Perhaps the most powerful role the Internet can play in building brand is that the integration programs. It has the potential to provide a unifying bond among all communication efforts surrounding a brand. In addition, the medium can do this both internally and externally, helping the company improve its brand marketing and sales efforts while galvanizing support in the consumer market. In-house Web provides a single place where all the firm’s brand-building programs may occur. When one or more of these programs is out of the strategy in the presentation or content, the departure can be observed and understood by all executives. The medium becomes a version of the wall on which companies and their advertising agencies used to attach and view the entire visual representation of a mark (eg, advertisements, packaging, product design, and brochures) to observe inconsistencies.
Externally, the website has the potential to play an integrating role similar to that of a “store of events,” the way to Niketown Nike is. Niketown provides a total brand experience, with the full scope of the trademark represented in a controlled environment. Such use of retail stores (retailers of outdoor gear REI and LL Bean also uses them) depicts a brand in all its richness to a large segment of consumers who get to see the mark as a whole, in a mark on context rather than piecemeal.