Part 2: Consistency, appropriateness and the power of the "Web"

What is a typical discussion you have with a prospective client?
Let's say they come to us and say, "Build our web site." The first question I ask is, "What else are you doing and how is the web site going to interact with the rest of the whole marketing ensemble?" Because no web site is out there by itself. It's always part of some ensemble and so the first thing I want them to understand is what's the ensemble, what's the context that this web site is going to operate under? What else are you doing besides your web site to reach customers? What's your advertising campaign plan like? What does your media relations campaign look like? Do you have a media relations campaign? And if they don't have any of those, that's where we really do our best job. We can sit down with them and say, "What's your goal, what are you customers, what do you want them to know about your company."

What do you think is the most important media strategy in the ensemble?
I think the most important thing is to have consistency in all your materials. If you're aiming at a customer and you've figured out what you want to tell them, and your messages are in place, why would your web site be something different? It ought to look sort of similar, it ought to say the same thing, because the audience is the same and your goals are the same, it's really fundamental. I'm often dazzled that people don't seem to get that. People are like, "This is the web site, let's do something cool, let's have a bunch of flaming logos and stuff like that" and don't get me wrong we like flaming logos as much as the next guy but only when they're appropriate. Appropriateness is really important on the Web, particularly because that seems to be the place that most of the inappropriate things take place.

What irritates you most about web sites?
Well, bad writing, bad copy, it blows me away. People say, "I can get my nephew to do my web site for $US500. Why shouldn't I just do that?" They want to do the web site on the cheap side but they'll spend thirty-five thousand dollars for a TV commercial. And what I do is tell them, "Well, you're going to get what you pay for. If the rest of your marketing campaign and your media events and your TV and print campaigns are worth all of this, then why isn't your web presence?" So my job really at Buzzword is to convince my prospective clients why they should invest in what we do. My job is to find the solution for them to understand what my company can do for them.

Do you have people that come in your office and don't recognize the power of the Web?
Yes, and I think the thing they need to understand is pretty much everyone needs a web presence but not everybody needs a gigantic interactive site. There are a lot of companies, small ones in particular, where the "yellow pages" ad model is the presence they need on the Web. If you're a bakery, you're not going to sell fresh donuts on the Web; you want people to know that you're out there so if they need a bakery they can find you. It's like the yellow pages in that sense but a more interactive one. You can use your website as an opportunity to let people tell you what they're looking for, and that's useful because you can have some two-way interaction, which is very important.

What do you think is a common misconception about the Web?
The fallacy that people operate under is that the Web is some sort of a "technology" thing. Thankfully you see this less often than in the past, but you go to these seemingly big smart corporations and they'll say, "We want to talk about our web site" and the first thing they do is hand it off to their IT department rather than their marketing department. And that's just dim. That's like saying, "We ought to do a brochure, so make sure you get the guy that runs the paper mill in this meeting." It's wrong-headed. Just because the Web happens to use computers as its vehicle, it's not a programming thing per se, it's a message thing, and that's marketing. What I try to do is set the level of expectations at "Ok, what we're talking about is what's the marketing problem we're trying to solve."

We spend a lot of time framing that marketing question. Because almost inevitably it's B to B - almost everybody we deal with are B to B. They're not like Disney or entertainment sites, people are going to the web site because they have a question in mind and you want them to be able to go there and get their answer and get out. Navigation is hugely important - "the gooey" is hugely important. What do you want to tell your audience, what do you want them to know? And then if you have all that and you lay it all out on the table, the pattern emerges, the content is there.

We did a site for a big cemetery here that's a very old cemetery and it's really a beautiful site and their basic message was, "You know there's still room to rest in peace here." And they wanted their site to be very simple and tasteful. So what we did was hit them hard with landscape visuals, lots of photos of the grounds and flowers, and made it tranquil and serene. So again back to appropriateness, that was a very appropriate design for their needs.

Is it difficult for you if the client doesn't know much about the Web?
A lot of times it works better that way. If they don't very much about the Web but they know about what they want in the content. We have them react to the stuff we show them in the BETA test, and then we use their reactions to tell us if we're doing the site correctly. And what I tell people is to get the URL on everything they can. On e-mails, the TV ads, the brochures, you basically carpet bomb everything you have now because that is your constituency and that's working and you keep using it and working the crowd. What we try to do is help them to get that URL out there.

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