Posts

80. Emoticons making communication ineffective

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Emoticons are beautiful, they make conversations interesting and they prevent the talks from truing boring. But, they also limit the words and make communication ineffective. As a person who has been writing continuously for months now I just had to write about this. This is my dilemma, something that I truly believe in and have been trying to justify for a long time now. So in this blog, I will do just that, I will talk about how emoji or emoticons are making communication ineffective. We all talk on social media platforms, constant messages and quick conversations, and how many of us use emoticons in our messages? I am sure the answer would be almost all. Communication is all about giving words to our thoughts and opinions. It is a way of sending across our messages to make the person understand our intent and the meaning behind it. Any piece of communication fails when it communicates unintended meaning. Miscommunication leads to misunderstanding. Emoticons are like a...

79. United Breaks Guitars

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This is a classic case study on how a crisis can strike from the most unexpected situations. One fine day Dave Carroll and his band were travelling to Nebraska with United Airlines for a music concert. The flight landed on O’Hara, Chicago which was the connecting station. While in Chicago, Dave heard a passenger behind him say, ‘My God, they're throwing guitars out there’. He realised that the guitars might be his and he alerted a few employees who were very indifferent towards him. Upon landing in Nebraska his fears were confirmed when he saw his Taylor guitar broken. The incident made him very angry and rightfully so. This kind of service and indifferent attitude from a reputated airlines was completely unacceptable. He registered many complaints but received no positive response from the airlines. After this bad customer experience and their indifferent attitude towards David and his guitar, United Airlines continued as they were without any regrets. And they were...

78. #SheDrives by Nissan in Saudi Arabia

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On September 26, 2017, Saudi Arabia lifted its ban allowing women to drive which meant that women will be allowed to drive from June 2018. This reform was a historic move for women empowerment in the country. While many of the women in different parts of the world have been driving for ages, we might fail to understand the impact the decision had on the women in Saudi Arabia. Because of the strict laws and restriction on women this legal reform somehow liberated the women in some form. The decision was met with various reactions and the acceptance by the society was a little difficult. The women and their families experienced the earlier hesitation to be driving for the first time. The women majorly nervous and their families a little sceptical of if they would be able to do it. Jokes like ‘the decision will cause more accidents’ were floating around which impacted the already wavering confidence of women. Women needed that first push from their families to take their first step t...

77. A gamble with the logo for crisis communication

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This campaign was specifically designed for the crisis management of KFC. The brand is well known for its chicken worldwide. KFC chicken is its identity. In the UK KFC ran out of chicken and it turned into a huge crisis which blew out of proportion especially on social media. The brand had recently changed its delivery partner who tried to run the whole delivery operation through one channel. The strategy did not work and as a result, they were unable to deliver in all 900 KFC stores across the UK. Because of the unavailability of chicken they had to shut 600 of their stores and the remaining took chicken out of their menu for the time being. Now, this may seem like a small issue but, with the reputation of the brand and chicken being the core of its identity, this led to a huge crisis which created a buzz on social media called ‘KFC Chicken Crisis’. In this blog, we will explore how KFC handled the situation beautifully through their crisis communication and how they tu...

76. The downside of impulsive buying decisions

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Fast fashion is the inexpensive clothing produced by mass-market retailers on the basis of the latest trends. As the name suggests it makes the fashion industry fast-paced. The consumer buying behaviour has changed drastically over the years especially with the increasing digital usage and emerging e-commerce market. This makes shopping experience convenient and more appealing. Now, the consumers invest fewer resources such as time, energy, and with the help of fast fashion the prices are also very cheap. Traditionally in the clothes industry, there are four major seasons on the basis of which the clothes are produced. Luxury high-end brands follow this structure to launch clothing lines for different seasons. The investment in terms of resources, time, and money is very high for these luxury brands. Immediately after the launch, fast fashion brands such as H&M, Zara make knockoffs of the trending products and sell them at very cheap prices. The idea behind fast fash...

75. Challenging the stereotyped beauty standards

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Beauty, the word holds a different meaning for different eyes but our societal norms have forced us to standardise the definition of it into an almost unattainable projection. To break this beauty stereotype Dove launched a campaign called Real Beauty in 2004 with Edelman as their consulting firm. A research conducted by the brand showed that only 2% of women consider themselves beautiful.  The lack of confidence and the fear of judgement that women go through makes them think of themselves as average. Dove decided to design a campaign taking this as an insight to challenge the idealized depictions of beauty. The brand came up with a campaign that depicts the real beauty of women. This is a huge breakthrough. Amongst brands which chose celebrity actress with unattainable beauty standard, Dove came up with a new thought. This is a long duration campaign with an idea that became the part of the brand’s identity. Starting in 2004, the campaign thought has been carried...

74. Changing Perceptions- #LikeAGirl by Always

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#LikeAGirl is a campaign breaking stereotyped and demeaning connotation the slang ‘like a girl’ has. The campaign was done by menstrual hygiene products brand, Always produced by Procter & Gamble with MS&L as their consultancy. ‘Like a girl’ is a slang most commonly used to insult a person. Always took this insight and created a campaign out of it. Research conducted by the brand shows that during the age of puberty around 12 to 14, 50% of the girls feel paralysed by the fear of failure. This decreases their level of confidence and makes them feel incompetent to do certain things such as sports activities because they fear to do it ‘like a girl.’7 out of 10 girls feel they are not good at sports. This has less to do with their physical capability but rather is a result of societal expectations and emotional turmoil. Their self-confidence takes a big hit and half of them end of quitting sports. Always used these insights and decided to change people’s perception o...