Coming from a traditional advertising background, I'm always looking for the commonalities with digital advertising rather than the differences. As a group of us were discussing how to brand a new client the other day, it struck me how much search has changed the practice of branding and all the stuff -logos, taglines-that go with it. Brand used to be a purchasing short cut. I like my Chevy car, I bet I'll like a truck with a Chevy logo on it too. Pre-search engine, getting information about product quality was hard. So trust, trust in the brand, was pretty much all you had to start with. Search has changed that. You can type "truck" or "half-ton truck" or even "best half-ton truck" and get a page full of professional and personal reviews on every brand truck available.
So what about that old standby of branding, the tagline? The killer tagline was to ticket to branding success. It seems almost quaint to me now. Why? Because today are people aren't searching for trucks under "The Heartbeat of America." Seems like taglines might have to act more like- tags. Less poetic, more descriptive. Like, " A truck for every job." or "More trucks for more Americans." Yes these are lame, but you get the idea. Copywriters take note.
While we're at it, is there really any reason to put a url. in a TV spot? Do people write them down and run to their computers? No. I think a lot of people just type a whatever fragment of the url. they can recall, into the search box. I do that with urls I do know. Saves me the "http://www." part.
Given the trouble it takes to find a decent url., one that somebody hasn't already squatted on, I'm wondering how long before businesses stop identifying themselves by their url. At some point I'm thinking browsers might let you hide the address box altogether.
So what about that old standby of branding, the tagline? The killer tagline was to ticket to branding success. It seems almost quaint to me now. Why? Because today are people aren't searching for trucks under "The Heartbeat of America." Seems like taglines might have to act more like- tags. Less poetic, more descriptive. Like, " A truck for every job." or "More trucks for more Americans." Yes these are lame, but you get the idea. Copywriters take note.
While we're at it, is there really any reason to put a url. in a TV spot? Do people write them down and run to their computers? No. I think a lot of people just type a whatever fragment of the url. they can recall, into the search box. I do that with urls I do know. Saves me the "http://www." part.
Given the trouble it takes to find a decent url., one that somebody hasn't already squatted on, I'm wondering how long before businesses stop identifying themselves by their url. At some point I'm thinking browsers might let you hide the address box altogether.
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