Merge

In 2007, Bairstow Lifting Products had a 170- page, robust product catalog, but a very hard to use and confusing web site. Merge was initially engaged to make the web site as robust as the catalog.

The problem was that Bairstow had over 1,500 product SKU’s but a limited ability to maximize on the information via the web for the end user to find through search engines.  The majority of traffic (over 60%) was being driven through paid search.

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Depending on the brand, your online presence may lean heavily towards the creative, or heavily towards usability and functionality.  Much of this has to do with where, and how, your digital strategy fits in with your overall marketing strategy. Typically, websites built around heavy creative involve a ton of customer interaction, including video, games, flash and other fun functionality.  Ultimately the end result is brand awareness, with the metric of time on site and pages visited resulting in greater sales offline.

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I was meeting with someone at Caviar and Bananas in Charleston a couple of weeks back, and afterward took a quick stroll through the wine section.  I stumbled upon something I had never seen on the back of a wine bottle before, a phone number.  I'm sure this is not a rarity, but it prompted an experiment involving 15 more wines.  Of the 15, no other had a phone number, and only two had a web address.&nb

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So Brad, the elite hacker, and I were talking Tuesday morning about the USA vs. Canada hockey game from Sunday night.  It's being dubbed as the second greatest moment in USA Hockey history.  When there might only be three such moments (only one other actually comes to mind), second place isn't that bad, or that good.  Anyways, I listen to sports radio some, and on Monday the outrage that NBC put the game on MSNBC was everywhere.  "How could they do this?!"  Easy, we (25-45 year old male sports fans) weren't the demographic.  The market for Olympic programming isn't us.  It's your grandma, or sister, or mom.  "But it's the biggest sporting event going right now, and this was the biggest game!?"  More news, it's not sports.  Phenomenal athletes abound, but there is a reason you don't get two hour pregame shows beforehand, and instead you get polar bears.  Most of the events are subjectively judged on crazy and inconsistent criteria, and by humans to boot.  If you have to count on the judge from Belarus to determine a winner, and not a clock or scoreboard, don't be surprised if it's not aimed and marketed to the typically sports fan. 

NBC does what I would consider average coverage of sporting events.  Their Sunday Night NFL show is decent.  But their coverage of this years Winter Games has been a Read More...

Generally, companies make the branding mistake of wanting to be all things to all people; however, the essence of a brand is just the opposite--focus.

Whether you are creating a new brand or reevaluating your current brand, there are four brand requirements that you should consider. These are the same provisions Merge utilizes when creating online branding strategies for our clients:

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