millie - 1:43 pm on Apr 16, 2004 (gmt 0)

A group of companies with an alarming lack of direction wishes to evolve their marketing strategy for each company / division in the Group and wish to use the Internet as part of their ongoing strategy.

Each company will have different branding. Each is in a distinct industry sector, with distinct target markets, but has some significant overlap with other companies in the group and some overlap with target audiences. The breadth of the Group's activities is huge and fairly confused.

My inclination is that they should have multiple web sites, individually branded and targeted but I have little experience of using the Internet for complex brand building.

Can you help? ... If they have multiple web sites, what's the best way to provide context for the Group - to have an umbrella site? Or is it possible to efficiently and neatly have multiple brands represented on one large site?