Part 3 of Loic Moisand’s presentation of the 4 Types of Brandsbroken down according to their social profiles focuses on:
The Exciting Brand
The exciting brand is one that everyone seems to be talking about online or that inspires conversation, online and offline. Think of the iPod (or anything Apple for that mater), video games, or the latest sneakers in style. They’re not boring and they’re not functional because they speak to us beyond their actual usages. It’s the brand image that speaks to us and makes many people want to speak about them with others.
“Exciting brands” appeal to our desires of association and community
Certain products that fall under this category appeal to our sense of association or community. Video games, for example, appeal to players’ sense of belonging to a group of experts that discuss their techniques, tips, and tricks. Forums are especially ripe for conversation as they allow web users to leave their mark for future visitors to find. Users can gain a certain type of notoriety in a given forum or in multiple forums as they become known for their expertise.
“Exciting brands” have high volumes of buzz and often have certain sentiments attached
Not only are there people talking about these brands, but people – lots of people – are responding. A typical thread in a forum has multiple comments, blog posts about the latest Chanel bag garners far more comments than any mainstream news blog, and everyone and their brother has posted something about the iPod 4. If we dig further into the conversations using a manual sentiment analysis, we’ve seen that there are far fewer “neutral” comments for exciting brands than there are for functional or boring brands.
People are passionate about these products and attach this passion – be it love or hate – to them in their conversations online.
