Social branding, the new paradigm for business communication

Social Branding is a communication arena where – for the first time ever – companies are not positioned above their target market (in a “top down” model typical of classic advertising). On the contrary, they meet the market on a one-to-one basis, through personalised engagement and tailored storytelling of their needs and expectations. The phenomenon is as important as the advent of commercial television and its profound influence on the brand-communication market several decades ago.

This new frontier’s main media arenas are global platforms like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, Pinterest and, more recently, WhatsApp and Wechat, which draw in millions of people worldwide every day.

Whichever platform you want to be present on, for your Social Branding to be effective, your brand must operate simultaneously on 3 distinct levels:

• Technological, to ensure effective access to the language of the platforms and devices and to monitor/analyse the target group’s digital behaviour.
• Strategic-Marketing, to ensure that the project concept embodies the brand values and that the outcomes reflect the objectives.
• Creative, to ensure high-quality engagement and interaction with the user by producing tailored content and to increase the potential for the message to go viral.

In this arena, Reply group offers a wide range of solutions to support social-branding approaches. Each is handled by a dedicated company with considerable vertical expertise in the specific field:

• Bitmama, the group’s Creative Digital Agency, which plans, creates and coordinates social-oriented multimedia communication campaigns.
• Forge Reply, specialists in creating digital games for target-engagement operations
• Like Reply, specialists in designing and building apps for the social world.
• TamTamy, dedicated to developing and coordinating company Social-Networking systems.
• Triplesense Reply, from Germany, a leader in Mobile solutions for Social Networks.
• Avvio Reply, a British firm specialising in Social-oriented Communications for company workforces.

All Reply’s offerings can be integrated together as modules in a single brand-communication project, even if several companies are involved.