by Kevin Menzie, CEO

One of my favorite web resources is ChangeThis, which packages “manifestos” into tidy, well designed PDFs. Their latest manifesto is authored by Mohammad Iqbal from Ogilivy & Mather Advertising and is titled “The Elongating Tail of Brand Communication.”

The manifesto references Chris Anderson’s book, “The Long Tail,” which is an excellent read outlining how the web is changing our “hit-driven” culture into a “niche-driven” culture. Given a plethora of choices, people’s tastes become much more refined. This fact, coupled with the web audience reaching critical mass, makes niche-industries possible.

Iqbal’s manifesto attempts to relate this to the world of branding. Can a brand have sub-brands that relate to smaller, niche audiences?

I couldn’t help but think about the brand direction of one of our latest clients, Return Path, while reading this article. We just recently launched their new website which takes a “long-tail” approach, in my opinion. They moved from trying to promote stand-alone brands (Sender Score, Postmaster Network, List Growth, and Strategic Solutions) and instead moved them under one core brand, Return Path. This brand then trickles down to the sub-brands, which composes the long tail.

The homepage makes it easy for their niche audiences to quickly find what they’re looking for using either a drop down menu at the top or an interactive menu system in the middle of the page.

Once the user arrives at the “sub-brand”, Sender Score for example, they are asked again to narrow their focus. Are they Email Senders? An Internet Service Provider? A Mail Administrator?

From there, the messaging focuses in on that specific person, “We’re stuck in the middle with you.” Return Path talks about how they can help manage spammers. On the left side of the page, whitepapers that relate specifically to this type of customer are dynamically presented.

Iqbal mentions the importance of “trading control for influence” to help promote sub-brands. Return Path turns over control via their popular blog, the “Email Marketing Water Cooler.” Regular posts speak directly to their niche audiences. Each post, written by Return Path staff, re-inforces the sub-brands for eternity. They are easy to find via a Google search and can easily be spread around the web, discussed, or subscribed to.

I especially enjoyed Iqbal’s closing two paragraphs:

A better model to communicate complexity is to let the consumers assemble it for themselves at their end. Just ensure that they have all the essential ingredients—a long tail of diverse yet simple and easy to communicate brand messages—and they will eventually put together a complex, layered and nuanced understanding of the brand.

One of the most surprising and desirable side effects of long tail brand communication is that by merely contemplating more than one message at the same time, your consumer is assembling the complexity you sought to communicate, but wisely didn’t.

I believe that the new Return Path website has achieved speaking directly to its many niche audiences while promoting their core, “Return Path” brand. As we look towards 2008, I’m sure that we’ll continue to explore ways to think about the “long tail” in relation to this company as well as our other clients.

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