A mini case study
Olpers milk, as most of us already know, is brand of milk owned by Engro. On January 31st, 2007, I wrote an article and published it online onto Treetech Communications website/blog (http://treetech.com.pk/). The article was among many others discussing various aspect of branding in the Pakistani market and how it can better be managed online. The mention of Olpers was more for academic purposes than anything else. That particular post was about branding of Olpers and where I had thought they missed out. A month later, while looking at my website statistics for Treetech Communications, some interesting observations came about.
In and out of context
Every day, for the last month or so since I wrote the post, my website has been getting two to five visitors daily, searching for Olpers milk. Most incoming links were from Pakistani Google, with search terms such as Olpers milk, Olpers or Haleeb, marketing strategy of Olpers (a business/marketing student probably made that search!),Olwell of Olpers and combinations thereof.
Even today, when you type in Olpers on Google and hit the search button, my website comes up on the first page. If I am the brand manager of Olpers, I should be worried, and rightly so. The fact Olpers does not have a website should be worrisome enough. Moreover, if someone asks for Olpers and is taken to some place that is not controlled by Olpers, then that can be dangerous to the brand.
Search engines place a lot of importance on context and a simple website under the Olpers domain would probably have shown up on the front page. But that was not the case as Olpers does not have a website. Imagine the negative connotations of this scenario: You meet, say, the brand manager of Olpers, and during the conversation, ask for his or her card. But the brand manger does not have one. Why? Because a business card does not do the company any good and no one uses it? That is the usual ‘excuse’ for not investing in a decent website. The business card does not work for you unless you make it work for you, by actually taking it out of your pocket and handing it over!
The same logic applies to websites. Websites are as basic and require the same amount of ubiquitous work as a business card or a letterhead or any other item in the corporate identity mix. That is the website’s context and that is where a website belongs; the corporate ID.
Wandering customers
Olpers, like many other businesses in Pakistan, is sorely missing out by letting their core customers wander about. I say core customers because these people did not search for milk or brand or anything, but they were specifically searching for Olpers milk. Then they were shown the way, by the democratically correct search engines, to my website, where I have a post titled Problems with Olpers milk. The visitors coming to my website could be concerned parents, checking up on what Olpers has to say about the quality, hygiene and purity of their milk. They probably were journalists looking for facts and figures to back their stories which they are going to have a harder time to write now. Or perhaps business students, prospective employees maybe, who can say.
Another interesting result that comes up online is when you search for best milk in Lahore. None of the top guns show up. For a very simple reason: none of them have invested enough into their online identity. By investment, I am not talking about heavy weight financial investments, but investments of attention and its span thereof!
