When working with our VP marketing clients on their online brand experience, a couple of times I’ve heard something scary from them: “We’d love to make that change, but marketing doesn’t control the website.”

What?

If your website is the front door to your brand experience, then the group that manages the brand must, if not control, then have substantial input to, the web experience.

These days, nothing kills your credibility more than a website that isn’t created from the point of view: how well does it deliver on our brand promise? If too many cooks are in the broth; if your home page is a jumble of different messages, functions and links, the place that everyone goes for a first impression will have no point of focus. 

Now, that doesn’t mean that marketing has to own the brand.  More and more, because brands have to be both strategically and operationally delivered, it’s not just marketing owning the brand, but a cross functional team, like Group Health’s brand governance team made up of people from HR, facilities, management and marketing.  If your organization’s brand is managed that way, then that is the same group that should oversee the web and online strategy.

Just sayin’, is all.

–Lynn Parker

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