CORPORATE
COMMUNICATION & PRODUCT PROMOTION
Companies these days communicate
very differently from the way they used to, say half a century ago. Then,
it was enough to put your products on view and tell folks that they were
the best money could buy. You can't do that anymore. It's not that people
don't want to believe you, they want you to make them believe.
Advertising is about giving the potential buyers the arguments with which
they can justify their acquisition. And more and more it becomes a way
of mirroring the people that already have bought your product. They don't
have to be convinced anymore, they want to be confirmed.
Nowadays products are about identity,
more than about functionality or anything else. So corporate communication
is not in the first place concerned with spreading factual information
on products and prices - that is something that comes later. First of all
the company wants to be recognizable as a mirror for its market. The targeted
public has to recognize itself in the image provided by the company. This
is true to a growing extent for advertising of products and brands through
television, posters and print - although in these media the product remains
in the center of the image. On the web, image is all. What else can you
do, knowing that your target is behind a screen, at home most likely.
Corporate websites try to fill in
the gaps left by advertising through other media. There, you can't elaborate
on your glorious past or the genius inventors that crowd your history.
And you can only hint at the way your product fits into your market's lifestyle.
On the web, you can be more specific - or more mysterious. The choice between
such very divers ways of addressing your market is motivated by that same
market: if you want to get your car under the attention of dynamic college
kids, your site will look completely different from a site that confirms
the average suburbian's arguments for not driving a Mercedes SEL. To be
sure on both sides, Honda made both websites.
On some sites, the product is missing
completely. All that the immersive environment tries to do here, with extensive
use of every feasible multimedia trick, is to glue a brand name to a feeling.
The images, the typefaces, the frames with photographs of distant countries
or beautiful people, the sounds and moving images, all serve to entertain
their viewers as old acquaintances. The brand is a good friend, someone
to look out for. |