By Nita Jatar Kulkarni, Rakhi Mazumdar & Pooja Garg

Dot.coms: the branding bazaar
They're cluttering up the column-cms and the airwaves, but eventually, the best dot.com brands could simply be those with the best sites.

No one really knows when the madness began. It could have been 6 months ago, when Delhi's auto-rickshaws started sporting dot. com bumper stickers. Or in November 1999, when indiaworld's Rajesh Jain sold out to Satyam Online for a whopping Rs 499 crore. Why, it could even have been in December, 1999, when BT launched dot.com. Either way, the branding machines of dot.coms are everywhere, attacking all our senses. Dot.com hoardings are changing the Mumbai skyline. Full-page print advertisements scream dot.com this and dot.com that. And Websites have started reaching out to people through `sister' medium TV's audiences. There's more: an army of advertising agencies, public relations, and event management firms, and, yes, the media with its cyber-hype.

Fuelling all this are thousands of dot.coms spending like mad to establish an identity. Branding is all. And timing is everything. With entry costs as low as $35 to register a domain name, these Websites, driven by venture capital, are in a tearing hurry to be heard over the din. Even Websites in a commanding position--be they driven by technology, service, or the first-mover advantage--are not ignoring branding. "We have to make it big, fast, or we're not going to make it at all," is the new credo.

While the average retailer spends roughly 5-8 per cent of its total revenue on advertising, and the average manufacturer 15-18 per cent, dot.coms are putting in more than 25 per cent of their revenues on promotions. And it's showing: ad spends in the dot.com industry have spiralled dramatically in the last 6 months. Horizontal portals such as Rediff.com are spending close to Rs 50 crore on branding; some like Satyam Online, even more. The typical finance-related vortal is investing about a quarter that, although SSKI plans to spend as much as Rs 20 crore on building the sharekhan brand.

A necessary caveat: many of these dot.coms may be using an advertising splash as a precursor to an IPO. However, a study by Forrester Research reveals that start-ups routinely devote as much as 90 per cent of the capital they raise in their initial public offerings to advertising and marketing. Thereafter, it's back to square one.

Is all this money being spent wisely? By and large, the answer is no. Sure, it's still early days of brand building in the Indian context. The idea is to make people aware; and to make a splash. Says Suman Srivastava, 36, Director (Strategic Planning), Euro-RSCG: "What most net companies have been doing so far is concentrating on traffic; their advertising has been geared towards generating trials." But the fact remains that there are still too many Websites competing to grab too few customers' attention.

Preeti Vyas Giannetti, 42, CEO, Vyas Giannetti Creative confesses to having burnt her fingers. "One doesn't know where these people are coming from," she says, "and now I work only on advances." But even if there is lots of money floating around, it's never going to be enough. Two years ago, an on-line brand could be built for as low as $30 million. Now, it'll cost hundreds of millions. Warns Jasjit Sawhney, 26, CEO, ISP Net4India: "With so many grappling for mind share, there is definitely some disappointment to be had. Even in the West, only 2 to 4 per cent of the dot.coms have been able to rise above the din, and enjoy top-of-the-mind presence."

The bubble will burst because branding a Website is entirely different from branding real world products and services. The latter is advertised and branded in order to provoke people to buy. Here is a more fundamental proposition: `Come and check my site out first.' This is tough, because everyone--and there are hundreds of new aspirants being added everyday--is trying to do the same thing. Technology, money, and the first-mover advantage will not necessarily distinguish the survivors (though having a good measure of each helps!). The winners will use branding to differentiate themselves. Particularly in the context of a small, but growing, Indian audience, which is trying to make sense of this barrage.

The first-mover advantage, combined with a snappy, easy-to-remember domain name, continues to be the starting-point in branding a Website. If you have an idea, good for you. But do you have a catchy domain name? Jeevansathi.com, a matrimonial site swears by the `naam-lila.' "The name has to define the offering. With so many sites around, one is not going to check around to see the real thing," says Rajiv Tandon, 44, Director, Jeevansathi. That's why domain names like Hungama, Jaldi, Khoj, Khel, Naukri, and Sawaal stick in the mind.

The problem is that not only are appropriate domain names difficult to get; there are too many similar sounding ones. Just one instance: personal finance portal indiainfoline runs the risk of being confused with horizontal portal Indiainfo.com, which has been doing a fair amount of advertising. "What's to stop people from accessing indiainfo.com for financial information?" asks Anand Halve, 44, partner at Chlorophyll Brand, a consultancy firm.

Clearly, an appropriate name is just the first step. As with flesh-and-blood people, imbuing a Website with values is the key to branding--in other words, creating an identity for a product or service at every point of contact with the customer. Take Rediff, which started a media-awareness campaign only last year though the company is 4 years old! Rediff's tag is tried and trusted. Says Rohit Varma, 40, V-P, Rediff.com: "Now that the Internet market is growing we have tried to create awareness about the portal, and the services it offers."

Although Rediff denies the figures, during a recent seminar on Internet advertising at the Symbiosis Institute of Mass Communication, it was revealed that Rediff's blitz had delivered results. E-mail subscription was said to be up by 7 times, e-Commerce 20 times, homepage traffic 6 times, search engine usage 6 times, and chat usage 4 times. All this is on a small base, mind you. The point is that other sites are also trying to portray a certain sine qua non. Take wahindia.com, whose print advertising campaign screams attitude. Punchline: `We're The Only Site With Balls.' Or indiainfoline's, `Where's The Money, Honey?' There are other attributes too, being rended by other sites, like credibility (icicidirect. com and india-today. com) or comprehensive links (123india. com, cricket.org, and satyam online.com).

The idea is to make an emotional connection with surfers, not unlike traditional branding. "Clearly, the principles of branding do not change. But the specifics have changed," points out Halve. The difference: many feel that the Web can be impersonal, or that it is only for techies. That's why most branding exercises keep an arm's length from technology. At the same time, the Web has the added dimension of user privacy and security, which are required for the level of trust demanded by on-line customers.

Trust translates a loyal customer base and will over a period of time, lead to word-of-mouth advertising, which is responsible for around 30 per cent of new site traffic. That's why, for instance, consultancy company e-lab gives cash incentives to the user for references forwarded to its site. And Indian search engine sawaal.com hands out free T-shirts to users who forward information about the site to 20 e-mail addresses. Or for every 5 new subscribers a surfer brings to tipsforme.com, she gets a free pearl earing the list goes on.

And if the target audience is 40-plus, connecting to them in the physical world assumes even more importance. "The industry doesn't understand the Web," says Naresh Malkani, 40, Managing Director, indiaproperties.com, a real-estate portal. "The top 20 per cent of real estate developers do, but the majority of the brokers do not." Thus, not only does Malkani avoid on-line advertising, he has also set up as many as 12 offices in the physical world to connect with his customers. Relationship marketing is what he is counting on.

Dot.coms spend roughly 70 per cent of their ad budget on traditional media, rather than on-line, according to the findings presented at the Symbiosis seminar. By and large, print is the favoured vehicle for Websites. Says Rediff's Varma: "This industry moves at a lightening pace, and to communicate messages in a short while, print is a very effective medium." However, sites like 123india.com. Jaldi. com, and Rediff.com, have begun television advertising. "Research suggests that television advertising is most suitable for dot. com companies," says Kumud Goel, 40, Managing Director, KLG Systel, a co-promoter of e-Commerce portal Jaldi.com.

There are other media too. Zaveri believes in `below-the-line' advertising, outdoors, and tie-ups with brands of similar image bracket: "We have tied up with McDonald's and Shoppers' Stop--basically all family brands." Adds Arvind Kajaria, 33, of 123india. com: "We will go wherever we get the maximum mileage."

Hungama.com (10 million page views a month) has gone a step further by building its brandname largely through events and contests. Says Neeraj Roy, 31, CEO, Hungama, whose target audience is people in the 15-22 age group: "We are not playing for 2 million users, but for 25 million; the 23 million users are at pubs, movie halls, shopping malls, and music shops, where Netizens hang out." According to Hungama, 150 people win something everyday. Roy, who spends almost 30 per cent of his turnover on marketing activities, says his unconventional promotion methods also serve to educate people: "Indians still think that the Net is e-mail. Consumers need to know about other applications of the Net."

Ultimately, the proof of the pudding is in the surfing. Well-designed, user-friendly, and functional sites will attract traffic. Says Zaveri of Indbazaar.com: "Of all the mind-grabbers, not many are really brands. Sure, the customer may visit a site once out of curiosity. But, will he want to visit it again? That is what really makes a brand." If your brand equity is strong enough, they perhaps will. Or perhaps hackers will. That is, if your site is important enough to be hacked Do you get the picture?

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