Brand people are woeful at defining what we're (actually) talking about

* Alistair Herbert is the founder of Linguabrand, a verbal identity management company that helps brands use words. He tweets here

“Brands need to put the same effort into creating a unique ‘tone of voice’ for the language used in call centres and on bills as they do for advertising campaigns or risk creating a disconnect that could hit sales.”

There’s a lot of trumpeting tone of voice at the moment, like the above quote from Marketing Week. But without some cold facts this sounds like hot air. Continue reading

Brand people are woeful at defining that we’re (actually) talking about

* Alistair Herbert is the founder of Linguabrand, a verbal identity management company that helps brands use words. He tweets here

“Brands need to put the same effort into creating a unique ‘tone of voice’ for the language used in call centres and on bills as they do for advertising campaigns or risk creating a disconnect that could hit sales.”

There’s a lot of trumpeting tone of voice at the moment, like the above quote from Marketing Week. But without some cold facts this sounds like hot air. Continue reading

The Farcebook IPO was a bad dream, but is it really a nightmare for Twitter?

Well, well, well, what an utter f*ck-up that was. The big, bad Facebook bubble burst in investors’ faces and now newlywed Mark Zuckerberg is being sued as well as the NASDAQ exchange.

At least that’s the widely held view. But it should be remembered that the point of an IPO is to raise money. Facebook did that, it raised $16 billion whatever the current market cap of the company. Continue reading

In social media everybody could hear you scream… not any longer

Man talking into shoeIt was when the Library of Congress in the US announced two years ago that it would archive every single tweet that people became serious about social media… and more to the point their data.

The idea of all that data being saved made many people more reticent when posting their 140 characters on Twitter. It seemed inconceivable that all that information could be stored, as much as 160 characters on SMS could similarly be saved via those operators that are as avuncular as Uncle Joe Stalin. Continue reading

Tottenham Court Road 'siege' shows how Twitter can hinder, not help, rolling news

Twitter was at the forefront of another breaking news story this week as Michael Green sparked a bombscare and a hostage crisis in Tottenham Court Road, London. As news broke, the phrase ‘Tottenham Court Road’ was quickly trending, while the earliest reports didn’t have the details.

Some tweets reported a bombscare evacuation, some said a man was holding hostages in Starbucks. In fact a disgruntled man had entered the office of Advantage HGV – a driver training company – to accost (and presumably threaten) one specific woman. Continue reading