Inside Scoop

Advertising With Purpose

Once upon a time I was sitting in a meeting with some other creative thinkers and some folks from an advertising agency. I had been hired as the copywriting and content design part of a team which would put together a Web site for one of this agency's top clients. The group was a mix of largely creative, imaginative people, and we threw around some ideas, discussed programming details and loading speed, had a few laughs, and got some things done. Then one of the client's account reps pipes up, "Couldn't we just take one of their brochures and scan it in . . . ?"

After the funeral, I got to thinking. When a corporate advertising client has spent 10 years or 30 years or maybe 50 years developing a brand image and a position in the marketplace, they've got a huge backlog of material that could be used in a World Wide Web site. Unfortunately, many developers ignore existing print and broadcast materials in favor of creating new images and content and putting their own "stamp" on the site. This kind of ego masturbation might be just what the M.D. ordered for the programmer or designer, but it hardly serves the advertiser or the ad agency.

Turning existing materials into content for a Web site, called repurposing, is a great way to save money and time. Think of the possibilities: you take your company's current brochure and use that copy for the main introductory copy to your site. You scan in your existing logo and photos from that same brochure, and you've got your main introductory graphics. You capture some video from current TV spots and turn them into stills with hot links to product information. And you take the time needed to create new graphics and shoot new photos and cut it in half, saving yourself money and Tylenol.

How and what to repurpose? Read on, oh seeker of knowledge . . .

Brochures

Do not, repeat, DO NOT simply scan your current brochure into Photoshop and drop it into your site. For one thing, your current brochure might suck. Hire a professional designer or brochure writer to critique your current piece; if it's good, use it. If not, throw the whole thing into reverse and do a new brochure before you even think about getting on the 'Net. Assuming your brochure does not suck, you still can't just scan it in. You'll get a weird fish scale look called "moire" that can ruin the look of your image. Take the best copy from the brochure and use it to sell your company or the particular product the brochure focuses on. You can also take the photos from the brochure, scan them in, and turn them into hot buttons that you can use to take users to other pages on products, personnel, or company news.

Logos

Your logo should be the centerpiece of your homepage graphics. Again, this is assuming that it's cool. If not, get a new one. The Web's got enough crap on it already without another dorky logo created in Wordstar. If your logo exists in electronic form, great. If not, have a computer artist recreate it as an EPS (encapsulated PostScript) file, and you can then give it to your Web designer for conversion into an eye- popping graphic.

Television commercials

You'll need someone with a video card and a Macintosh, someone who can take a videotape of your latest TV spot, capture a segment of it in digital form, and extract still images from that digital footage. Once that's done, you've got a collection of stills taken directly from your own commercials, stills that can be used as window dressing or to sell specific products.

Radio commercials

Audio on the Web is a trickier matter. You can convert the audio to digital form and compress it, then include it on your site. But to hear it, the user must download the file to his computer and have the software to play it. You can also have your programmer link the audio software to the download, so the application is automatically loaded along with the sound bite. But such operations can take a while if your user has a slower computer, so it's best not to build your site around cool sound bites. At most, they're a fun extra.

Publications

If your company produces in-house newsletters or publications that go out to the end user, you can make them available through your Web site. Chances are a newsletter or magazine has been created electronically, so it should be available as a computer file. You can do this two ways: convert the publication into a graphic and drop it directly onto the site for viewing by the user; or load the information onto the server and allow the user to download the text (and maybe some graphics) onto his computer and read it at his leisure. Either way, you offer valuable information with a minimum of work, and get more mileage out of your publishing efforts.

Getting the idea? So next time you're talking to a Web site developer who proposes spending thousands of dollars and months creating all-new graphics and content for your site when you have a $25,000 kick-ass brochure sitting right next to you, do us all a favor and put him out of his misery. There's a lovely burial site right next to that account rep.

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