What's Wrong With Online Branding?

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By: Kaitlin T. Gallucci

Digital marketing may be booming, but building your brand online is easier said than done. It’s certainly easier to target and reach your audience online, but users’ attention is fleeting, and the user is fully in control. While digital marketing has its perks, it’s not necessarily the best avenue for branding initiatives.

To put it simply, as Alan Pearlstein recently wrote, “the Internet sucks as a branding medium.” It’s not that the Internet sucks, it just isn’t the end all and be all when it comes to branding.

You can’t fully control who sees your commercials or print ads, but you can track your targets all over the Internet, displaying relevant ads on every page they visit… but those online ad formats don’t quite carry the same emotional punch as traditional media does. A 30-second commercial can manifest a brand image in a way that a few hundred pixels just can’t.

Those few hundred pixels can definitely drive revenue, but not necessarily trust or favorability. Social media can communicate a brand message, but its potential sometimes (or often) exceeds its effectiveness.

How do you build a brand when the user controls the channel? Does the Internet really “suck” for branding?