Building online communities: Questions to ask before creating one

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 […]

Building new communities: overcoming the network effect

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. […]

The point of brand personality

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. […]

Why CSR does not work for marketing

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 […]

Going viral the right way

As brand marketers continue to increase their digital marketing spends relative to the conventional media, their primary goal is to generate virality, buzz or word of mouth online – whether stated or otherwise. Digital marketing effectiveness is often measured by the number of people who viewed a brand’s communication (a video, website or a social […]