The Best Brands Ever

I was doing a story on branding for AVN Online recently, and it prompted me to ask myself about the nature of branding in this business and who really has the strongest ones. I also began wondering if perhaps branding outside of the industry is easier in the gay community because of our community's openness toward sexuality. Because we are predisposed to a certain amount of open sexuality, it seems to me that marketing one's company in non-industry-related events is much easier in the gay community than in the straight community. What do you think?

Also, who would you consider to be "the best branded company" (or companies) in the business? Gay and straight, and why?

You know, a lot of companies that in the past few years have solely focused on 'online branding' are now starting to venture offline more and more and at the same time, a lot of companies who have predominantly focused on 'offline branding' are now starting to venture towards more traditional online internet branding.

In Phoenix there was a lot of talk from several of the straight programs with gay properties about how to successfully infiltrate the offline gay community, pride events, etc because they were finding it hard to get their gay properties branded to the online gay community.

In terms of best branded, are talking about programs, sites or both because there is a difference also, are you talking about branding to surfers, or affiliates because again, there is a difference.

Regards,

Lee

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Lee

In terms of best branded, are talking about programs, sites or both because there is a difference also, are you talking about branding to surfers, or affiliates because again, there is a difference.

---

Good question.

When I ask about who you think the best brands are, I mean in general. Overall best brands, regardless of who they are marketing to.

But for the other question, I specifically was asking about branding OUTSIDE of the adult arena. Is it easier to market and brand gay sites to the mainstream gay community than it is doing the same thing with straight sites in the str8 community?

you can't measure the success of a brand unless you know how the brand performs and since we have no clue how these privately held companies perform, we don't know if they are successful -

recognition is a completely different issue

and of course, how affiliates can and do profit is yet another....