Vocal Brands

Being Vocal! Welcome to Brand 2.0 Era

Once upon a time the branding ecosystem was in complete isolation in India. Wall Painted ads, Print Ads & Radio jingles were among few means of brand voice. Consumer had absolutely zero say in brand affairs. This was the time when brands were just “products” or “commodities”. Products were promoted through celebrity endorsements without analysing consumer’s liking and desire. Even, a consumer hardly cares about any brand value. People usually prefer products with repeated Ads or those with big celebrities’ names. This era rests for almost two decades.  

     

Then, comes the second phase of Brand evolution where with the growth of market & awareness among consumers, brands became partial interactive. 

   

This phase was not natural but a compulsion for the brands to stay competitive in the market. Here, brands started caring for consumer thoughts through the introduction of helplines, customer care cells, grievance handling through emails etc. but the best was yet to come.

With the emergence of internet, the sphere of branding moves to a new threshold where it has integrated consumer reviews & feedback system in a much wider & open space. Social media adds yet another but most powerful dimension to the journey of branding called as “engagement”. Now, brands are more caring, engaging & interactive with their consumers.

 

This is the era when marketing guru termed a consumer as a “king” having immense power to even kill a brand. The market competition was high as ever (termed as “cut throat”). Also, the brands were leaving no stone un-turned to penetrate consumer base of their competitors.

But here comes the big one with brands being vocal not just with their customers but with other brands as well that too in public domain. Recently, social media especially micro blogging site Twitter was the playground for some famous brands. Take a look in some of the major events happened recently

Amazon's Aur Dikhao !  When ecommerce giant Amazon while running its campaign called #AurDikhao tried to zoom out the restaurant discovery platform Zomato & see what happened then

    

L  

        Love in the Twitter – The cupid event happened between another India based ecommerce platform Snapdeal & its recent acquiesce Mobile recharge website Freecharge 

     

K        Knock Knock Amazon inside – The historic conversation occurred when some Reddit India user posted an image with Amazon carton inside Flipkart Bengaluru Office and here is the discussion

      

 

          So, with the evolution of Social Media & increasing Internet penetration , we can expect more such funny & engaging spat among the brands, may be just for branding purpose.