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The Plan - 4 Steps To A Website Brand
By Jerry Bader (c) 2009 

Do you have a plan? Most companies spend a considerable amount
of time, energy, and money planning what to do and how to do
it.

Let's say you need a website, so you develop a plan, present it
to a bunch of website designers, and get quotes or proposals.
You're not going to get caught with your pants down like the
last time by some nerdy geek, you know the skinny kid with the
scraggly beard, whose techno-babble gave you a headache, or the
bizarre young lady dressed in gothic chic with the black
lipstick and tattoo to match - yikes, no thanks, not this time,
this time you got a plan.

Human Motivational Optimization

You read all the blogs on website design, you know all the
ins-and-outs of search engine optimization, and Google Adwords.
No one is going to pull a fast one on you. You know your
business, your market, and your needs. Or do you?

How much do you really know about how real people interact with
your website? How much do you really know about what we call
Human Motivational Optimization? All the stats, logs, and number
crunching analysis that forms the basis of many website
development plans does not truly give you the visceral
understanding of how to connect to an audience, and isn't that
what you want your website to do?

So maybe your plan is the wrong plan; it's like planning a trip
to Home Depot to buy a cabbage; it just doesn't make sense. So
how about a plan that does make sense, something simple,
understandable, easy to implement, that is if you hire the right
people to do it. But before we tell you the four steps to
creating your very own Website Branding Plan, let's talk about
Don LaFontaine.

Every Company Needs A Movie Trailer

Chances are you don't know who the late Don LaFontaine was, but
you've heard his voice many, many times. Don was the most
famous and influential voice behind thousands of movie and
television trailers. He had a distinctive deep, gravely voice,
and a writing style that reinvented the entire movie trailer
format. But why should you care? Simple. Movie trailers are the
ultimate elevator pitch, a short memorable performance that
compels you to action, kind of like what a mission statement is
suppose to do, but I'm getting ahead of myself. Let's start at
the beginning, or rather, the end.

Branding Starts With Thinking Backwards

Most people like to start a project at the beginning and work
their way through until they reach the end. Makes sense, or does
it? If you don't start with where you want to end-up, it's
unlikely you'll ever get where you want to go. Remember our
cabbage? Planning a shopping to trip to Home Depot because they
got cool stuff, doesn't help if what you want is a cabbage.

Branding is no different. If you don't start with how you want
your audience to think about you, they will probably never think
about you at all. So now that we got that straight let's start
our plan where it makes sense, the end.

The 4 Step Web-Branding Plan

1 The Slogan

Your slogan, you know the thing that sits underneath your logo,
that simple little phrase somebody in your office came up with
that makes you sound important, stuff like "the cool air
conditioning company." Most small and medium size companies
don't think too hard about this little marketing gem, and as a
result they either have something really cheesy, or some
meaningless platitude that has no memorable meaning at all, like
"the best people for the best job."

Just because you're small and don't have millions of dollars
to spend on television ads promoting your pithy little motto,
doesn't mean you shouldn't have one. That catchphrase is who
you are, and how you want people to remember you, short,
memorable, and to the point. I remember my sons arguing over
some complicated bit of business when one of them in frustration
finally said, "Enough already. Give it to me in one word or
less!" a demand to articulate what was important without all
the peripheral issues; a lesson all businesses should pay
attention to.

2 The Story Line (Logline)

To my mind, mission statements are a totally dysfunctional
marketing element, misused and abused by a bean-counter
attitude, born out of trying to squeeze every last drop of
information into a statement that won't offend anybody. A wise
man once said, "If what you're saying doesn't offend
somebody, maybe you're not saying anything" and most mission
statements that are full of meaningless platitudes and
toned-down amendments, fall into the category of not saying
anything, at least, anything worth hearing.

Okay so let's forget about mission statements, after all this
isn't the military, and we're not planning the next Desert
Storm. Instead let's think loglines, or what you can think of
as your brand story line.

You know those short statements you find in TV Guide, or your
weekend television insert, prompting you to watch the next
episode of 'House,' or 'Desperate Bimbos.' They are a short
form text version of a trailer, intended to get you to watch the
movie or television show. For our purposes, we want people to go
to our website, and stay-tuned long enough to get our core
marketing message, and not walk out half way through the
presentation. So, how do we do that?

The Six Elements of Effective Web Trailers

In order for us to come up with a compelling statement that
prompts people to view our website presentation, we need to
refer back to our old pal Don LaFontaine. What if Don LaFontaine
wrote our website trailer. How would he do it?

Don had a very distinctive style that you've heard a thousand
times for a thousand different movies, but they all followed a
similar format. Each trailer needs to cover six distinct
elements, who, what, where, how, why, and when. All the things
businesses should be presenting in their elevator pitch, but
with one extra ingredient, personality.

Here's the format used in many movie trailers:
"In a place (where), one man (who) brings stability to chaos
(what), in an epic tale that will both amaze and inspire (why)!
Coming soon (when) to a theatre near you." Sound familiar?

Let's take our air conditioning example, you remember, "the
cool air conditioning company." Let's say our fictitious
company is called Kool Air Conditioning, their website trailer
might sound something like this:

"In a town where summer heat melts the cool of the coolest
homeowners, one air conditioning company comes to the rescue.
When the mercury rises to eye-popping, mind numbing numbers, the
men from Kool spring into action, bringing relief to the
sweltering masses. The Kool Guys will amaze you with their
prompt service and installation know-how. The heat is on. It's
coming sooner than you think; it's coming this summer to your
town, your neighborhood; your house. Kool, the cool air
conditioning company."

Over-the-top? Maybe, but we've covered all the bases, we know
who (Kool), what (air conditioning), when (this summer), where
(your house), why (the heat) and how (prompt service and
installation know-how). Now that's a mission statement; one
with a little style, panache, and personality; one that will get
you remembered and prompt your audience to action.

3 The Personality

Movies like businesses all fall into certain genres or
categories. There's the action movie format that's suitable
for sports related businesses, the chick flick style that's
ideal for cosmetic or fashion industry businesses, and the
family comedy format suitable for entertainment and recreation
based companies, and of course the kids movie version perfect
for any business selling things for children. The point is that
every company and website has to have a personality.

Many hardnosed business executives scoff at the idea of spending
money on such seemingly trivial marketing concepts as company
personality, but ignoring your website persona, is a big
mistake. You can either invest a little in developing, creating,
managing, and promoting this personality or you can let the
marketplace decide for itself, or worse, find you completely
redundant and irrelevant.

4 The Delivery

You may be asking yourself, this sounds good on paper, but can
it really be done, and can it be done for my business, on my
website? The answer is damn straight it can. Like most things in
life, and in business, it's not grasping the concept tha's so
hard, it's implementing it.

With a little investment and a willingness to take some chances,
you can be the market leader. But if you thought you could
simply take your newly created movie trailer style website
elevator pitch and slap it onto your website in text form, you
would be mistaken. How you deliver the message is as important,
and in many cases more important, than what you say.

Whether you sell lipstick, licorice, or lingerie, you probably
have lots of competition, so how you deliver your message is
what's going to make the difference.

You want your website presentation to motivate people to email
or phone. You want to deliver a compelling performance that is
more than a sales pitch, a presentation that uses voice,
visuals, words, and music to create a website personality, a
lasting impression; one that is going to allow you to stand out
from the crowd and give you a competitive advantage.

Nothing will convince better than seeing an actual example, and
guess what, we just happen to be able to provide you with one:
check out http://ww.SonicPersonality.com and see what an
effective website presentation sounds like. If nothing else, you
may get a chuckle or two.
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Jerry Bader is Senior Partner at MRPwebmedia, a website design
firm that specializes 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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