If one side of the coin displays the sweet likeness of a compassionate Cinderella, the dark flip side is never far from the surface of the collective consciousness. That dark side might be best summarized as "Washington bureaucrats in bed with heartless bankers." No wonder that the Bank’s website has a page called "10 Things You Never Knew About the World Bank."

If brand managers may rue a lack of balance between functional and emotional benefits, scholars and other fact seekers will be impressed by the sheer size of its information banks.

WorldBank.org's design looks like a portal, with links scattered all over the place. A few thumbnails, pictures and other graphics enhance the experience. Keeping images sparse certainly helps the downloading speed for slow connections, but a little more indulgence here could contribute to enhancing the emotional appeal of the Bank. The few positive visual examples tend to fall short, such as the "Africa Gallery" that works like a slideshow presentation, conveying all the excitement of an edition of the BBC’s "Newsnight."

By comparison, the Red Cross' US website welcomes the visitor with pictures of smiling faces (usually children) and Doctors Without Borders is similarly full of human faces (no smiles though). Different missions perhaps, but the World Bank could benefit from learning how to immediately connect with viewers by seeing how these sites do it.

That lack of emotional connection aside, the World Bank provides an important service, and that service is conveyed well here. The more we surfed the World Bank's web presence, the more we were impressed with the extraordinary depth of data, facts and information.

Branding is a matter of focus as much as balance between functionalities and emotions. Offline, if the functionality is there (and according to many sources, the Bank’s actions are much improved over disastrous lending policies of the past), the World Bank brand still has a considerable unfilled potential: to make our hearts excited. What better place to start than most people’s first point of contact, the website.