Making the right connections;Superbrands: Britain's strongest brands 2006;Sponsored supplement

As more business is done over the net, CLARE GASCOIGNE assesses the power of online branding

When Honda ran a television campaign showing Honda owners who look like their cars, it invited viewers to post photos of themselves and their vehicles on its website. The move generated so much traffic that the car maker had to set up a new site.

It is a good example of one of the net’s key features: interactivity. The ability to engage can help develop a brand and inspire customer loyalty.

“The key word with online branding is simplicity,” says Michael Peters, chairman of Identica, a branding consultancy. “People have so little time, you have to be able to sustain their interest. Online branding should be about distilling the essence of what the brand is until you get to its core values.”

That means employing clear graphics and designing a website to be easy to navigate (most online presentations, says Peters, are still created by IT departments, which is a little like getting an engineer to write a car manual).

Reinforcing the brand might mean becoming a one-stop destination for your product, according to Bob Baker, author of Poor Richard’s Branding Yourself Online. “Let’s say your company sells unicorn-themed knick-knacks. You might simply post an online catalogue; a far better approach would be to set up your site as a clearing house for all things unicorn-related -articles, personal stories, photo galleries.”

One key difference between on-and offline branding is that online tends to build by word of mouth, says Cheryl Giovannoni, managing director of the Landor London branding consultancy. “Look at sites such as Bebo or MySpace. The net gives you the ability to reinvent or invent new markets, but you need to be much more creative.

“Google is a good example of a brand that is in constant development -because they know their market can be eroded overnight by the next big thing.”

Net development, however, does not mean ignoring traditional media. “Online brands such as Amazon are all starting to communicate with traditional campaigns,” adds Giovannoni. “If these brands are going to grow, they have to reach new customers – and the best way to build brand awareness is still via the mass media.”

Google is ranked seventh in YouGov’s survey of Superbrands. Also in the list are Royal Mail (14), BT (21), Sky (37), Amazon.co.uk (53), Orange (129) and Honda (380). For a full list of the top 500, see pages 14-15

PAT UNTANGLES THE WEB

The net may not seem the obvious home for Royal Mail. After all, we all know what they do, and they can’t deliver the mail over the web.

But, according to Alex Batchelor, Royal Mail’s marketing director, the very universality of the organisation is one of its strengths. “We don’t have to spend time and effort generating traffic -we are one of the top 25 most visited sites in the UK. What we wanted was a way of interacting with people.”

Some elements of the online brand were obvious: “Our logo is well recognised, and red has been our colour since the 1820s.”

But finding ways to interact meant being a bit more innovative. Posting lists of prices and postcodes was an obvious first step; adding track and trace facilities for special delivery items the next. Now, Royal Mail is developing a shop and giving customers the ability to print their own stamps -with a company logo where required. “Rather than be afraid of the net we need to embrace it,” says Batchelor.