Rahul Gandhi’s Twitter account has been set up finally. I say ‘set up’ because to me (going by the two tweets thus far) it seems to be a medium to broadcast his activities, views (maybe). Nothing wrong in that – several politicians, national leaders and other celebrities are known to have a social media team who tweet on their behalf. Many Twitter folks commented on the handle (@OfficeofRG) as being too aloof & distant, while…
Years ago, when I was working on a MNC account, the MD of the Indian operations (a Canadian) asked why his ads (for an FMCG brand) were not shown on sports channels during telecast of golf tournaments. When I told him that the numbers didn’t warrant it, he said, ‘but all my friends watch golf’. That’s the trouble with hanging out with only a particular kind of like-minded people and being completely out of touch…
‘People don’t want to have conversations with a beer brand’, said the incomparable @rameshsrivats at a Social Media Week in Bangalore last week. This was in the context of building brands in digital media in response to how brands have very poor ‘engagement rates’ and ‘conversations’ on Facebook. He also made the point about today being the age of brands ‘doing’ things rather than merely saying through advertising. Done well, it leads to people talking…
Of late, several Indian brands have created campaigns specifically on Twitter. An interesting aspect about it is such campaigns are finding favour from big, mainstream brands who traditionally rely largely on mass media for advertising. Social Media platforms like Twitter continue to find favour among media and retail brands for whom there is a natural fit. Also, Twitter campaigns have become the centrepiece of a marketing campaign and not just an add on. The ‘Tweets…
Two recent Social Media snafus were in the news for different reasons: one, where the CEO was seen as insensitive in his social media avatar and the other where an outsourced social media agency used inappropriate language on a brand’s Twitter feed. The former was a case of ‘in-house’ social media presence and the other was outsourced. Social media content for a brand is created either through specialist agencies who handle ORM and social media…