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Tag: ABC Namebank

  • E-Commerce Branding: The Corporate Challenge of 2006

    Imagine, one morning you see all the roads and highways and ask for the reason of their existence while being totally unaware about the invention of a car. Holding just a wheel in your hand, you wonder on some vague possibilities of using the million miles of roads and super highways. That’s exactly where we are on the information highway. So far there are flashy websites with a few twisted email addresses. This is just like having a wheel in your hand and being totally oblivious to the finer workings of an automobile, never mind a tractor or a forty-foot trailer or a bullet train.

     

    Corporations are in need of quick and serious shock therapy so as to graduate from the earlier joys and excitements of owning a few flashy websites. This early exuberance fueled the false notion of being ‘the master players of global e-commerce’ amongst the members in the corporate boardrooms. Let’s face it; most organizations very gracefully eluded this false misconception throughout the hierarchy all based on few web pages linking to the net. The magnitude of e-commerce is so huge and vast and it demands a deeper understanding on how to capitalize on this freely available trillion-dollar public infrastructure.

     

    Here is the reality check.

     

    In a recent study by ABC Namebank on the issues of cyber-branding, some 10,000 websites of the top businesses around world were analyzed and each was measured on it distinct personality, visibility and its value to the end-user. The study was divided into two parts, the Timeline of initial adoptability and the Bottom-line of returns and profitability. The results were very alarming and here are the key points for the corporate world.

     

     

    Timeline Issues
    The adoptability phase, resulting in a quick creation of owning a moderate website scored very high, while the efforts to strive for readership were significant

    and most remaining on a struggling course via online banner advertising to ensure minimum hits. The poor corporate image on e-commerce is now becoming a major challenge of corporate communications.

     

    Bottom-line issues
    The knowledge base to understand the precise nature and the rules of profitability by sophisticated application of e-commerce models was extremely poor. Thousands were chasing the same few overly repeated models and falling flat, as on e-commerce, only the best and only the top name in a category survive. In this race for the top, the screens are very small and only the first few choices have a chance, while the other millions sink to the bottom.

    Surprisingly, for some of the big operations, the sites were lost in the fathom. It’s down the hill for all such e-commerce players, straight-lined by the thousands in a queue anxiously waiting to get attention.

     

     

    Following were the top two reasons of most e-commerce failures.

     

    Lack of a Selling Proposition:
    There are millions of such sites selling millions of basic products and services. So what? Commoditization will certainly kill the business, as only by sheer accident, would some sales be made. Selling screwdrivers is one thing to compete but to offer advance assembly ideas with a screwdriver, as one of the essential tools is a better selling proposition. ‘Cheap’ is losing its power as now ‘Free’ is in. The global competition is so fierce and the labor cost disparity is so wide that most bargains are no longer working. as there is always some other supplier to offer it for far less, or even for free. Most corporations are still stuck in the old print-society mentality and see their selling proposition somewhere in the middle of an old fashioned glossy brochure. The traditional advertising and promotional model with graphic overdose are often replaced on the ecommerce with animation overload. This approach shifts all the intelligence from the actual proposition to little or useless information leaving the sharp deal hunters without any motivation to act or to come back for a revisit.

     

    Total Oblivion:
    Any website, portal or any ecommerce strategy is simply doomed from the start without a Five Star Standard of Naming. 99% of the sites are unsearchable. This means that unless a potential customer remembers all the twisted spellings and all the added differentiators of a URL including dashes and slashes plus is equally aware whether it’s dotcom or dot net suffix, the access to the e-commerce model in impossible. When a site is in this, oblivion it’s doomed and the e-commerce gameplan is lost. Period. With millions of sites being added all the time around the world, there is much to be said about the simple, unique, one of a kind globally protected name identities. This demands the application of a Five Star Standard.

     

    Recommendations:
    Formulate a management task force to review this as a critical boardroom level issue. Bring the open-mined IT teams closer to marketing. Seriously explore the selling proposition and image positioning strategy and see how it’s the current URL’s name identity and its related difficulties on the search engines. Professionally audit the liabilities of your URLs and have them analyzed using some proper standards. Nothing less then an open debate in search of a perfect solution will work. Welcome to 2006.

  • Winners, Losers of Corporate Image 2005

    Corporations that develop clear messages and clearly communicate their stories to both the internal organizations and the external forces are the real players. The rest are either still discovering who they are or just making stories as they go along or periodically falling flat on their faces.

    Who are the real winners and losers of the corporate image in 2005, which corporation had the best identity, which was most famous, hated or most profitable? All these responses depend on where you stand, as a loyal customer, the general public, employee or competitor.

    In a study conducted by ABC Namebank International, 5,000 major corporations around the world were surveyed and results were compiled to measure the impact of their image on customers, profitability and overall market positioning. There was also a strong emphasis on their cyber-branding platforms and e-commerce presence.

    Most corporations passed the acid test — 54 percent in all — with a B+ ranking. But the real big winners were very few — 3.9 percent — and the losers stood at 42.1 percent.

    The big winners had the Right Story with the Right Image; the others had The Right Story but a very poor Image and struggled to make it work. The losers were almost without a Story, with a bunch of ideas thrown together and some randomly picked up image. They were spinning, but going nowhere.

    The Story

    Corporate image demands a very clear strategy, a mission, a game plan and a story. All that needs to be enunciated in a few simple sentences or a paragraph or two. What is the corporation all about, what does it do, and where it is going and why?

    Corporations that develop these clear messages and clearly communicate their stories to both internal organizations and external forces are the real players. The rest are either still discovering who they are, are just making stories as they go along, or are periodically falling flat on their faces.

    It is true that most corporations are usually wrapped-up in some big generic business concepts. It is also a very common problem these days that most find themselves in the middle of quicksands, while the markets are moving too fast in too many directions. Still, the issue of clarity and directions must be fixed. The correct messages must be built and the real stories need to be told.

    The Image

    There is a lot to be said for the right image to fit the right story.

    The most common problem is that the image has no relationship whatsoever with the corporate objectives. Still, senior teams regularly send out very confusing messages to internal layers of staff and ask them to band around the existing image and sing along with out having any solid base or substance. This very often makes it a chicken-or-the-egg dilemma.

    The issues about image-building also require a deeper understanding and professional guidance. The right image to fit the right story is critical.

    Basic Rules

    No matter what the corporation does, it must project a sharper personality, something that requires professional and objective assessments — not just randomly picked, trendy ideas.

    When it comes to corporate image, corporations must also try to have images of honesty and respectability. Therefore they have no room for false claims or overly silly, wildly humorous image campaigns. Money and business both are serious issues. Customers and shareholders alike want to do business with the sober teams, and not the beer-commercial-happy bunch.

    Lastly, whatever the corporate image and brand name identity the corporation adopts, it must be secured under proper trademarking so that it can be built as something unique and not something shared by thousands of others. Cyber-branding is now the backbone of any business. Only good name identities will survive on the search engines.

    In Summary

    It’s very easy to figure all this out. A quick review of all your corporate communications material and your collateral will clearly tell you what are the several stories that are being projected by your corporation today. A quick search of your own corporate name identity in Google will tell you in seconds where your corporate brand stands in its distinction, visibility and how easy or difficult is it to find on e-commerce.

    Once you have all the data, it is also very easy to have a conference call with your senior management on this issue. You will quickly come up with a game plan to fix the problems you have. After all, it is very easy to do.

    Remember… the customers are waiting.