Branding the Web

Last week in class, we briefly touched on “branding,” one of the big words of the web world. When I served as a web editor, “branding” and “brand extension” were what the website I was working on was all about. Trouble was, we weren’t actually extending our brand, we were only duplicating the information we created for our print issue in hopes of extending our audience — not likely to happen when all of the copy is flat and regurgitated.

This seems to be the problem with many websites that have sprung from magazines, newspapers, and television. And if predictions are correct, this duplication of information will actually drive away the audience and eventually end newspapers, magazines, and maybe even television as we know them.

Here are a couple of websites that I use and think have successfully extended their brand by introducing a website:

(I know they are all food based … sorry! It’s dinnertime and I’m wishing I had a kitchen I could actually cook in!)

foodnetwork.com – an arm of the popular television network that allows users to access, search, print, comment on, and save recipes

saveur.com – an extention of the magazine Saveur, the website brings services (tips, technique demos) and content (recipes and menus) to users that are beyond the capabilities of magazine pages

epicurious.com – a compilation of recipes from all of Conde Nast’s food and lifestyle magazines (Gourmet, bon  Appetit, Self, and others). It has all of the benefits of the sites listed above plus an additional benefit to readers of multiple Conde Nast titles in that they can go to just one website for all of their cooking needs. (Although the individual magazines do have their own websites, too, which is a bit confusing.)

Now, none of the websites mentioned above are presenting essential or time-sensitive information but they are giving their traditional audience a reason to jump on their computers and creating the potential to attract new audience — all while extending their brand in a way that makes it more profitable and more attractive to advertisers.

Seems to me like the extension would be even easier for information that is essential or time sensitive.

Since moving to Australia, I have turned to nytimes.com for my US and world news. Currently, I am undecided on the effectiveness of its website as an extension of the NY Times brand.

On the upside, the web addition makes the brand available to a new audience (those outside of the paper’s standard circulation) and makes some effort to connect to the audience on a more personal level through blogs.

On the downside, it seems that much of the information is circulated through the page to give the appearance of updated content, and  I am willing to bet that many of the online stories are just duplicates of the print stories. I might subscribe to the electronic version of the paper just so I can compare the online version of the paper and the website.

I think that the effectiveness of the website will be easier to determine once I get comfortable with the site and use it as my primary source of news for at least a couple of weeks. I will check back with information and insights on the site weekly.