To quote The Secret of Advertising,

“TV, radio, magazine ads, web sites, signs and posters are all media avenues. Shout your message from a rooftop and that's your medium. A salesman's patter is his. However to reach the maximum number of customers and potential customers, you have to use a combination of media: direct mail, newspaper, magazines, radio and television. And to be most effective, they should reinforce one another.”

Your web presence is no different. Just as your stores must keep the promises you make in your advertising, your web presence must keep the promises your customers have come to expect of your stores. If your store is a bright and sassy juniors clothing source, your web site must also maintain that image. Your traditional customer base is the core of your e-store base, and you cannot afford to disappoint them.

Clothestime designed their site to be a brick and mortar support vehicle. All the images had to be fresh and reinforce the "Take Control" empowerment message to their junior clientele. In store, the environment welcomed the consumers to try something new and take control of their look and their style. On-line, they were shown whole new ways to take control of their lives through links to lifestyle, humor, fun, fashion and abuse resources on the web.

All the elements of the Clothestime experience were carefully coordinated, advertising, store environment and web environment all reinforced one another. As a result, the site achieved enormous popularity with little or no allocation of ad resources dedicated exclusively to web promotion. However, every ad, every store and every direct mail piece featured the site, and the site featured the fashions and specials that the store had to offer. The stores and ads reinforced the site and the site helped generate new traffic to the stores.