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2HousePlague · 04-29-2005, 07:28 PM

Branding, as an effect, is unavoidable -- whenever your customer encounters your products or your company, there is a branding effect.

In most basic form, branding is the sum of a person's experiences with a NAME (could be a person's name, a product name, a company name, an idea, etc.), the retention of attribute associations with that name, and the degree to which those associations impact future consumer behavior.

And that is true whether you spend a billion dollars per year on branding or zero.

But I'm assuming what we're all talking about here is branding as Marketing Art, not the unavoidable sort described above - but branding that requires both creative choices and expense to execute

The short answer: for some businesses very much so, for others irrelevant.

In most (if not all cases) where the DIRECT customer is a member of the consumer public, I would say yes, absolutely. You need to brand to differentiate, you need to brand to build conceptual associations, you need to brand to foster loyalty. Example: a person scanning the items along the shelf in a supermarket. There, you CANNOT win without branding.

Even if your product looks like this...

..it's STILL branding. The apparent LACK of brand IS the brand -- hence, differentiation is achieved and the consumer's purchase decision has something on which to operate. The trouble here, of course, is you can't prevent someone else from selling plain white cans of soda, and you have given your customer no way to tell yours from theirs.

But the challenge with our business is our customers are "browsing" in a manner very different than people do in a supermarket -- they are not coming into "purchase mode" with a head full of names and attribute associations. They may not be inclined to make a purchase at all. Surfers don't fire up their computers and say "I need a solo-girl pay site for a big-titted brunette who does inter-racial anal..."

The purchase RESULT is always specific, but the impulse that drove that purchase probably started out with very little definition and, therefore, with a high degree of DIRECTABILITY.

For adult companies, unless you are a Hustler or a Playboy, and therefore can capitalize on a brand that you've been able to pre-imbue with attributes, I would say that traditional associative branding is next to meaningless in our field.

There are a few online adult companies (pay site operators) that I would say HAVE achieved a success based on associative branding -- but the effective reach of that associative branding (outside the existing customer base) is really rather limited. If you are already a paying member for one of their sites, then they have your e-mail address and can use it to sell you other stuff -- at which point associative branding would come into play.

But, in our business I would say the truly important branding is moment-of-purchase branding .

THIS is the branding that we should be most focused on, and not the sort exemplified by so many companies and product names listed above.

Moment-of-Purchase branding is simply what you convey and how well you convey those things about your product WHILE your prospective customer is IN THE MIDST of a purchase decision.

This is absolutely branding, but not the sort I think most have been discussing in this thread.

For the most part in our business, the brandable name is the domain name, and (Halcyon's BangBus example, which is a word-of-mouth success, notwithstanding) I would say that there are statistically ZERO branded adult domain names out there -- when you consider the percentage of surfers who have ANY domain name in mind (with or without prior associations) versus the total number of porn-bound surfers each day.

To have a unique vision and a catchy name and use unsual colors and have memorable content is all well and good -- ESSENTIAL, even, as success factors.

But to wrap all that up under a name and try to get that name into the mind of the consumer BEFORE he is even "shopping" seems a very difficult thing, to me.

We can't buy billboard ads, or TV time, or even "speak" our brands in most public places.

Until that changes, I don't see that Associative Branding can be very meaningful to porn sites. We simply don't have access to the mediums such branding campaigns require --

j-

04-29-2005, 07:28 PM
2HousePlague CURATOR Join Date: Jul 2004 Location: the attic Posts: 14,572	Branding, as an effect, is unavoidable -- whenever your customer encounters your products or your company, there is a branding effect. In most basic form, branding is the sum of a person's experiences with a NAME (could be a person's name, a product name, a company name, an idea, etc.), the retention of attribute associations with that name, and the degree to which those associations impact future consumer behavior. And that is true whether you spend a billion dollars per year on branding or zero. But I'm assuming what we're all talking about here is branding as Marketing Art, not the unavoidable sort described above - but branding that requires both creative choices and expense to execute The short answer: for some businesses very much so, for others irrelevant. In most (if not all cases) where the DIRECT customer is a member of the consumer public, I would say yes, absolutely. You need to brand to differentiate, you need to brand to build conceptual associations, you need to brand to foster loyalty. Example: a person scanning the items along the shelf in a supermarket. There, you CANNOT win without branding. Even if your product looks like this... ..it's STILL branding. The apparent LACK of brand IS the brand -- hence, differentiation is achieved and the consumer's purchase decision has something on which to operate. The trouble here, of course, is you can't prevent someone else from selling plain white cans of soda, and you have given your customer no way to tell yours from theirs. But the challenge with our business is our customers are "browsing" in a manner very different than people do in a supermarket -- they are not coming into "purchase mode" with a head full of names and attribute associations. They may not be inclined to make a purchase at all. Surfers don't fire up their computers and say "I need a solo-girl pay site for a big-titted brunette who does inter-racial anal..." The purchase RESULT is always specific, but the impulse that drove that purchase probably started out with very little definition and, therefore, with a high degree of DIRECTABILITY. For adult companies, unless you are a Hustler or a Playboy, and therefore can capitalize on a brand that you've been able to pre-imbue with attributes, I would say that traditional associative branding is next to meaningless in our field. There are a few online adult companies (pay site operators) that I would say HAVE achieved a success based on associative branding -- but the effective reach of that associative branding (outside the existing customer base) is really rather limited. If you are already a paying member for one of their sites, then they have your e-mail address and can use it to sell you other stuff -- at which point associative branding would come into play. But, in our business I would say the truly important branding is moment-of-purchase branding . THIS is the branding that we should be most focused on, and not the sort exemplified by so many companies and product names listed above. Moment-of-Purchase branding is simply what you convey and how well you convey those things about your product WHILE your prospective customer is IN THE MIDST of a purchase decision. This is absolutely branding, but not the sort I think most have been discussing in this thread. For the most part in our business, the brandable name is the domain name, and (Halcyon's BangBus example, which is a word-of-mouth success, notwithstanding) I would say that there are statistically ZERO branded adult domain names out there -- when you consider the percentage of surfers who have ANY domain name in mind (with or without prior associations) versus the total number of porn-bound surfers each day. To have a unique vision and a catchy name and use unsual colors and have memorable content is all well and good -- ESSENTIAL, even, as success factors. But to wrap all that up under a name and try to get that name into the mind of the consumer BEFORE he is even "shopping" seems a very difficult thing, to me. We can't buy billboard ads, or TV time, or even "speak" our brands in most public places. Until that changes, I don't see that Associative Branding can be very meaningful to porn sites. We simply don't have access to the mediums such branding campaigns require -- j- __________________ tada!