The Branding Power of Email
and Wireless Media
We all know the classic Rodney Dangerfield line, "I can't get no respect." It's his trademark, his brand essence if you will, around which he has built a career of roles as the goofball entertaining us at his own expense. The parts he takes are extensions of his brand just as the clothes he wears and his unkempt physique are as well. Clearly, neither his roles nor his clothes nor his belly alone embody the whole brand. But each is a medium through which the brand essence is communicated along with other attributes particular to the specific medium.

The same is true for wireless and email in relation to communicating a brand. Recently, these electronic media have been taking a beating, with people arguing against them as effective branding tools. They just can't get no respect. Some argue that the screens on wireless devices or bandwidth capabilities are too limited to adequately express a brand. Others focus on the fact that electronic messages have been almost solely text based until recently, further limiting the medium. But, like Rodney Dangerfield's plaid sport coat, email is only one medium through which a greater brand is conveyed. And while all of the attributes of the brand may not be captured through this medium, if used properly, the essence certainly can be along with some other beneficial attributes particular to electronic media. Before you write off electronic media as a branding tool, see what you are missing. You might just want to give it some respect.

Electronic media, in fact, offer someone building or reinforcing a brand a unique opportunity. The reason that this opportunity is often ignored or missed, however, is that these media present a unique challenge as well.

Here's the opportunity. Electronic media allow us to touch people at any time and in any place. Electronic media enhance a whole dimension of branding by allowing our brands to be directly connected to the times and places in which we deliver them. Because we can touch people more precisely, we can brand ourselves more precisely as well.

Like it or not, we know there is a temporal aspect to branding where the time a customer is touched applies extra layers on a brand. Super Bowl commercials are a prime example. The general public knows how expensive Super Bowl spots are, and as a result equates the commercials seen during the game with a huge expenditure of money. This could either create an impression of affluence and financial stability for a brand, or it could create an impression of financial recklessness and misappropriation. E*Trade handled this temporal brand implication beautifully with its ad for the Super Bowl in 2000, where a dancing monkey was accompanied by a tagline about having just wasted two million dollars. The concept and placement of the ad in an extravagantly expensive time slot leveraged the branding implications inherent in the timely delivery of a message. E*Trade, a young new economy financial institution, came away appearing very financially sound for wasting money! And it all hinged on the delivery of the commercial at a specific time.

Now imagine a simpler example, also involving electronic media to leverage the temporal aspect of branding. You are a travel agency and you need to move some packaged tours. Your competition has the same goal, and proceeds to send out email messages that arrive in business people's inboxes during the weekday when they are most likely to see them, right? Well, most likely, these emails are simply an annoyance during a busy day that involves an overflowing inbox, and they get deleted before they're even read. So you use the fact that you have customers who access their email through wireless devices, and you wait until Friday evening, when the week has taken its toll, when the traffic is ground to a halt, when the heat is rising off of the pavement to mix with the exhaust, when there's no place your customers would rather not be. Then their mobile devices beep, and it's a message from you sympathizing with their pain and offering the panacea, the perfect getaway long weekend - a four-day trip for two to Mexico. You've read their minds! You are not only branded as the company unlike others in that you don't fill a work inbox with solicitations, but also branded as the company that knows what I want when I want it. And because of this benevolent omniscient quality you seem to display, your customer is sure your package includes just the right hotel in just the right secluded spot for a great getaway. Your electronic medium has just afforded you the opportunity to enhance your brand by leveraging the temporal implications of message delivery.

Now, here's the challenge. You have less space and often less ability to deliver visual or audio information when dealing in electronic media, especially wireless devices. This challenge can also be seen as an opportunity though, the opportunity to really identify and condense the essence of your brand. It is difficult to pare a brand down so much that it fits into this format, but this should lead to thinking about how to communicate brand attributes differently, not surrender to limitations. My ninth grade English teacher was notorious for hashing out a line to her students over and over. "Losers find excuses while winners find a way." It's simplicity beguiles its truism, but that line has stuck with me since and helped me to approach challenges such as this rather than backing away from them.

So how do you overcome the obstacle of limited space, capabilities or bandwidth? Personalization is the key. With personalization you can optimize the available space by making every bit of information pertinent. Today's technology allows marketers to capture, store and utilize an incredible amount of data about an individual's personal behavior and preferences from a variety of touch points. Technology also allows you to dynamically populate templates or standard forms with highly personalized content for individuals. And the technology has made consumers expect you to remember and use the information they provide, so to fail to use it casts a negative light on your brand from the start. When you combine personalization with the timely aspect of branding through electronic media, your ability to pinpoint the feeling your brand inspires expands exponentially.

The advent of rich media capabilities allows you to do even more for communicating a brand through email than a print ad or radio spot alone could do. While many wireless devices are as of yet unable to receive or display these types of messages in an adequate and timely format, almost all email clients can. With radio you have only audio. With print you get the marriage of static visual and text. With TV, you combine both audio and dynamic visual. But with rich media email you have all of your weapons in one place, dynamic video, audio and text working together to bring your brand home.

And don't forget viral marketing. Viral marketing gives your brand an even greater reach when properly implemented through electronic media. Of course, allowing others to pass on your message can at times change or dilute the brand, but carefully planned strategies and the use of technology for viral marketing can combat many of these uncertainties. The tools are available for controlled viral marketing through electronic media. In fact, when used properly, electronic media afford you more control than ever over viral efforts because of tracking capabilities and checkpoints than can be installed to make sure your message isn't being abused.

Clearly, the key to branding through electronic media lies in identifying new or enhanced opportunities rather than focusing on limitations. It's also important to remember that within the space allotted, your branding effort won't be focused on getting attention but rather on building certain aspects of an already acknowledged brand. Electronic media is functional for most, something to be checked while on the run. To properly utilize it as a branding tool you cannot forget this.

Every time you communicate with a customer you are communicating your brand. The fact that you are reaching out to them through email or wireless devices brands you in and of itself. It brands you as tech savvy and forward thinking for utilizing technology, as considerate and convenience minded for using an individual's medium of choice, as timely and ahead of the game for delivering relevant information as soon as it becomes available. Your exercise of this technology should not be the cornerstone of your entire branding effort because it is still a very functional and in some ways limited technology. But it should be a well-exercised arm of your branding effort as it can communicate your brand essence and express certain attributes of your brand that you will be otherwise unable to express.

There is no reason not to start branding today using electronic media. It may not convey your entire brand, but it will convey certain things about your brand that set you apart and cement your customer relationships, giving you the necessary market share to vault you ahead of the competition. It is also the training ground for the future of marketing and branding where use of electronic media will be a necessity rather than the luxury and competitive advantage it is today.

Copyright 2002 ClickAction