and unfiltered dialogue with
its publics, thus improving greatly the
quality of the exchange of communica-
tion and information between the
organisation and its audiences and
thereby potentially creating the basis
for a stronger and more durable
䉷 HENRY STEWART PUBLICATIONS 1350-231X BRAND MANAGEMENT VOL. 9, NO. 1, 8–19 SEPTEMBER 2001
BRANDING ON THE WEB: A REAL REVOLUTION?
relationship. This supports the view
that in general digital technologies
allow companies to introduce in their
relationships the element of informa-
tion — information that is available,
valuable, relevant, contextual and up to
date — and that, in turn, this informa-
tion can become knowledge, which, as
Müller and Seidler say, is ‘the incubator
for more frequent interactions, more
relevant relationships and more valu-
able transactions’.2
As websites are available on demand
to consumers 24 hours a day, they play
a very important role in the feedback
process, as they can deliver instan-
taneous information. This is a crucial
element in brand management as it
makes it possible for a company to
assess the effectiveness of its marketing
strategy, and to review its communica-
tions and amend them if necessary.
More accurate and frequent feedback
also means an organisation can improve
the understanding of its customer base.
Indeed, it was argued that websites
enable companies to acquire detailed
information about their customers in a
very spontaneous way, and that this
information, when used effectively, can
provide accurate guidelines of the cus-
tomers’ needs and wants which, in
turn, represent a valuable asset for the
definition of an efficient marketing and
product development strategy.
However, the authors’ findings out-
line that even though companies have
the technology to collect detailed in-
formation, most of them — especially
in the Italian market — lack the right
attitude to use it effectively. In general,
managers agreed that to date their
companies have not been able to ex-
ploit the potential of the Web fully
as a means of gathering information
about their stakeholders, and that the
13
IND AND RIONDINO
data-collection activity has been so far
limited to names and addresses. The
findings suggest that websites can be-
come an essential tool in developing an
organisation’s ability to listen to and
understand the needs of its various
audiences. However, even though the
technology is there for companies to
use, for it to be effective there needs to
be a deliberate and consistent strategy
behind data-collection activity which
should involve not only the website
but also all the internal processes of the
organisation.
POWER TO THE CONSUMER
Another important aspect of interac-
tivity which emerged from the re-
search is that companies believe it
empowers customers by making them
more knowing and active and, as a
consequence, potentially more cynical
about the messages companies wish to
communicate.
As it is so easy today to access
information on a worldwide basis, and
as many people are exposed to and use
a single information-sharing system,
markets are becoming smarter and
more organised. Indeed, the possibility
of exchanging views and opinions
with other actors in a networked
marketplace has deeply affected the
decision-making process. The Web has
freed customers from their traditionally
passive role as receivers of marketing
communications, giving them much
greater control over the information
search and acquisition process, and
allowing them to become active par-
ticipants in both communication ex-
change and purchasing activity.
An important implication of these
considerations is that the Web has led
to a network of interested internal and
14 䉷 HENRY STEWART PUBLICATIONS 1350-231X BRAND MANAGEMENT VOL. 9, NO. 1, 8–9 SEPTEMBER 2001
external audiences. It allows people
with common interests to exchange
information and share experiences.
Despite all the marketing communica-
tion efforts undertaken by organisa-
tions, information circulated among
online communities is likely to be
significantly more relevant to con-
sumers compared to corporate mes-
sages, as it is perceived to be unbiased
and therefore more reliable.
As noted by David Siegel,3 the In-
ternet is ‘not about transactions; it’s
about communications and relation-
ships’. The focal point of all relation-
ships, whether virtual or real and both
in a marketing and in a social context,
is trust. However, although organisa-
tions may seek to nurture trust by
building secure and easy-to-use web-
sites and by promoting certain values
and messages, customers are now will-
ing and able to look beyond the tech-
nical features and to question both
messages and values, and they do not
respect companies which are reluctant
to engage in a dialogue or which
refuse to share information or accept
criticisms.
Managing criticism seems to be a
very delicate issue for managers. In-
terviewees generally expressed scep-
ticism concerning the opportunity for
answering embarrassing questions or
letting people discuss criticisms and
complaints freely on the corporate
website. However, chances are that the
discussion will take place anyway in
another part of the marketspace, with
the consequence that the company will
miss out on the opportunity to benefit
from this feedback and, at the same
time, may come across as a dog-
matic and narrow-minded organisation
which is not worthy of customers’
trust.

Increasingly therefore, the hyper-
linked economy is bringing of age a
new concept: the concept of loyal
brands.4 With the proliferation of
dot.coms, digital outlets, portals and
service providers, what fascinates
the consumer in the overcrowded
electronic environment is the quality of
the dialogue he or she can engage in
with a company, and this dialogue
cannot be based on anything other
than an uncensored and unfiltered
exchange of information. As Myers
noted, information breeds intimacy and
lack of information breeds contempt.
FACILITATING THE DIALOGUE
According to Hatch and Schultz, ‘One
of the primary challenges faced by
contemporary organizations stems from
the breakdown of the boundary be-
tween their internal and external aspects
. . . This is, in part, due to increas-
ing levels of interaction between or-
ganizational members and suppliers,
customers, regulators and other en-
vironmental actors, and the multiple
roles of organizational members who
often act both as ‘‘insiders’’ and as
‘‘outsiders’’.5 Just as the Internet impacts
on external audiences, so the corporate
intranet was found to affect internal
communications. In particular, the in-
tranet proved to work as a means of
sharing information and knowledge and
for generating commitment and en-
thusiasm within the organisation, and
was therefore perceived as an extremely
powerful resource for building a com-
mon culture within an organisation.
An effective intranet can stimulate
the creation of communities of interest
about the meaning and the values of
the brand and, especially in global
organisations, can facilitate dialogue
䉷 HENRY STEWART PUBLICATIONS 1350-231X BRAND MANAGEMENT VOL. 9, NO. 1, 8–19 SEPTEMBER 2001
BRANDING ON THE WEB: A REAL REVOLUTION?
between people working in different
places. Furthermore, the possibility of
sharing not only work-related informa-
tion but also fun and social issues was
found to facilitate the creation of a
sense of belonging and commitment
within the organisation.
It was also felt that the possibility of
giving anonymous feedback, either
spontaneously or in the form of
anonymous satisfaction surveys, on the
intranet would encourage people to
express their real opinions, making it
possible to find out what the real
perception of the organisation is. This,
in turn, would allow companies to
understand the people who work for
them, analyse their suggestions and
resolve potential problems.
Finally, the intranet was defined as a
very effective channel for companies to
implement their identity programmes
in terms of both cost and time savings,
and interviewees believed it could in
time replace the need for printing
and distributing corporate manuals and
brochures.
The intersection of the market
dialogue with the conversation which
takes place within the organisation is
bound to become the source of new
opportunities, emphasising the human
element in the corporate communica-
tions strategy. Research findings con-
firm this view, stressing the importance
of the role of employees in the brand
management process and outlining the
danger of causing a gap between
perception and reality if the way in
which the personnel behave is not
consistent with the other elements of
the branding strategy.
A recent survey into attitudes and
practices in corporate branding, carried
out by ORC International,6 found that
in dot.com companies the role of
15
IND AND RIONDINO
employees tends to be marginalised as
they become less visible and less
important to the transaction. However,
this research paints a different scenario.
Managers unanimously agreed that
even though people in dot.com com-
panies may communicate in a dif-
ferent way to people in traditional
organisations, this does not under-
mine the fundamental need for the
human interaction to be consistent
with the whole brand experience. Not
only have the findings of this study
rejected the hypothesis that the role of
employees is less important in dot.coms
than in traditional companies, but they
actually suggest quite the opposite,
especially in respect of sustaining a
dialogue and generating trust. It was
generally suggested that as the Internet
is still perceived with a certain degree
of diffidence or dislike by some people
who are not totally comfortable with
giving their personal details over the
Web, the possibility of human interac-
tion and the quality of the customer
service are seen as fundamental in
building a relationship with the cus-
tomer.
In spite of the fear that managers
may have of losing control of the
communication process, a more open
and frequent exchange of information
between companies and their audiences
should be considered more as an
opportunity than as a threat, for it
enables organisations to be closer to
their markets, leveraging their learning
capability and thus allowing them
to become more flexible and more
responsive to the needs of their
stakeholders. It was noted that ‘the
most powerful corporate brands are
those that listen effectively and have
the confidence to allow their customers
to define them’.7
16 䉷 HENRY STEWART PUBLICATIONS 1350-231X BRAND MANAGEMENT VOL. 9, NO. 1, 8–9 SEPTEMBER 2001
UPDATING THE MODEL OF BRAND
MANAGEMENT
In general, interviewees stressed that all
conceptualisations of corporate iden-
tity management tend to be extremely
theoretical and cannot encapsulate the
variety and peculiarity of individual
situations. The common feeling was
that, although identity and branding
models are often used and discussed in
the academic world, in the business
environment both companies and con-
sultancies tend to adopt a much more
practical approach.
It was argued that models can be
considered as ‘wish lists’ or benchmark
procedures of what would happen in a
perfect environment, but that in prac-
tice there are so many variables to be
taken into account that it is extremely
difficult to make a generalisation or
suggest a single methodology.
Bearing in mind the risks and limita-
tions connected with every attempt
to summarise the complexity of the
branding process in a static framework,
a model is suggested here which takes
into account the major findings of the
study (Figure 1).
The model, which builds on a chart
previously elaborated by Stuart,8 has no
pretensions of being an exhaustive and
universal explanation of the brand-
ing process, but aims to be a graphic
presentation of the findings of the
study, and to give a small contribution
to the conceptualisation in the area.
In particular, the present authors have
introduced the brand idea into the
model. This concept appears to enjoy
wide use among practitioners, and has
been defined as a way of summarising
the brand and expressing it in a very
simple and clear way. The general
opinion is that the brand idea should sit
between the corporate identity and
 BRANDING ON THE WEB: A REAL REVOLUTION?

UNPLANNED COMMUNICATIONS

IDENTITY IMAGE
Spontaneous stakeholder feedback

BRAND
Customers
Corporate p ersonality Marketing

R E P U T A T I O N
c om
ommunications
munications

OF THE
strategy Suppliers

INTERFACE

ACTIVITY
Corporate culture Feedback

P O S I T I O N I N G
Shareholders

EXPERIENCES
Employees’ Local communities
Brand view of
Corporate philosophy idea identity

IDENTITY/ IMAGE
E-communities

COMPETITORS’

B R A N D
Feedback Governments
Core values

ACCUMULATED
Products
and Media
services
Corporate mission Influential groups

Spontaneous stakeholder feedback

UNPLANNED COMMUNICATIONS

Figure 1 Updating the model of brand management

the central elements of the marketing
communication strategy, the employees
and the products and services. It is a
result of the organisation’s identity and
values and should consistently inform
the company’s strategy and activities.
The concept of brand idea seems to
be closely related to that of positioning,
which has also sometimes been defined
as ‘a summary of the brand’. However,
positioning appears to be related more
to the perception of the company in
the mind of the audiences, and there-
fore to the image of the company,
than to the actual brand identity and
values. Moreover, positioning shows
greater market focus, taking into ac-
count the aspect of competition. Ac-
cordingly, it might be concluded that
both the brand idea and positioning
offer a snapshot of the brand, but
whereas the brand idea is part of in-
ternal processes and, in a way, the
source from which all the other ele-
ments flow, positioning takes place in
the mind of the publics as a result
of the company’s communications and
competitors’ activity. In general, feed-
back loops have increased compared to
previous models, with more oppor-
tunities for spontaneous feedback from
stakeholders, and so has interaction
between the stakeholders and the or-
ganisation.
Finally, unplanned communications
have also been incorporated into the
model. It was found that even though
companies may wish to control their
communications, there are a fair num-
ber of completely unmanageable and
unplanned cues that add to all other
accumulated experiences of the brand
and contribute to the corporate reputa-
tion. Indeed, unplanned communica-

䉷 HENRY STEWART PUBLICATIONS 1350-231X BRAND MANAGEMENT VOL. 9, NO. 1, 8–19 SEPTEMBER 2001 17
IND AND RIONDINO
tions are seen to be an increasingly
important phenomenon which seems
to have found its natural home in the
World Wide Web. This is due to
the growth in both size and strength
of online communities as well as to
the more frequent interactions between
an organisation’s internal and external
stakeholders.
SUMMARY
The authors’ research, which consisted
of qualitative work conducted with
companies in the UK and Italy during
2000, demonstrates the primacy of the
brand idea as a concept. In established
companies the idea is clearly articulated
and used to steer management deci-
sions, and in some companies it impacts
in a profound way on employees.9 For
dot.coms the brand idea seems to be
more subliminal. This is perhaps not
surprising in young companies, which
are sufficiently small to embed the
brand through the direct influence of
founders. However, as these com-
panies grow they need to understand
the essence of their brands. This will
help them to define clear strategies.
For example, it is instructive that
Lastminute.com has begun to explore
the true meaning of ‘lastminuteness’.
The danger in delaying formulating the
brand idea for new start-ups is that there
is an over-reliance on advertising and
PR messages to build awareness at the
expense of structuring a truly customer-
focused and customer-engaging offer.
Look round at the high-profile dot.com
problem cases and the tendency is not
to find awareness problems — rather to
see only partially constructed offers that
have failed to listen to customers and
have not explored the potential of the
business idea.
18 䉷 HENRY STEWART PUBLICATIONS 1350-231X BRAND MANAGEMENT VOL. 9, NO. 1, 8–9 SEPTEMBER 2001
When it comes to delivering the
brand idea on the Web, there is a
tendency for organisations to fall into
one of two traps. Either the com-
munication potential of the Internet
leads to site concepts and designs that
have little relationship to organisational
reality, or the too-literal transfer of the
brand fails to make the most of the
medium’s attributes. The argument
here is that the presentation of the
brand should reflect the overall brand
idea and make the most of the
medium’s potential. The failure to
achieve this is largely because organisa-
tions see the Internet as simply a
communications channel. Interviewees
tended to deride any notions about the
Web as a revolutionary medium, espe-
cially in Italy, which seems to be less
Web savvy than the UK.
In the authors’ view, the value of the
Web is that it is both a distribu-
tion and a communications channel
that facilitates interaction, community
building, openness and comparability.
The best Web brands optimise all these
facets and integrate the Web into the
other activities. They recognise that
the Web is not just a medium to the
outside world, but something that im-
pacts both internally and externally on
the way they do business. The Web
may not be a revolution in terms of a
seismic shift in the world order, but as
it becomes a more intuitive part of
business, it will alter the relationship
between a brand and its users.
References
(1) Opinion Research Corporation
International (2000) ‘Global 250 —
Attitudes to corporate brandings’, ORC.
Research was conducted among 263 senior
corporate communicators and brand
guardians within the world’s leading
companies.

(2) Müller, T. and Seidler, P. (1999) ‘Global
dimensions of web site design’, Design
Management Journal, Fall, pp. 47–52.
(3) Quoted in Mieszkowski, K. (1999) ‘Web
sight — Let your customers lead’, Fast
Company, No. 33, p. 210.
(4) Myers, R. (2000) ‘When ads get personal’,
eCFO, October.
(5) Hatch, M. J. and Schultz, M. (1997)
‘Relations between organisational culture,
identity and image’, European Journal of
Marketing, Vol. 31, No. 5–6, pp. 356–365.
䉷 HENRY STEWART PUBLICATIONS 1350-231X BRAND MANAGEMENT VOL. 9, NO. 1, 8–19 SEPTEMBER 2001
BRANDING ON THE WEB: A REAL REVOLUTION?
(6) Opinion Research Corporation
International, ref. 1 above.
(7) Ind, N. (1998) ‘Making the Most of Your
Corporate Brand’, Financial Times
Management.
(8) Stuart, H. (1999) ‘Towards a definitive
model of the corporate identity
management process’, Corporate
Communications: An International Journal, Vol.
4, No. 4.
(9) Opinion Research Corporation
International, ref. 1 above.
19