A long time ago (by internet standards, 1996 is considered wayyy back), Fische introduced me to a web strategies/design company called RazorFish. A pioneer in web advertising and web branding (they didn't even have a name for it then), this company thought up of innovative ways to sell things over the internet (it was so new that then, it was spelled with a capital "I").
I used to enjoy reading their case studies on how to capture people's imagination via an online medium. Of course, this has been exhaustively researched and web branding/design/strategy enterprises have mushroomed as the internet becomes the de facto business medium.
In the mid-90s, Ralph Lauren used RazorFish to market their fragrances. Their idea then was to convey the message in the scent through stories that invoke certain feelings. It was done over a series of soap opera-ish stories, with the name of their fragrances incorporated as the climax or emotional point of the experience. Today, most online storefronts have gone straight to the point, and refined marketing strategies leverage on a variety of delivery media. If they had to market Romance today, I would imagine one would have to describe a walk on a cold, wet spring morning under a tangerine tree as one's bare feet float over a carpet of fresh rose petals in anticipation of the date.
Posted by Najah Nasseri at 2003年01月10日 08:44