These days there are tons and tons of twitter profiles from brands. Most of them seem largely similar. Take, for instance, the ones I stumbled last week.
Levis India
Nope, I’m a staunch Lee fan when it comes to my denims. But, I was looking for some information on Levis’ range of sandals – I love them and was looking to buy another one. Stumbled upon a flash-heavy website that used flash in incredibly pointless ways – and of course, I couldn’t find a page in the website that talks about its footwear range. The tweets too are mighty mundane – almost like an assembly line. The tweet on April 17th says ‘25000 fans and counting…Thanks for all the support <link>‘. Of course, they mean their Facebook fan page and it has been posted from Facebook as well. Looks like Twitter is merely an after-thought.
Radio Indigo
PR pro Shane Jacob pointed me to Radio Indigo’s tweets, last week, via Twitter. It’s rather strange, but it looks it is being managed predominantly by an RJ who does the morning show, since most tweets are between 7am and 11:30am, with very occasional noon and evening tweets.
The point of such twitter pages is that they do not have any point! They do not force you to follow them immediately. They are not even functional, and with no stand-out personality whatsoever.
But, I did see a twitter page that had a distinct personality and I haven’t seen many in India like that.
And that belongs to Parle’s snack food brand, Hippo. So, how different is it?
- There is a unique persona behind every single tweet – the language and the tone are crafted specifically. And every tweet adheres to this tone.
- The jokes are consistently corny – again, part of the persona, I believe.
- The Hippo responds, again, in character.
This is the kind of twitter profile that eggs visitors to join after reading a few mandatory tweets, because it is completely unique! It stands out from the assembly line tweets from many other brands!
Fellow tweeter and ad-pro Lakshmipathy Bhat has already written about how Parle has crafted Hippo’s personality on television commercials. The website is barely functional with merely 3 links – a form to leave feedback (with absolutely no context!), a link to view the brilliant TVCs and a link to the twitter page. Hmmm…at least they seem to be getting it right on twitter!