JIM IS A partner at Story Worldwide and a course director for The Chartered Institute of Marketing. In 1998, with chief creative officer Lars Hemming Jorgensen, Jim established Large, a highly successful internet consultancy identified by the Financial Times in 2001 as a company to watch. Over the course of the next six years Jim delivered benchmark websites for the world’s top brands including the site for Bang & Olufsen referred to as “the most beautiful website in the world” by the Financial Times and a series of breathtaking sites for Agent Provocateur deemed the “sexiest website in the world” by Vogue. In 2007, Large merged with Story Worldwide to create the world’s first postadvertising agency.

WD: Do you think we now know the DNA of branding?
JB: A brand personifies an organisation. Businesses that are built around a personality (Virgin, Apple or any of the political parties spring to mind) have a lot easier job managing their brands than a faceless corporation.

WD: Can we now define what branding is and how businesses can construct their own using the internet as the delivery mechanism?

JB: Constructing a brand is easy, communicating it is the tricky bit. Brand stories, metaphors, pictures and parallels help us to do that in using the same storytelling techniques that mankind has used successfully to make things stick since the dawn of time. As an interactive platform, the internet is the first medium to behave like face-to-face communication, in that questions can be asked halfway through and the story can evolve as it’s told through audience participation. There is therefore no substitute for human craft, someone who understands the brand, the audience, the medium and the art of conversation is required – in effect an online editor.

WD: How do you think branding has evolved?

JB: Acquisition is no longer the goal, the goal is engagement. At Story, we say it’s no longer about two per cent conversion but about 98 per cent engagement, if people feel better about themselves as a result of having contact with your brand, the next time they are in a position to buy, your brand will have a head start.

WD: When you deconstruct your brand, what do you think makes it a powerful marketing tool?

JB: Brands exist to differentiate you from the herd. For example, Story’s USP is that content and specifically editorial is at the heart of everything we do. We won’t only produce a website for our clients, we’ll supply an editor, a copywriter and a creative to maintain it and determine the direction of online marketing. However, brands become truly powerful when they also possess a little bit of intangible magic that you can’t put your finger on. Something that can only come about as a result of an energetic ‘make great things happen’ company culture.

WD: What do you think the future of online branding looks like? What are your business’s plans for developing its brand in 2009 and beyond?

JB: The future of online branding is about turning your brand into media, media that someone will genuinely gain value from consuming, be it information, entertainment or as ‘pass-it-on’ currency.