Web Communication: "Sign, Sign, Everywhere A
Sign"
Author: Jerry Bader

Your business success depends on your ability to communicate
effectively to an interested audience. Driving appropriate
traffic to your site is important, but the tactics that
generate visitors are not the same tactics that get visitors to
stay on your site.

Websites that consistently under perform and that don't meet
business expectations generally suffer because they are not
designed to hold viewers attention long enough to communicate a
clear concise marketing message.

Web-communication is a series of elaborate multi-sensory sign
languages; signs being the words, images, audio and videos that
constitute the range of presentation vehicles that like all
forms of communication have their own grammar, context, and
relevance as interpreted from personal experience by each
member of your customer-audience.

When Words Lose Their Meaning

Marketing is one of those words that has lost its currency
because it has been tossed about with little respect for its
meaning. To many, it's merely just another word for
advertising, which of course it is not. To the more
sophisticated it takes in all the disciplines of branding,
positioning, identity, advertising, and more. Above all
marketing implies a strategic approach to implementing these
tactics.

For companies interested in using the Web to further their
business objectives, Web-marketing is the execution of a
communication strategy through the creative implementation of
multi-sensory signature presentations.

Semiotics: The Study of Signs

"Sign, Sign, everywhere a sign,
Blocking out the scenery breaking my mind,
Do this, don't do that, can't you read the sign."
- Five Man Electrical Band

Like the lyrics of the song, 'Signs,' by the Five Man
Electrical Band' suggests, we are surrounded by signs, the
interpretation of which creates our reality. The study of signs
and how meaning is derived from them is called 'semiotics.'

We are bombarded by signs, not just images, but the words,
voicing, gestures, posture, attire, and movements of the
messengers, as well as the music and sound effects that
accompany the presentation; not to mention the chosen media
itself.

Each of these elements is a language all its own. And like all
forms of language if you don't learn the rules, the grammar and
syntax, you can't communicate coherently.

Fear of Meaning

Most business communication is shrouded in a haze of protective
ambiguity caused by the fear of making a decisive statement of
who you are, and what you stand for. This kind of defensive
thinking may protect your company from some criticism, but it
also distances you from your real audience, people and
businesses that could be responsive to what you have to offer.

Advertisements, videos, images and copy designed to not offend,
will fail to communicate meaning and if what you have to say is
not meaningful, how can you expect your audience to respond?
Bland royalty-free images, stock video clips, and talking-head
presentations of statistics and specifications will guarantee
all the money you spent on generating traffic will go down the
drain as visitors leave faster than they arrive.

Instead of just looking at how many hits your website is
getting each week, take a look at how long they are staying on
your site. If people are leaving within a few seconds of
arriving, then they have determined you have nothing to offer
them, which may or may not be true. You need your website
visitors to stay long enough to get the essence of your
marketing message and if they aren't, then maybe it's time to
rethink the message and how it's being delivered.

A Little Yiddish May Help

Yiddish is a language of idiom, of colloquial metaphor, a
series of expressions that by strict interpretation of the
words mean little, but through the common experience and
relevance of the listener mean more than mere words can imply.

In Yiddish there are many ways to tell somebody to 'drop dead,'
not a very nice thing to say to someone, but a sentiment that is
often expressed anyway.

So how then do you tell someone how you feel without resorting
to the crude direct approach? In Yiddish you would use one of
the many expressions available such as, "zolst vaksn vi a
tzibele mitn kop in dr'erd!" which literally means "may you
grow like an onion with your head in the ground," a far more
colorful, poetic turn of phrase with humorous undertones that
softens the intensity of the raw meaning.

Our everyday language is full of idiom and metaphor and for the
most part we don't even notice. If we want to outwit our
competition, we instruct our staff to "take no prisoners" and
if we are successful we 'blew them away;' business often
resorts to war metaphors to emphasize the enormity of the
stakes involved in business initiatives, or should I say
'campaigns.'

And it is not just written and verbal communication that is
perpetually encased in a cocoon of evocative metaphor. Visual
communication, including images and video, has its own
idiomatic metaphorical sign language that helps communicate a
message in meaningful short-hand. The producers of 30-second TV
commercials are expert in this style of communication, how else
can a complete marketing story be told in 30 seconds?

Relevance of Character and Situation

When we create Web-video commercials we need to tell a story
that the audience can relate to. This story should be a
metaphor that draws upon the audience's own experiences, and if
done properly it should allow the viewer to let down their
natural sales defense mechanism and let the humanity of the
characters and situation penetrate on a meaningful human level.
This style of presentation makes the point and delivers the
message in a much more effective manner than a
hit-you-over-the-head, hard sell style commercial, or a
meaningless exhortation of business platitudes.

Dr. Satoshi Kanazawa, a sociology professor at the University
of Canterbury in New Zealand, in the 'Psychology Today'
article, 'Friends In Cerebral Places' by Kaja Perina states:
"The human brain is hardwired to respond to stimuli as it did
in its ancestral environment, where television and movies
didn't exist. Kanazawa says that we have evolved to believe
that 'all realistic images of people you encounter repeatedly
are friends and family.'

In the environment of evolutionary adaptedness there was no
one-way acquaintance, as there is today with celebrities."

The implication of Kanazawa's research for the Web-marketer is
significant. If you as marketers can create websites and
webmedia presentations populated with ongoing characters to
which your Web-audience can relate, then you have solved the
biggest obstacle in the Web-sales process: lack of trust.

People buy things from people they trust, people they know and
like, and people to whom they can relate. You can establish
this relationship with a continuous campaign of audio and video
presentations delivered by characters representing your
company's personality, delivering a message that improves your
audience's lives or business interests.

The Familiarity of Presentation Genres

An effective Web-commercial must touch your audience in some
way. One method that we use to make this connection is through
the exploitation of genres.

Genres are storytelling formats with built-in conventions,
rules and guidelines. These conventions provide a
communication-shorthand allowing Web-storytellers to deliver
rich content in an economical use of time and space.

Since the audience already understands what the conventions of
the recognizable genre are, resources need not be wasted
establishing a frame-of-reference that is built into the genre
itself.

It is here that the Web-commercial producer must expand the
concept of genres beyond that which is normally understood.
Everyone understands the western, detective, romance, and
sitcom styles of storytelling genres, but genres exist beyond
the confines of literature, movies, and television series.
Genres also exist in the truncated world of television
commercial storytelling. Take for instance the current
ubiquitous series of Macintosh television commercials that have
been copied numerous times by many people on the Web and even on
television itself.

The use of genres as a method of presenting Web-commercials
provides a set of expectations for the viewer or what has been
referred to as 'cultural capital.' While the recognition of the
familiar provides a connection, its creative manipulation
provides enjoyment and more importantly aids memory and
enhances recall. You can see an example of this genre
manipulation at http://www.mrpwebmedia.com/ads.

The Bottom Line

If real estate is about, 'location, location, location' then
websites are about, 'communication, communication,
communication.' The skillful Web-marketer will understand this
and use their website the way it was always supposed to be
used, as a means of communication; but that communication no
longer has to be delivered in mere text form, but rather it can
now be delivered using all the multi-sensory media tools
available. The caveat, of course, is knowing how to use these
tools properly.


About The Author: Jerry Bader is Senior Partner at MRPwebmedia,
a website design firm that specializes in Web-audio and
Web-video. Visit http://www.mrpwebmedia.com,
http://www.mrpwebmedia.com/ads, http://www.136words.com , and
http://www.sonicpersonality.com. Contact at
info@mrpwebmedia.com or telephone (905) 764-1246.