One of the foundations of the art/science of Branding is the reality that "you can't be all things to all people" instead, we have learnt to create brand identities, which specifically appeal (more or less?) to certain segments of the overall market space. Proctor & Gamble have graced more than a few marketing textbooks as the classic example of successfully marketing identical products, differentiated only by their branding and positioning in the market. The concept of being "different things to different people" is also not new. The luxury of distant and disconnected markets allows Honda to sell the same cars in Asia and North America with very different brands (Acura vs. Honda). The same principle allows discount brands in developed countries to be touted as luxury goods in developing nations like Nepal or Indonesia. It is the disconnection between these markets which makes this feasible, otherwise the leakage, and the cost of rebranding efforts are too prohibitive.

The Internet is empowering managers for the first time to create flexible branding strategies, which can react in real-time to reflect the current situations in multiple markets. Through this medium, marketing managers can micro-segment their customers to create their own distinct markets. Two recent case studies from our work at Blue should help demonstrate how we can do this.

Hewlett-Packard is launching a new printer this month, which we have determined, will appeal to three different market segments. The off-line campaign is restricted to trying to find a creative which will have a broad appeal and across the segments. On the online side, we are able to tailor a different set of messages for each group. These are delivered through custom jump pages that allows us to track the relative interest of the different groups and the effectiveness of the various media properties driving traffic to these jump pages. By using a targeted and serving technology such as Engage with Space Asia, we can ensure that there is no leakage between these "distinct" markets allowing us to fine tune the branding messages to the customer. HP can review the effectiveness of each creative execution on each media outlet and reallocate them daily if they wish. This makes campaign more and more efficient as time goes by, so different from creating a traditional media plan six months in advance and hoping that it's effective.

A second example shows the amazing power the Internet has as a flexible & accountable testing tool. Hard Rock Hotels runs a "Backstage Pass" loyalty card program to encourage guests to visit and return to their Beach Club in Bali. The loyalty program is marketed through both direct marketing pieces and a call-center. The Hard Rock name is one of the most well-known and consistent brands globally, any new program must therefore reinforce the existing efforts while also being an effective sales tool. This is where the flexibility of the Net became a powerful testing mechanism. The goal of the campaign was to drive customers to a restricted web site where they can purchase a card-on-line. A lot has been written (including these pages) about the pass/fail importance of a well-branded web address. Before committing to a year's print-run of OM materials, the call center was tasked with evenly distributing different URL addresses to the customers. We could then track the relative recall people had of the options by monitoring the traffic to each version and the average time from the call to the action. The most effective choice could then be confidently distributed to the mass market. We could leverage the flexibility even further by randomly serving different Hard Rock "themes" and layouts to the customers to determine which are more effective to different customers from different geographical/demographic markets. Again, this makes the overall sales campaign and branding efforts more efficient with time.

The Internet doesn't change the absolute need for a brand to plant a stake aground and say, "this is who I am". However, we are seeing clearly that one-to-one personalization flexibility of the Net is going to make it easier for the future power brands to be "different things to different people".