Delivering Brand Consistency and Faster Time-to-Market with Web Content Management

Web content management (WCM) allows companies to maintain brand consistency on the Web whilst launching Web-based marketing and products at speed.  Erik Aeyelts Averink at SDL Tridion explains how this technology enables companies in the CPG sector to launch new products quickly and keep branding control in the hands of people who understand the business.

Keeping control of your brand globally is a tricky business. Large international Consumer Packaged Goods (CPG) companies often grow organically and haphazardly via acquisition and merger, across countries and continents.  A decentralised company structure can play havoc with corporate identity and brands, whilst control of these vital assets represents a serious challenge.

Diluted Web presence

This task becomes even tougher over the Internet, where a decentralised environment can quickly translate into a diluted Web presence as local divisions attach their own ‘look and feel’ to the brand.  This situation is every marketing manager’s nightmare, as they strive to keep tight control of company brands across borders - especially for online retailers as they turn their attentions towards foreign markets, ready for the next stage of growth. Millions of pounds have been invested in creating visual brands designed to be instantly recognisable and communicate the values to which companies aspire. Keeping brand representation and content consistent across all Web communication is key to protecting that investment.

This is particularly important when one considers how quickly people make judgments online. A recent Canadian study showed that users form first impressions of Web pages in as little as 50 milliseconds (1/20th of a second). In the blink of an eye, Web surfers make nearly instantaneous judgments of a Web site's ‘visual appeal’ and these first impressions can colour subsequent judgments of perceived credibility, usability, and ultimately influence purchasing decisions.

Brand globalisation

Controlling brand content centrally will help achieve a consistent image across a company’s numerous external and internal Web sites. With a growing trend towards brand globalisation, there is a strong case for standardisation across certain areas with, of course, some room for local diversity. Chinese customers, for example, will have very different motivations and desires to UK customers, and Web content needs to reflect this variation. 

Google, Dell and HP are felt to be the best examples of Web globalisation sites, according to the ‘2005 Web Globalisation Executive Survey’ from Byte Level Research. Executives surveyed for this report felt that the greatest obstacles when localising their Web sites was a lack of time and technical know-how.  

Without a dedicated ‘Web globalisation manager’, this responsibility falls to busy marketing and business development executives. The main problem is that Web globalisation remains largely a manual process with few companies using content management systems to support their global Web sites. 

Companies must also consider how the ‘mother brand’ is represented, how easy the details are to access as well as consistency of information. Managing brand content centrally will help satisfy your customers’ thirst for knowledge relating to materials used, their origin, and in an increasingly environmentally conscious society, the manufacturing process involved. 

This is particularly pertinent for online retailers where, according to a recent Forrester report (Web Content Management for Retail, Q3 2005), fierce competition means retailers are looking for new ways to differentiate their Web sites and build unique experiences for consumers. Many retailers are renewing their focus on content to provide information to buyers - reviving the Web’s initial promise of combining content and commerce.

Web sites spiral out of control

The importance of a well-managed Web presence to a company’s brand and business success is not in question but the increasing scale of a typical company’s Web presence is making it difficult to manage this channel. According to our recent research - ‘Brand Control on the Web’ - European companies are losing grip of their brands as Web site numbers spiral out of control. Since 2001, the average number of external, customer-facing Web sites that companies maintain has doubled to 34 and this figure triples if internal Web sites and intranets are included.

Although 61% of companies know they must keep their brand consistent across the Internet, many lack the tools and processes to do this well. 55% of companies surveyed still manually check and update their Web sites to ensure brand consistency, whilst it could take one person as long as three months to complete just one site. We also found that only 54% of brand managers have a key say in the appearance of their Web sites, which is hardly a recipe for increasing competitive advantage…

Blueprint for success

Updating and maintaining global Web content need not be arduous and time-consuming. Powerful content management solutions enable companies to create, manage, distribute and deliver brand content in multiple formats and languages, to multiple Web sites, channels and online applications. Forrester endorses the importance of having product and marketing data in one central source - making it much easier for retailers to push content to other channels like print, kiosk, call centres, commerce platforms, or portals without having to recreate it for each one.

And, you don’t need to be a ‘techie’ to update content, as these solutions are designed to be user-friendly, in keeping with the move towards ‘Web 2.0’. Content management systems allow anyone with authorised access to update content, without relying on IT support teams. 

Technology is based on a unique ‘BluePrint’ approach whereby any changes made to the ‘parent’ site are automatically replicated on local sites. BluePrint Management not only ensures global brand consistency but also enables new products and marketing initiatives to be launched globally, at speed. Customers and business partners will always have relevant and up-to-date information whilst local Web sites can be implemented within days - saving vast amounts of time and money.

Unilever used this approach as part of its restructuring and re-branding programme. Their new logo and branding guidelines had to be communicated to all employees and external third parties within six months, at minimum cost. An online brand guidelines brochure - aimed at four different audiences - provided the answer. Using SDL Tridion’s BluePrint technology, Unilever ensured that, regardless of page content, the same brand would be represented in all four sectors: employees (240,000 in 150 countries); Unilever brand guardians; key suppliers; and external audiences. A change in one section will instantly be cascaded across all other relevant sections of the site.

Companies spend millions launching and developing unique brands and, the best organisations will ensure that brand messages are represented consistently and efficiently across all their Web sites.  Otherwise, their very identity will be threatened and their brands will be in crisis or, worse still, eroded in the online world.