How quickly these things change.

In remarkably short order, it seems, interactive communications has gone from cutting-edge discipline to (ho-hum) part of the mainstream marketing mix. Just ask yourself: how many ads have you seen lately that didn’t list a Web site?

That’s not to suggest that the majority of marketers have mastered the art of communicating their message via the World Wide Web, kiosk or cd-rom. Far from it.

‘A lot of the stuff out there is crap,’ says Darin Brown, director of interactive marketing with Toronto-based agency Leo Burnett Company.

‘It’s done by people who understand how to use the tools, but not how to communicate to consumers. Just because I know how to use a typewriter doesn’t mean I can write a book,’ says Brown.

So what distinguishes truly successful interactive marketing from what Brown so delicately terms ‘crap’?

Simple. Just like successful print or tv advertising, it must form part of a fully integrated communications plan.

Lisa Boccaccio, director, multimedia for Toronto agency Tudhope Associates, puts it this way: ‘When somebody reads your corporate brochure or sees your television ad, and then goes to your Web site, are they getting the same message? Are they seeing similar images, similar words?’

There is, of course, one added wrinkle. Interactive marketing, as the term suggests, involves a two-way exchange with consumers. And consumers aren’t going to bother entering into an exchange unless there’s a compelling reason.

For companies, the challenge, then, is to ensure that their interactive initiatives offer tangible value to the end user.

‘Consumers come for very specific reasons, such as collecting information,’ Brown says. ‘And you have to show a true commitment to delivering. Because this isn’t a broadcast medium. It’s about one-to-one marketing – establishing relationships.’

In this special feature, Strategy writers David Chilton, Mariam Mesbah and David Todd profile six companies that have clearly grasped these all-important lessons.

Chestnut Park Real Estate

‘Location, location, location’ is the time-honored maxim of the real estate business.

It may, however, be coming due for an update. How does ‘Internet, Internet, Internet’ grab you?

Yes, the residential real estate industry has begun moving on-line, as firms use the World Wide Web to give prospective home buyers access to their listings.

Toronto’s upmarket Chestnut Park Real Estate, which sells homes in the $200,000-and-counting range, is among those companies to have established an on-line presence (at www.chestnutpark.com).

Catherine Deluce, president and ceo of Chestnut Park, says her company sees the Web as the way of the future.

Besides serving the needs of Toronto-area homebuyers, it also affords an opportunity to reach the international market – American executives, for example, who have been transferred to Toronto and know little about the city.

Chestnut Park’s core areas are central Toronto and the cottage country of Muskoka, two hours north of the metropolis.

Bill James, creative director for The James Gang, the Toronto advertising agency that developed the Chestnut Park site, says the whole real estate industry is increasingly interested in the Internet.

What his client wanted, he says, was a site that would reinforce its position as the leader in a sophisticated market.

The Chestnut Park site was launched this spring.

Its main page features three door icons. Clicking on the first leads to a corporate profile. Behind the second door are the firm’s listings, and behind the third is a featured home section.

Among the benefits to would-be home buyers are immediate access to listings at any time of day or night, and the opportunity to take an ‘anonymous peek’ at certain properties before talking to an agent.

For Chestnut Park, says James, it offers a means of building or enhancing relationships with clients or potential clients.

Integrating the site seamlessly with other Chestnut Park communications has been a priority. James says they tried to take the imagery and the ‘elegant yet friendly’ feel of the company’s other marketing and communications material, such as print advertising, and bring these to the Internet.

Deluce says it will be roughly a year before she can assess how successful the Chestnut Park site has been.

It’s an expensive proposition, she concedes, and has yet to drive a house sale. DC

Federal Express Canada

John Cooper has three words about World Wide Web sites that offer nothing but eye candy: no thank you.

‘You see that all too often,’ says Cooper, managing director, marketing, for Federal Express Canada. ‘Sure, it’s cool, but you never want to go back and see it again, because it hasn’t had any benefit for you.

‘The most critical thing with interactive applications is to provide value to the user. Otherwise, people will become bored or disenchanted.’

That pretty much sums up the philosophy FedEx Canada has adopted with respect to its own Web site (www.fedex.ca). Launched in March of this year, the site is designed to give customers round-the-clock access to a wide range of FedEx services.

‘A lot of sites out there are one-way communicators,’ Cooper says. ‘They provide information the originators think is important, but may not meet the needs of people accessing them. We felt it important to ensure that ours was a useful tool.’

One good way of doing that, the company concluded, would be to give customers the ability to track their packages on-line. Users may type in their waybill number, at any hour of the day, and obtain access to FedEx’s tracking system to get the most recent information on the delivery status of their packages.

The site, which was built by Mississauga, Ont. Internet applications developer e-Commerce, also allows customers to open an account, order supplies on-line and locate the FedEx drop boxes nearest them.

Cooper says the company has been reluctant to use the Web site as a forum for more purely commercial messages, preferring to keep the emphasis on utility.

Nevertheless, it has attempted to add a measure of entertainment value. A newly-introduced demonstration of the company’s desktop shipping software product, FedEx Ship, lends some ‘funk’ to the site, Cooper says, while remaining very much in keeping with the overall environment.

‘We’re trying to present a service offering in a way that’s more entertaining for our audience, but still informative,’ he says.

The content of the site, Cooper adds, is meant to reinforce the themes of ongoing campaigns (like the recent push behind FedEx Extras) as well as the overall corporate image.

‘Whatever you do with the Internet, it has to reinforce your brand clearly,’ he says. DT

Signature Vacations

When it comes to holidays, planning the trip is half the fun for a lot of folks.

That, anyway, is what Canada’s largest tour operator, Signature Vacations, concluded from consumer research last year.

So when the company set about creating its World Wide Web site (www.signature.ca), it focused on providing useful services that would enhance the whole vacation-planning experience.

The site, developed by Leo Burnett Company’s interactive marketing group, was launched last September.

In addition to information on hotels and tour packages, the site offers an interactive ‘Travel Planner’ service.

Users can plug in information about their budget, their preferred destination and personal preferences, explains Darin Brown, director of interactive marketing at Leo Burnett.

The Travel Planner will then supply them with a shortlist of vacation packages that fit their personal profile.

There are also links to other travel-related Web sites, and a ‘Travel Talk’ feedback service that lets users e-mail questions to Signature representatives, who will reply within 24 hours.

Considerable care has been taken to integrate this on-line component into the company’s ongoing marketing efforts. Signature launched a major advertising campaign a year ago, aimed at promoting its brand in the marketplace.

For example, the four primary colors found in all of Signature’s promotional materials (pink, yellow, blue and gold) predominate on the Web site. Each one is used to denote a particular section.

The overall graphic design mirrors that of Signature’s brochures, as does the text. And, of course, the ‘Don’t WorryBe Happy’ tag line that the company has adopted in its advertising, to convey the idea of hassle-free travel, also appears prominently.

‘When people look up the site, all the creative says it belongs to Signature Vacations,’ says Brown.

While convenience for consumers is the major objective, the site also affords advantages to travel agents, who can refer clients to Signature’s on-line address instead of spending a lot of time describing holiday options in detail.

Brown says having a Web presence has also helped Signature broaden its client base, by attracting the interest of younger, Internet-savvy consumers.

While the day may come when it is possible to book trips directly through the site, that remains some distance down the road. MM

Spectrum United Mutual Funds

‘There’s a lot of bad advice out there.’

Allen Marple, president of Spectrum United Mutual Funds, is talking about the investment business, and the need that he sees to upgrade the knowledge and skills of the people who sell financial products.

Such is the thinking that has guided Spectrum United’s forays into the realm of interactive marketing.

Spectrum’s major clients are the distributors – the agents of its parent, Sun Life Assurance Company of Canada, along with brokers, dealers and financial planners – who in turn sell the company’s funds to investors.

Among the support services the company now offers to distributors is a software package called Fundworks, designed for laptop-based sales presentations. The package is updated on a quarterly basis.

‘It’s an expensive proposition, so we don’t give every broker in the country one of these,’ Marple says. ‘It’s just for those who are obviously top producers.’

Rather than providing mere puffery about Spectrum United’s products, in multimedia form, the software allows the representative to model for the client the outcome of a savings investment plan, based on recent performance figures.

Marple says the company’s goal is to equip distributors with access to timely information about the funds they’re selling, and to enhance their ability to build relationships with clients.

The launch of Spectrum United’s World Wide Web site, the next component to be added to its marketing mix, is scheduled for December.

The site will offer brokers and dealers up-to-date information on funds, unit pricing and performance, as well as on the general state of the market. For individual investors, it will include a library of educational materials on personal finance.

Ultimately, it will serve two purposes: giving investment professionals another way to get at the information they need, while building awareness of Spectrum United among investors.

Marple says these interactive elements have been designed (by Toronto agency Tudhope Associates) with a careful eye toward ensuring continuity with the company’s overall communications strategy.

They share the same visual language and communicate the same message as the company’s print materials.

Spectrum United plans to monitor closely the usage of its Web site, building a demographic profile of those who visit, in order to target its message more effectively.

‘At the end of the day, we’d like to think we’re helping Canadian consumers do a better job of investing and saving for retirement,’ says Marple. ‘And this is all part of it.’ DT

The Sports Network

‘This is tsn.’

So trumpets the voiceover on The Sports Network’s station id.

Meanwhile, out in cyberspace, at www.tsn.cawell, this is tsn too.

The all-sports cable network launched its World Wide Web site in September 1995, as a means of forging a stronger connection to the members of its audience.

The site offers users up-to-date scores and standings, interactive games and ‘mini-sites’ for a number of tsn programs. Web surfers who click on the Sportsdesk mini-site, for example, can get in-depth information on that show’s major stories-in-progress.

The original version of the site was created by Toronto’s ICE Integrated Communications and Entertainment. The current version, which went live in June, was designed in-house by tsn.

Jeffrey Elliott, director of media development for tsn, says the Web site is a form of one-on-one mass marketing – something the network has never done before.

The major thrust of tsn’s venture into cyberspace is to support its main programming to the extent possible. The branding on-line is the same as on the air.

The same Sportsdesk logo, familiar to millions of viewers, for example, is also to be found at the network’s Web site.

One of the other ways that the network uses interactivity to support its programming is through a sports poll, run with Insight Canada Research.

A sports question is asked on the 6 p.m. edition of Sportsdesk, viewers vote using the Internet, and the results appear on the 11 p.m. edition of the program.

According to Elliott, www.tsn.ca is currently the busiest Web site in Canada, with 1.6 million hits a week and 550,000 page requests (possibly a more accurate measurement of a site’s popularity).

Perhaps predictably, almost all are from men. tsn’s key tv demographic is males aged 18 to 49, and an estimated 95% of the network’s cyber audience is male.

As for what advertisers think of tsn’s on-line presence, Elliott says the site is already generating revenue. Among tsn’s Web advertisers: Pepsi-Cola Canada, Subway Sandwiches and Salads, Corel Corporation, Stentor and Labatt Breweries of Canada’s flagship brand, Blue. DC

Royal Bank of Canada

To financial institutions, interactive technology represents more than just another medium for their marketing messages. It’s a new and potentially very powerful means of providing service options for customers.

‘It’s the way of the future,’ says Judy Murchison, manager of channel marketing and sales for direct banking with Royal Bank of Canada. ‘Customers expect to be able to do their banking when they want, from where they want.’

Royal Bank’s efforts on this front are fairly typical. Telephone banking was introduced last year. This fall, the institution will begin offering pc and Internet banking. All of its interactive products and services are marketed under the umbrella brand name Royal Direct.

The Royal Direct pc banking product includes a fully-integrated financial planning software package called Managing Your Money, along with an application that enables users to place orders for stocks and mutual funds.

Among the challenges in this area, says Murchison, is finding ways to ensure that customers feel confident using interactive media for their routine banking.

To this end, Royal Bank is in the process of setting up interactive kiosks, or ‘merchandising units,’ in key branches across Canada that will enable customers to familiarize themselves with the Royal Direct phone and pc banking technology.

‘We want to give customers a chance to try it out,’ says Martin Stevens, manager, pc banking development and operations for direct banking at Royal.

The free-standing modular units, which were designed in-house, will be equipped with both a phone and pc, and feature point-of-sale material developed for Royal Direct. Branch personnel will be available to provide demonstrations.

Murchison says the branches remain an important channel for the bank to get its message across.

Integration of the bank’s communications across all channels is crucial, she adds. In addition to using traditional advertising and point-of-sale materials, the bank is promoting Royal Direct through direct mail, its World Wide Web site and even atm video screens.

The message is consistent throughout. The atm screens, for example, duplicate Royal’s print ads for the telephone banking service. MM