Television has taught us that the brand is visual. Glossy magazines, and to a lesser extent newspapers, reinforce this impression. To be a brand is to have a strong visual image. Marketing and advertising agencies have shaped themselves around this basic premise.

To promote a brand is to promote mood, color, feeling. It is also to do it quickly and repeatedly. The short TV ad length has framed a whole way of thinking about and promoting a brand. Many marketers and advertisers think in short, intense bursts. It's all about that wonderful catch-phrase, that compelling image.Successful web brands need to take a very different approach, as Google - and before it, Yahoo - has illustrated.

A web brand - a brand that exists primarily on the Web - is concerned with helping people do things. It is, first and foremost, functional.Every time a reader succeeds in carrying out a task on the website, the brand's reputation is enhanced. Every time a reader is frustrated by the website, the brand's reputation is diminished.The very tools and approaches that make marketers and advertisers a success offline, are often drawbacks on the Web. The compelling image is slow to download and frustrates the impatient scan reader. The catch-phrase is of little use to a reader who is hungry for more information.On your website, you brand with your words. You brand with accurate, well-written, up-to-date content. You brand with your classification. You brand with your navigation. You brand with your search process. You brand with your purchase process.

The new and strategic role of branding has remolded the concept of branding. Today, brand building no longer constitutes a mere manipulation of the consumer's perceptions and desires, but it is a creation of a system that on the one-hand makes promises and arouses anticipations, while on the other-hand it delivers and realizes the promises that it makes.