Is your Web site a silent movie or a talkie?
April 18th, 2008 by Hugh KennedyI had some interesting conversations today about marketing and the future evolution of brands, a few hours’ worth with one of my favorite clients, the rest with my favorite colleague and someone I was meeting for the first time. It has always been interesting to me how spending time with truly creative thinkers ups my game as a thinker. As the old Yiddish saying goes, “When you make a friend, take a step up.”
What I was pondering today was this: most Web sites in BtoB are silent films. There’s a sort of backdrop quality to them, a lifelessness, and almost no meaningful sound or vision. They are like the 2D sets in silent movies and just about as authentic in feeling. They don’t really talk to or interact with you, so until the next little injection of content, the intertitle card with the language on it, you really have to guess what the characters are saying, what the narrative arc is, and what the key dialogue is. The expressions are somewhat exaggerated or off (bad stock photography is the wooden silent actor of the 21st century). You’re held at a remove from it all because it’s…silent.
Where Web sites want to move is into the Talkie era: the era of full stereo sound synchronized to movement, the era of storytelling that really reaches out and involves the user, the state of a medium starting to realize its full potential. In film that era began in 1927 or so, with The Jazz Singer. There’s only about two minutes of synchronized talking and acting in the film, but movies could never go back afterward.
It might make sense to look at your Web site the same way. Is it really engaging your audiences, or is it mute? Does it deliver a story, or just a series of title cards? Is it experiential, or just a 2D storefront with a few frills attached?
One of our major goals for 2008 is to bring BtoB companies into the era of the talkie Web presence. Once you’ve seen the engagement measures and longer visits to your little marketing theater, you really can’t go back again. And that’s a very good thing.
April 18th, 2008 at 8:39 am
First, let me state that I respect PJA as an agency that gets their own website right–a rarity in the advertising world. The reason it’s better than most is not because it has “full stereo sound synchronized to movement,” it’s because of its focused content.
You have accurately identified the problem with most website, especially B2B, that they are too static with infrequent “injections of content.” But let me suggest that your solution is going in the wrong direction. I frequently consult agencies with respect to the “creative barrier” that inhibits their ability to devise robust web strategies. The solution to poor websites is not more Flash, or more pizzaz. It’s better content. Regular, thoughtful, compelling content, like the content PJA regularly adds to their site, is the solution. Not heightened experiences. When it comes to the web, “creative” brand strategies need to take the back seat to “content” brand strategies.