The Hostess with the Most-est

My previous post waxed lyrical about brands that bother to deliver an experience that sets them apart from the rest. On the flip side, let me highlight what happens when you don’t differentiate yourself from others.

I recently blogged about how happy I was with the live chat function of BlueHost, them having helped me out with a problematic installation of a new CMS system. I loved the immediate, ‘live’ assistance that I was able to receive, and that was all good. Until I encountered another problem on a project I was working on.

I had to visit the Hostmonster site…only to get rather confused.

Let me try and show you my point. Two hosts, offering similar (if not identical) services, both with the same Live Chat function that I liked. In the end, I did get my problem solved, although I felt a little cheated because both live chats were using the same names for their staff. So much for that personal touch! After I got Chris and Issac one time too many on both chats, I lost that feeling of talking to a ‘real’ person altogether.

At any rate, I was confused about both brands now because nothing about their splash page helps me differentiate between the two. You may argue that there are so many choices of webhosts out there, who gives a damn about branding, right? People will just find one and stick with it. Yes, but… imagine if you were the host with a difference and people could actually remember you. You would OWN the web hosting brand space.

I guess what we all need is differentiation. I do not know if everyone is trying to allude cleverly to Seth Godin’s Purple Cow, but of course, purple lights at Virgin, huge a$$ purple pencils from Yahoo! at AdTech that everyone wants to get their hands on… purple seems rampant on a lot of cool ideas here.

I thought these giant lead weapons were Totally Useless but then word got around that there were these “cool”, humongous pencils that Yahoo! were giving out. Suddenly, Totally Useless was obscured by the fact that it was also Totally Desirable. At least for the moment.

And so I reiterate- Give people something to talk about! (In a positive light, of course.)

Tags: branding, talk, web hosts, yahoo!, purple