Advertising slogans and Internet presence: connection rarely recognizable

Company homepages are ideal platforms for bringing an advertising promise to life through images and films. However, Swiss companies make too little use of this.In today's age of communication, the coordination of individual communication channels is becoming increasingly important, as this is the only way to use advertising funds efficiently. Rainmaker specializes in the positioning of companies and brands. In our day-to-day work, we have repeatedly observed that the advertising slogans of traditional media are not continued on the Internet. However, a company's website is the ideal platform for bringing an advertising promise to life through images and films.50 websites analyzedRainmaker launched in 2012 with Business students at the Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts a project to analyze the advertising slogans on the websites of the 50 largest Swiss companies (source: Handelszeitung). In other words, the "Who's Who" of companies - the big pharmaceutical companies, the watch and luxury industry, the raw materials companies, large-scale industry, energy companies, transportation and logistics companies, the food industry and the retail trade.The central question of the work was whether the companies' websites are designed in a way that is easy to understand, so that their own value proposition can be communicated to the various stakeholder groups in a sustainable way using the slogan.Based on their studies and using relevant specialist literature, the students worked with Rainmaker to develop an interview guide for surveying marketing and communications managers from various industries. Subsequently, an assessment grid for the qualitative and quantitative evaluation of the websites was developed based on the findings of the interviews. For the qualitative assessment, all websites were evaluated by several teams and, in the event of deviations, the different ratings were discussed. This part of the assessment is of course subject to a certain degree of subjectivity, but the results nevertheless provide very interesting insights, as the young business students are among the "digital natives".Half of them did without a sloganJust 43% of the companies surveyed had a motto for their Internet presence and their websites, or an advertising slogan or a communicative central idea was recognizable on the websites. The websites were assessed using a classic grading scale. On average across all companies and sectors, good marks were awarded for "target group orientation" and "credibility". Sufficient marks were awarded for "arousing emotions", "comprehensibility" and "arousing interest". "Presence among the population" and "Historical anchoring" were rated as unsatisfactory, and in over 70 percent of cases the slogan was immediately recognizable to the students. In the remaining 30 percent, the slogan had to be searched for. In 86 percent of cases, the slogan was visible on all subpages - i.e. it was either placed under the logo or otherwise placed in a dominant position so that every visitor could see it."Obvious benefit" of the slogan for visitors only at 43 percentIn addition to the mere presence of a slogan, it was also examined whether there is a connection between the slogan and the website. A stringent connection between the website and the slogan was only seen in just under 50 percent of the companies with a slogan. The slogan was often limited to the homepage and could not be experienced on the subpages. 2/3 of the companies were considered to have a pictorial implementation of the slogan. In other words, images were available that reproduced the slogan. However, in just over 1/3 of the cases, the students rated the graphic design of the pages according to the slogan. Although the slogan was often emotionally appealing, the design of the pages was rather sober. In 81 percent of cases, the texts on the pages were judged to be linguistically adapted to the slogan, and an "obvious benefit" of the slogan for visitors to the pages was considered to exist in only 43 percent of cases. If, for example, an insurance company's slogan promises "security", then information on increasing security should also be found on the relevant websites.there were major differences between the individual sectors. As expected, industries that are closer to the consumer perform better. One positive example is the energy company ALPIQ, which was chosen by the students as an example of best practice. The slogan "Energy with a future" is brought to life on the Internet in a variety of ways and credibly supported with images, videos and texts. The advantage of ALPIQ was probably also that the company and the name are still relatively young and that it was actually possible to start from scratch when designing the website.ConclusionThe study shows that for some companies, the implementation of websites was probably carried out separately from traditional advertising and that there is therefore potential for optimization in the coordination between responsibility for the Internet and advertising. If an advertising slogan exists, then it also belongs on the Internet and not just on the homepage. Even more important than the mere presence of the slogan is that it is brought to life through design, image and text and that it communicates a benefit to visitors. The advertising budget will certainly not increase in the future, but the use of new media means that advertising money will be increasingly fragmented. Successful and efficient communication will be achieved by those who know how to bring a memorable, benefit-oriented and credible advertising slogan to life on all communication channels.