Express' approach to online is all about persuading the audience to come into the store. To that end, they have embraced the online changing room Expressfashion.com as a way to give their products a more tangible life and allow women to visualize themselves in Express clothing in an effort to motivate the next step in the buying process.

Moving this window to the desktop delivers the crucial ingredients of utility and community the web can't provide. Buttons to "e-mail a friend" and "print" hint at what Express hopes women will do to close the loop and further the decision-making process.

On the desktop, this becomes viral very quickly. Users can show each other clothing combinations in real time (think of a split-screen view of the outfits with a chat window). Not only does this engage the community decision-making women prefer for new purchases, it lives beyond that, allowing users to create outfits from past purchases and share those ideas with friends for feedback.

This engaging feature is logistically impractical on the web. But in the desktop space, where people are using their own hard drives for storage, any images of past purchases -- as well as pictures of items in their own closet -- can be saved (privately, I might add) without touching the corporate web server.

I can easily imagine one woman pinging another with a message like, "Do you think this is too dressed-up for that martini lounge?" The other woman quickly scrolls the list of available tops, changes it on the model (which could easily be a picture of themselves uploaded) and chats back, "Wear this top instead. It looks great on you!" The concept works for the all-important brand-building teen demographic as well, so outfits can be coordinated and agreed upon before the next school day.

While the choices available in the desktop space can seem at the same time overwhelming and tangential to consumer brand marketing, in reality it is neither. The desktop is indeed a crucial space for consumer brands vying for utility in the everyday lives of their audience. Many consumer brands have already built much of the content for these desktop applications. Now is the time to allow that creative work to live to its full potential, delivering the reach/frequency combination consumer brand promotion websites may never achieve.