What's More Important Than WHAT?

As much as I hate it when people say they've been on the web, well, forever, I have to give context to my entry to say that we at Resource Interactive have been immersed in the web since the beginning (as far as consumers are concerned, at least). And in these last 12+ years we've watched and analyzed as specific audiences, business models and industries have hopped on the web.

In my opinion, one of the more exciting--and recent--evolutions has been consumer packaged goods. For years, CPG companies created web sites and then spun their wheels trying to figure out what to do with them. Outside of a few super-stars (like Procter & Gamble's "The Tide Fabric Care Network" and KraftFoods.com) it's only been in the last 18 months that we've seen most of these companies and brands really start to figure it out. And I'm not just saying that because we work with a bunch of them ;).

I read an article last week in DM News that explored the many great ways that the interactive medium supports CPG. I particularly liked this reasoning why:

"Beyond the economics, interactive is a great hub for this new relationship because it enables two main criteria: the relationship must put the consumer in control, and it must base the relationship on something beyond the product."

And while the article went into more depth about the WHY--why interactive is a perfect way to build relationships between customers and brands, and even the HOW (not just web sites alone, but podcasts, RSS, etc.) it didn't really get into what I find even more important today, the WHAT.

To me, the real challenge and fun of working on these projects ourselves has been figuring out the WHAT. WHAT is going to be relevant to consumers on a CPG web site? WHAT will they expect? WHAT will they need? If we don't first figure out the WHAT, it won't matter how interactive, how beautiful, how flashy the sites are, because consumers won't care.

In the end, in some strange way, we come full circle with what great marketing should always do (online or off), get closer to the consumer. Then, and only then, will the WHAT become more evident.