Nothin' but 'Net and image

"I predict that by 2003 the major unit of international currency will be the Yahoo!"
- Jim Sterne, author, speaker and pundit who owes me lunch.

Branding. It is a central tenet of modern marketing that brands are to be vigorously built and defended. But what are brands? I'll take a stab at a definition: Brands are images that represent the intangible qualities of the brand owner and its products.

Perhaps the best example of this is Coca-Cola - the definitive brand of the 20th century. Coca-Cola, a k a Coke, has had the widest brand recognition of any modern product. But the Coca-Cola brand isn't about a carbonated drink that used to be made with cocaine - it is about a lifestyle, a feeling about the product and the company - "Things go better with Coke," goes the jingle.

But is Coke still the top brand? No longer. A recent study by one of the automakers showed that among 16- to 24-year-olds, Coca-Cola no longer holds the No. 1 slot for brand recognition. Nope, Pepsi didn't replace Coke. Nor was it Ford, Kraft or any of the traditional players. It was (drum roll, please, maestro) ... Yahoo! Honest.

This is our first clue that branding online is very different from off-line branding. Online, a brand can grow at a rate that Madison Avenue couldn't have imagined in its wildest dreams. This is the result of pop culture meeting the 'Net ... it starts with 15 minutes of fame being spread and replicated ad infinitum by word of 'Net and ends accelerating the brand into orbit.

Now here's an interesting thing. Amazon has done what has traditionally been considered suicidal: The company has moved into a number of areas that have nothing to do with what it started out doing and became famous for - that was, selling books. Now it runs auctions and sells consumer electronics. Oh, and confectionery and lots more stuff.

The company's diversification started when Amazon began selling music and videos. No one was too shocked by that - CDs and videos are similar in distribution and pricing to books, so it was seen as a logical and smart extension of Amazon's focus.

But the entry into stereos, chocolates and video games was surprising, and the move into the territory of eBay even more unexpected. Amazon was doing what has been a disaster for many brick-and-mortar retailers - it was going outside of its core business and consequently diluting its brand.

Now I contend that it is virtually impossible for an established online property such as Amazon to dilute its brand. The only way it could happen would be through gross incompetence. Hell, even something as contentious as, say, Amazon operating a porno site under its name would probably do no damage.

You see, online, there is nothing but brand. Without real salespeople to interact with and real premises to walk into, and provided your content is relevant to your audience, you are judged solely on how you present your content. The company is its image, and the image is the company. And as long as you have a solid online style, everything under your brand is branded even if that stuff spans markets, sales strategies and cultures.

This means that companies such as Amazon can enter and leave markets with what, in traditional marketing terms, amounts to wild abandon, and suffer little or no brand dilution as long as they maintain their image and the context in which they communicate.

The message is clear: Online, your company is judged by its image and style. Everything else is content. Appearance is all.

Altered images to nwcolumn@gibbs.com.

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