Has there ever been a time that a mistake was made with your marketing, that conveyed a message that didn’t truly embody your brand? We’ve all been there.
One of our publishers told me several years ago: “When I landed on the JuicyAds website, I knew that there was something different and it was something I wanted to be part of.” That choice is what ultimately drove them to be one of our publishers, and eventually that person rose above and became a very valued team member here at the company. Our company website changed a lot since those early days. For many years, I was solely in charge of our website design. That experience taught me one of my earliest and most valuable and humbling lessons about delegation: There is someone in the world better than you at most everything.
The world is filled with companies whose marketing does not truly embody what they are ... pursuing things that are not true to the brand, you run the risk of making the brand less of what it is for those who love it.
Six years ago I took a step back from the daily operations of JuicyAds for personal reasons. At that time I was rebuilding my life after a messy and soul-crushing divorce. The website was in dire need of a face lift and I was simply not in the mindset to handle it, and I had come to the hard realization that I was simply not a great web designer. The torch was passed to someone I hoped would revitalize it and they were allowed full creative freedom to do something amazing. What happened instead, was that we lost our juice.
I strongly believe our brand as the “sexy advertising network” was tarnished by that ill-fated design. After all, a company website is the first thing that new clients see before signing up, and the first thing existing clients see before logging in. New prospects often make up their minds swiftly. I’ve always strongly believed in keeping the JuicyAds brand “sexy and fun” but the new design seemed to make an effort to tone that down — a lot. The whole concept of being “juicy” has real meaning to us, but the new design was brutally mainstream, generic and boring. The design was not sexy and it wasn’t very JuicyAds, either. It lacked all the qualities that our brand embodied and undermined all the consistent marketing we had done over the years.
I voiced my concerns, emphasized what was truly wanted and even provided new images that we preferred to be included in the design. These suggestions did not materialize on the website during the time that design was live, and to this day, I believe that web designer just didn’t understand our brand and therefore could never deliver something true to it.
Sure, it’s possible that we gained thousands of clients who might not have been comfortable with our sexy feel. But, at what cost? How many thousands of others were not attracted to the mainstream feel? How many were shocked to discover that the majority of our advertising is for adult web properties? The company had not fundamentally changed, and the platform was the same. A mistake had been made. Our website marketing was at odds with the company itself.
The world is filled with companies whose marketing does not truly embody what they are. Sometimes companies will try to attract more people by becoming less of what they are through compromise. In the end, pursuing things that are not true to the brand, you run the risk of making the brand less of what it is for those who love it. Always remember that your brand doesn’t just belong to you and your company. Your brand belongs to everyone who uses it, believes in it and loves it.
After nearly 13 years, JuicyAds has won the award for “Best Adult Internet Brand” not once, but twice. Even though this happened during the years our “less juicy” website was online, it was a nod to the overall brand and provoked a strong desire to bring back the juice on our website. We took the necessary steps and brought in well-known adult industry designer Zuzana, who gutted the front-end design and delivered what we desired.
Despite what many companies attempt to do with their marketing (in adult, and mainstream alike) you can’t paint stripes on a horse and call it a zebra. We are a leading adult advertising network. That is who we are and we are proud of it. Unintentionally making our website look more “mainstream” made us less of what we are. This could happen to any brand, perhaps even yours. Mistakes happen, but what’s more important is correcting those mistakes as soon as possible and learning from them. Our new website redesign launched last month — that brought back the juice and we couldn’t be happier. We intend to stay true to what it means to be juicy and not lose our way again.
Juicy Jay is the CEO and founder of JuicyAds, the Sexy Advertising Network. You can follow Jay on Twitter @juicyads, visit JuicyAds.com or like on Facebook.com/juicyads.