Back in the nineties, online communities organically grew around gaming, particularly around the gaming consoles from Sega, Nintendo and Sony. Users would spend hours discussing new games, hacks and tricks and gameplay for the most popular games of the day. Right from those days of Bulletin Board Services (BBS), Usenet newsgroups and IRC, consumer brands in general and Internet companies…
This is the first of a multi-part series on the relationships between brands and online communities. It’s nearing the end of September 2014 and many of you would have already secured, or at least requested for an invitation to join Ello, the all new Facebook-replacement social network that counts ad-free and privacy as its USPs….
Do all brands have a personality? Do all of them need one? A brand personality is simply a set of human characteristics associated with a brand – think Virgin’s fun and irreverent personality vs British Airways’ warm, comforting albeit a staid one, or Johnson & Johnson as a nurturing and caring brand vs Harley Davidson’s rugged one….
Chinese phone company Xiaomi recently sold a few thousands of phones to eager Indian buyers in a matter of seconds. Xiaomi hosted two online sales in two weeks on partner Flipkart.com’s website; and saw over 100,000 people register for the sale. Remember, this is a brand that is new to India, alien to most India-based…
Many companies consider their corporate social responsibility (CSR) programs as a powerful means of enhancing their corporate image. A few of them even ask their PR or advertising agencies to recommend ideas for CSR activities or projects that can be, well, marketed well. However, this approach inevitably skews the choice of potential CSR projects to a handful…
Electric-car maker Tesla recently posted a new video commercial on its Facebook, Twitter and Instagram accounts. Tesla’s CEO Elon Musk even raved about it on his Twitter feed. What is the big deal here? That the one-minute video is a spec commercial produced by a bunch of recent college graduates, who say they are ‘passionate…