The corporate site has a lot of stakeholders: shareholders, potential investors, journalists, job-seekers, employees, analysts – financial and sustainability, suppliers, partners, customers… There needs to be somewhere that at least the core facts about the company can be found by all these people, for convenience as well as for legal reasons. (If you’re reading this comment but haven’t visited Gini’s post yet, then go now, and don’t forget to read the comments – there’s a fascinating discussion going on there about all this).

I think it’s important that we remember that some – if not most – of the visitors to a corporate website aren’t customers. Or, if they are, that isn’t necessarily their main reason for visiting. Of course, for some companies, all visitors are potential customers, but most visitors to a corporate website are considering interacting with the company in a way that isn’t buying one of their products/services: they want to find a job, find out how their shares are doing, maybe download the annual report, submit a proposal for collaboration, find a map to headquarters, find out how to submit a question for the AGM, write up a case study for college, apply for a charity grant, see the company’s reaction to a press story, and so on.

How that interaction is managed may change – and the fact that it is a potential interaction, not a one-way broadcast is vital – but the corporate brand will still need to be centred somewhere even if that centre is little more than a repository of links out – and where better than the corporate site? I happen to think that the corporate centre should be more than a repository, a library or a train station to another destination, but that’s a topic for another post, perhaps…

Thanks for commenting – you’ve triggered a number of thoughts. (I hadn’t realised Cadbury were one of your clients when I read your post – a double connection!).

I love the idea that companies are creating home pages full of engagement and content that is ever-changing in real-time. I love that companies are allowing their employees to blog and become brand stewards. I love that a lot of private company CEOs are connecting with their customers in new and interesting ways.

We heart chocolate and Cadbury (see http://bit.ly/G6LDj). Seems like they just need to tweak a few things to truly be on the forefront of a new trend.