Marketing a brand for the non-converted

Although there may be only large sections of the population living quite happily without the Internet, there are many marketing departments working long hours in an attempt to convert them.

Most of the budget of an consumer-based Internet start-up is spent on marketing the brand. The challenge for the new wave of companies is to convince people of the benefits of using the Internet and to communicate their own identity and services.

Several "dot ie" operations have opted for character-driven advertising campaigns and the use of humour. Whether it is a sheep, a mouse or a funny little man, the point is that the consumer is going to get to know the character and associate it with the brand.

The most unusual individual from the stable of characters has got to be the Oceanfree.net sheep. The sheep first appeared on billboards last month with cryptic messages in a teaser campaign designed to tickle the public interest, or irritate people. The animal then appeared on the website home page on a green and blue graphics background. The raison d'etre of the sheep is that it asks questions all the time, questions to which Oceanfree.net has the answer.

The television element of this integrated campaign kicked off last week and, in this, sheep are seen "baaing" intelligent questions at each other (viewers get subtitles). "The idea behind this campaign is that the sheep is the spokesman for Oceanfree .net," according to Mr Hugh Murphy, marketing director of Oceanfree.net.

The advertising campaigns reflect the fact that the services being offered by these companies are new and innovative, and the staff are young.

"There are so many service providers out there that it's difficult to differentiate; we have to make people think of us a little differently," Mr Murphy said.

With business online comes a whole new calendar, the Internet year is three months. Marketing strategy is developed on a weekly basis and campaigns move through different phases at breakneck speed.

During the introductory week of Irish online auction site, Ebid.ie, the promotional work was apparent to many. On-street leafleting, direct door-to-door drops, billboards, bus stop sites, radio advertisements and website banner advertisements were all part of the campaign. Central to the brand identity for Ebid.ie was the cartoon mouse character and the use of colour. Ms Maeve Harrington, chief operating officer of Ebid.ie, said the online campaign was very effective in driving trial traffic to the site. Ebid.ie bought banner advertisements on the top 10 Irish web-sites to bring the browser directly to the new site.

"The thing about this kind of advertising is that there is an instant reaction from people. They check the site straight away when it comes to their attention online and the standard has to be high because Internet users are very unforgiving," Ms Harrington said.

Clare O'Dea can be contacted at finance@irishtimes.ie.