The Brand Tree

VLSI Technology, subsequently acquired by Philips, was a leading manufacturer of large-scale integrated circuits for digital entertainment, networking, advanced computing, and communications. Brooks Cole’s team developed an Internet-centric marketing communications strategy to enhance the effectiveness of VLSI’s marketing messages and strengthen its corporate image and brand. We then created the second-generation Web site for VLSI with a flattened site architecture for easy navigation, an animated interface using Shockwave, streaming audio and video for enhanced visual appeal, and an iconic 3D object library for multiple product line identification and branding.

We designed Web templates for dynamicly customized technical pages to meet the specific needs of VLSI’s customers (who are primarily engineers) and created an alternative method for visitors and end-users to meet their immediate needs by having easy access to VLSI’s product and service solutions. Engineers Brian Tracey and Mark Watson also wrote a metacrawler to automate the site conversion and a “server-side include” program to facilitate the frequent in-house content updating process. Launched in October 1997, the VLSI Web site was voted number one in navigation among the top 50 Silicon Valley corporate Web sites in a survey by Shelley Taylor & Associates, an Internet consulting firm.