During the next few weeks, About.com will roll out a new campaign – “Need. Know. Accomplish.” – designed to make its brand message clearer. As a site that bills itself as “a valuable resource for content that helps you to solve the large and small needs of everyday life,” the change is a much-needed evolution from the previous branding of “Guidance, not guesswork.”
The newer three-word tagline better communicates how the user uses the site – to look for answers to their needs – and how marketers position themselves as resources on the site – as the experts on how to help user accomplish those needs. Everything is clearer. And, to visually push the change in verbiage, the campaign’s imagery will also change by relying heavily on animated graphics, not photography.
The benefits of About.com’s branding change are two-fold.
First, About.com has found that consumers responded well to ads that helped them go from a “need” to “accomplish” state as a “decision making tool.” By narrowing its tagline to exactly how the customer feels going into and coming out of the product experience, a stronger and more specific message – for both the user and the marketer – is derived.
Second, the new branding makes it easier for About.com to secure new marketing partners, who can provide the expertise and knowledge users are looking for. As About.com’s CEO Cella Irvine said in an AdWeek article, “marketers are under more and more pressure to show results, [we’re] showing the value of capturing that with a [targeted] brand message.” Like any company, About.com needed to make its product clearer to marketers so that they understand how to position themselves towards consumers on the site to reach better results.
