I’ve just gotten out of the first full day of sessions. I feel beaten. I wonder if the hotel would frown if I carried this nice desk chair from my room down the elevator to the conference area for tomorrow? Sitting in a hard little chair all day has near killed me.

Anyhow, the first session of the afternoon was Fritz McDonald, who presented yesterday. The session was on web branding, and it was pretty good—a whole lot of information in a short time. I definitely won’t do it justice here. Fortunately, much of what Fritz covered can be found in the articles over at Ubrander.

Fritz started off by trying to get the idea through that a brand is much more than just a logo. (It amazes me that people in positions of power over college marketers still think that and associate the word “branding” with just insuring that the logo is presented uniformly across the campus.) Fritz defined a brand as being primarily:
* A Signifier – A physical representation of your institution, be it a logo, tagline, etc.
* A Repository – A collection of experiences
* An Expectation – Something people expect, associations that have been built around your institution

Fritz said that his definition of a brand differed from the poplar authors on the subject because of his idea of a brand as a repository of experiences. I found the idea very similar to how Scott Bedbury defines a brand in New Brand World. Wherever it comes from, it’s a great way to think about branding and to realize that your brand absorbs the bad experiences as well as the good—you can never fully control it. Riffing some more on popular thinkers in branding, Fritz discussed storytelling as an important way to convey information about your brand. He cited James Twichell who wrote Branded Nation, and most of us will also recognize Seth Godin’s All Marketers are Liars here as well. Fritz inferred that brand storytelling strikes the same cord as fables intended to teach social behavior and norms did in the past.

A strong brand, he said, has a single overarching relevant story that conveys a promise. This overarching story can be represented in any number of different ways. A brand also defines a category (or a niche or audience). A strong brand rallies its community. Blake Ross, speaking earlier today, told how Firefox’s excellent brand decisions helped galvanize a strong community of supporters who generated on-brand messaging on their own. Fritz went on to say that brands have episodes and evolve. The main soul or identity of the brand remains largely the same, but the way it manifests changes in order to remain fresh and relevant. Above all, a strong brand is durable—it is something that will be remembered long after a certain specific add campaign has runs its course. It forms a part of a business’s identity that isn’t easily ignored or discarded. However, Fritz stressed that you have to tell real stories and not just extol lofty values.

Fritz went on to cover some of the challenges in communicating your brand, which are familiar to most of us already. He stressed the issue of authenticity, which is refreshing every time I hear it.

Where Fritz’s pitch became particularly different, to my mind, is when he began advocating the web as the starting point and central hub for any branding effort or campaign. Basically, Fritz believe that an institutions website should occupy the position of dominance that the viewbook and print pubs largely do now. All effort in a campaign should start with the web and emanate outwards from that. Design ideas, messaging, copy—all should move from a planned website into print materials, signage, etc. Multimedia should start online and only then move to TV or radio. As an example, Fritz discussed the recent efforts of YorkU. They started with a web campaign and then expanded it into their viewbook, campus signage, flyers, and even dominated a subway station by buying every available slot for advertising. Despite the compelling case study, I don’t think he was able to justify his notion of the web as the primary hub of all marketing efforts (not that I don’t think that the case can’t be made, just that I don’t think he provided much support).

There was more than this in his presentation—much more. I’ll leave you with one notion that I found powerful. Fritz suggested that there was no reason that we shouldn’t attempt to create a web brand that occupies a position in the culture. I love that phrase: “a brand that occupies a position in the culture.” It’s a good place to stop. More to come later.

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 12th, 2006 at 2:54 am and is filed under Branding, Higher Education, Marketing. It has been viewed 5254 times. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

From ‘A Softer World’

There is an argument made against privacy that says someone who isn’t engaged in criminal behavior has nothing to hide. This method of thinking allowed the US government to slowly sap away our civil liberties in the wake of the 9/11 attacks–many have just accepted that trading privacy for security is acceptable and used the “nothing to hide” argument to rationalize what was, essentially, a decision based on fear. However, limiting the government’s ability to intrude in our private lives is easy compared with attempting to control how personal information spreads on the internet via gossip. Rather than spies or wiretaps, gossip is often gathered by those we trust and spread online by people who don’t understand or appreciate the potential for the damage it can do. In reality, privacy is about much more than concealing wrongdoing.

Internet-based abuse (‘cyberbullying’) and privacy / relationship issues are still massively misunderstood. The complexities of online sociality are probably the biggest ‘generational divide’ between modern teens and adults. To help put it in perspective a bit, here are some numbers…

I HAVE A MYSPACE ACCOUNT!!1!