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Featured Article:

IS ANNOYING PEOPLE A GOOD STRATEGY? 

Traditional marketers and communicators are obsessed with  achieving their objectives. Web marketers and communicators are  obsessed with helping customers achieve their objectives.

"Brand advertising, the kind you're used to seeing on TV and in  print, isn't nearly as big on the Internet as the search ads  dominated by Google," writes Peter Kafka for the Wall Street  Journal in January 2010. "But that's got to change, as marketers  realize that traditional advertising works on the Web, too."

"The above is an article of faith among a certain kind of Web  publisher," Kafka continues. "And some of them are even paying  for studies to prove that display ads-basically all the ads you  see that aren't part of search results-really do work on the  Web. Except when they don't."

Kafka goes on to cite a study carried out for Yahoo that found  that brand ads have some impact on those over 40. For those  under 40 the impact of these ads is nearly zero; no impact.

What has happened to branding? How has such an important word  been hijacked by such a narrow interest group? Whenever I hear  branding being talked about these days I know I'm about to enter  fairyland. Otherwise sensible people start talking gibberish and  lose all track of reality. 

Branding has become all about organizational narcissism, vanity,  ego and self-delusion. It's all about what the organization  wants (needy child that it is), where the organization wants to  go, what excites the organization (or certain senior managers in  it), what the organization wants you to do. Branding doesn't  care about you, the customer. It sees you as a target, an entity  it must convince to do what it wants.

A number of years ago, I remember buying books from Amazon.  After I added a book to the basket I was brought to a page that  had a huge ad for jewelry. I was taken aback. What does this  have to do with buying a book, I thought? Amazon was 'excited'  to tell me that they had just launched a new jewelry store. I  wasn't excited. After a while I noticed that these disruptive  branding ads that were unrelated to the task I was seeking to  complete had disappeared.

What I learned much later was that these branding ads had not  just annoyed Amazon's customers; they had negatively impacted  sales and overall customer satisfaction and loyalty. Amazon had  listened and removed the disruption.

When it comes to marketing and communication we need to measure  both satisfaction and dissatisfaction, both positive and  negative action. Sure, if you put a big ad for jewelry in front  of 100 people you'll get 2 to click on it. And if you make it  really annoying and intrusive, you might even get 5 to click.  But what about the 95 that didn't click? To get those 5 clicks  how annoyed did you make the 95?

Amazon has a great brand and tremendous customer satisfaction  because it cares about the 95. It listens, measures, responds.  I'm loyal to Amazon because I feel it's an organization that  pays attention to my needs. 

Traditional marketing is about getting attention. Web marketing  is about paying attention.

Gerry McGovern is a web content management author and consultant
www.gerrymcgovern.com