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Web Communication: "Sign, Sign, Everywhere A Sign"
By Jerry Bader (c) 2007

Your business success depends on your ability to communicate
effectively to an interested audience. Driving appropriate
traffic to your site is important, but the tactics that generate
visitors are not the same tactics that get visitors to stay on
your site.

Websites that consistently under perform and that don't meet
business expectations generally suffer because they are not
designed to hold viewers attention long enough to communicate
a clear concise marketing message.

Web-communication is a series of elaborate multi-sensory sign
languages; signs being the words, images, audio and videos that
constitute the range of presentation vehicles that like all
forms of communication have their own grammar, context, and
relevance as interpreted from personal experience by each member
of your customer-audience.

When Words Lose Their Meaning

Marketing is one of those words that has lost its currency
because it has been tossed about with little respect for its
meaning. To many, it's merely just another word for advertising,
which of course it is not. To the more sophisticated it takes in
all the disciplines of branding, positioning, identity,
advertising, and more. Above all marketing implies a strategic
approach to implementing these tactics.

For companies interested in using the Web to further their
business objectives, Web-marketing is the execution of a
communication strategy through the creative implementation of
multi-sensory signature presentations.

Semiotics: The Study of Signs

"Sign, Sign, everywhere a sign,
Blocking out the scenery breaking my mind,
Do this, don't do that, can't you read the sign."
- Five Man Electrical Band

Like the lyrics of the song, 'Signs,' by the Five Man Electrical
Band' suggests, we are surrounded by signs, the interpretation
of which creates our reality. The study of signs and how meaning
is derived from them is called 'semiotics.'

We are bombarded by signs, not just images, but the words,
voicing, gestures, posture, attire, and movements of the
messengers, as well as the music and sound effects that
accompany the presentation; not to mention the chosen media
itself.

Each of these elements is a language all its own. And like all
forms of language if you don't learn the rules, the grammar and
syntax, you can't communicate coherently.

Fear of Meaning

Most business communication is shrouded in a haze of protective
ambiguity caused by the fear of making a decisive statement of
who you are, and what you stand for. This kind of defensive
thinking may protect your company from some criticism, but it
also distances you from your real audience, people and businesses
that could be responsive to what you have to offer.

Advertisements, videos, images and copy designed to not offend,
will fail to communicate meaning and if what you have to say is
not meaningful, how can you expect your audience to respond?
Bland royalty-free images, stock video clips, and talking-head
presentations of statistics and specifications will guarantee
all the money you spent on generating traffic will go down the
drain as visitors leave faster than they arrive.

Instead of just looking at how many hits your website is getting
each week, take a look at how long they are staying on your site.
If people are leaving within a few seconds of arriving, then they
have determined you have nothing to offer them, which may or may
not be true. You need your website visitors to stay long enough
to get the essence of your marketing message and if they aren't,
then maybe it's time to rethink the message and how it's being
delivered.

A Little Yiddish May Help

Yiddish is a language of idiom, of colloquial metaphor, a series
of expressions that by strict interpretation of the words mean
little, but through the common experience and relevance of the
listener mean more than mere words can imply.

In Yiddish there are many ways to tell somebody to 'drop dead,'
not a very nice thing to say to someone, but a sentiment that is
often expressed anyway.

So how then do you tell someone how you feel without resorting
to the crude direct approach? In Yiddish you would use one of
the many expressions available such as, "zolst vaksn vi a tzibele
mitn kop in dr'erd!" which literally means "may you grow like an
onion with your head in the ground," a far more colorful, poetic
turn of phrase with humorous undertones that softens the
intensity of the raw meaning.

Our everyday language is full of idiom and metaphor and for the
most part we don't even notice. If we want to outwit our
competition, we instruct our staff to "take no prisoners" and if
we are successful we 'blew them away;' business often resorts to
war metaphors to emphasize the enormity of the stakes involved
in business initiatives, or should I say 'campaigns.'

And it is not just written and verbal communication that is
perpetually encased in a cocoon of evocative metaphor. Visual
communication, including images and video, has its own idiomatic
metaphorical sign language that helps communicate a message in
meaningful short-hand. The producers of 30-second TV commercials
are expert in this style of communication, how else can a
complete marketing story be told in 30 seconds?

Relevance of Character and Situation

When we create Web-video commercials we need to tell a story
that the audience can relate to. This story should be a metaphor
that draws upon the audience's own experiences, and if done
properly it should allow the viewer to let down their natural
sales defense mechanism and let the humanity of the characters
and situation penetrate on a meaningful human level. This style
of presentation makes the point and delivers the message in a
much more effective manner than a hit-you-over-the-head, hard
sell style commercial, or a meaningless exhortation of business
platitudes.

Dr. Satoshi Kanazawa, a sociology professor at the University of
Canterbury in New Zealand, in the 'Psychology Today' article,
'Friends In Cerebral Places' by Kaja Perina states: "The human
brain is hardwired to respond to stimuli as it did in its
ancestral environment, where television and movies didn't exist.
Kanazawa says that we have evolved to believe that 'all realistic
images of people you encounter repeatedly are friends and family.'

In the environment of evolutionary adaptedness there was no
one-way acquaintance, as there is today with celebrities."

The implication of Kanazawa's research for the Web-marketer is
significant. If you as marketers can create websites and webmedia
presentations populated with ongoing characters to which your
Web-audience can relate, then you have solved the biggest
obstacle in the Web-sales process: lack of trust.

People buy things from people they trust, people they know and
like, and people to whom they can relate. You can establish this
relationship with a continuous campaign of audio and video
presentations delivered by characters representing your
company's personality, delivering a message that improves your
audience's lives or business interests.

The Familiarity of Presentation Genres

An effective Web-commercial must touch your audience in some way.
One method that we use to make this connection is through the
exploitation of genres.

Genres are storytelling formats with built-in conventions, rules
and guidelines. These conventions provide a
communication-shorthand allowing Web-storytellers to deliver
rich content in an economical use of time and space.

Since the audience already understands what the conventions
of the recognizable genre are, resources need not be wasted
establishing a frame-of-reference that is built into the genre
itself.

It is here that the Web-commercial producer must expand the
concept of genres beyond that which is normally understood.
Everyone understands the western, detective, romance, and sitcom
styles of storytelling genres, but genres exist beyond the
confines of literature, movies, and television series. Genres
also exist in the truncated world of television commercial
storytelling. Take for instance the current ubiquitous series
of Macintosh television commercials that have been copied
numerous times by many people on the Web and even on television
itself.

The use of genres as a method of presenting Web-commercials
provides a set of expectations for the viewer or what has been
referred to as 'cultural capital.' While the recognition of the
familiar provides a connection, its creative manipulation
provides enjoyment and more importantly aids memory and enhances
recall. You can see an example of this genre manipulation at
http://www.mrpwebmedia.com/ads.

The Bottom Line

If real estate is about, 'location, location, location' then
websites are about, 'communication, communication, communication.'
The skillful Web-marketer will understand this and use their
website the way it was always supposed to be used, as a means
of communication; but that communication no longer has to be
delivered in mere text form, but rather it can now be delivered
using all the multi-sensory media tools available. The caveat,
of course, is knowing how to use these tools properly.
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Jerry Bader is Senior Partner at MRPwebmedia, a website design
firm thatspecializes in Web-audio and Web-video. Visit
http://www.mrpwebmedia.com/ads, http://www.136words.com, and
http://www.sonicpersonality.com. Contact at info@mrpwebmedia.com or
telephone (905) 764-1246.
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