NetworkLet me brand my cloud. Part II
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As you may have guessed from my previous post “Let me brand my cloud“, I use web apps with mixed emotions. While I rely on them to keep my business going, they dilute my brand in the eyes of my clients.
Most web apps and services has an branding option, but changing default colors and uploading a logo is far from branding in my book. Some apps and services has extended the possibilities of what you can change within their app/service. But this only creates more work and headache for me as a user. In the end I have to individualy customize every app I’m using.
Today web apps forces the user to customize branding within the web app and only in the form of colors and logos.
The web apps today needs to strip away the styling completely from their service and let us, their customers, submit our branding from an external source.
The most unobtrusive way of doing this would be creating something like a “OpenBrand” standard. It is inspired by OpenID. The OpenBrand would be a unique place/url/identifier that contained information on colors, typography, grids, logos and other styling related elements.
An external standard like "OpenBrand" would give the user and the app provider several branding advantages.
User advantages:
I publish and manage my brand from one central location. Whenever I sign-up for a web app I submit my OpenBrand, and the web app takes care of the rest for me - “branding” itself according to my preferences.
The OpenBrand standard would also make it really easy to re-style a whole existing cloud. Simply update the OpenBrand info and in an instant all the apps in the cloud will be re-styled.
App provider advantages:
Most of us don’t hesitate to switch to a better web app if one rolls around. Supporting OpenBrand would become a competitive advantage.
The app that supports OpenBrand makes my brand stronger, and that’s why I would choose it over its competitors.
Sure, app providers would loose some of their own branding ability with OpenBrand, but that’s just part of adapting to a new reality: brand loyalty equals loyalty to my brand.
January 31st, 2009 at 2:13 am (#)
This was a great post. I have had similar thoughts about this but they extend even further.
My dream is to have the possibility to gather all the different application I frequently use in an web / air application with the same branding throughout each service.
But to get back to your subject:
I believe this would be possible through a consortium of different web application providers getting together and working out a API for web design.
The biggest technical challenge is to agree on a very generic but still versatile CSS framework to work with.
So it would most likely be smaller applications that would be among the early adopters.
One first step would be to create a pilot framework then create a twitter service and some other application using this framework/API.
Get back to me about what you think
February 6th, 2009 at 12:41 am (#)
Collecting them would be a great idea :-) Just one entry point would be lovely.
Your thoughts on the way to get the branding-API going is really good. My idea was to approach to web-people that has a lot of influence right to get the project going. But your idea of making the pilot framework and then create a service using the framework/API to get the smaller app providers onto the waggon is much better. It makes the whole idea/project more tangible.
Bloggy.se is supporting custom CSS files, that is really good but it is still lacking the unique place/url/identifier that contains the branding information.
Let’s get in touch and see if this is anything we can make a reality :-)
February 7th, 2009 at 10:02 am (#)
Sounds like a great idea. I haven’t looked yet, but is there a mailing list to get updates on the project? Best of Luck!
February 11th, 2009 at 4:07 am (#)
Hi Eddie!
Glad you like the OpenBrand idea. There is no mailing list but any news for the project will be posted here on Noded.biz so if you keep your eye open or subscribe to out post feed you won’t miss a thing!
Take care! /Andreas
February 16th, 2009 at 8:52 am (#)
Really great Idea - I would love it even more when extended to lo tek stuff too so that one could just give print shops and what ever the OpenBrand URL and presto it became a discussion about content (since branding information has been taken care of).
February 21st, 2009 at 2:21 pm (#)
Just getting round to catching on the old feeds, and loved reading this :-)
Totally agree with the Open Band concept, and also agree about the loss of brand when using Web Apps.
Basecamp does allow some customisation and you can add your logo + the client’s. This is a working solution, but not ideal.
Too be honest, some of the clients wouldn’t notice ;-)
February 25th, 2009 at 11:36 am (#)
This is a thought I’ve had but not challenged to change. Thank you for writing about this. My solution as been to steer clients away from co-Branded apps (facebook - Twitter - Wordpress) in favor of less broad-reaching custom solutions. I worked for some time at Leo Burnett and was taught the power of brand. It is no good for my clients to shuttle their visitors off to facebook. My feeling is piggy-backing on other brands defuses your brand’s impact and creates more work as you maintain 2 web presences.
My impression is that it would be difficult to convince providers of free apps that they should adapt an open standard. A good option may be to offer Branded versions as a free standard and Open-Brand versions for a fee.
March 26th, 2009 at 4:56 am (#)
Great book, I am recommending it in my networks along with another small gem from 37 Signals, Getting Real: The smarter, faster, easier way to build a succeessful web application: http://gettingreal.37signals.com/
The whole concpet of print-on-demand books that also can be sold as PDFs are appealing, feels like the future of nisched publishing.