The web's still spinning

Brands are storming the Internet for bloggers, even as new portals take shape online.

Now that brand blogs and brand portals are storming the web again, the online scene is beginning to attain some much-needed clarity. "Indian companies are eager to leverage the Internet," says Chhaya Brian Carvalho, managing director and CEO, BC Web Wise, a web design outfit that has worked for ITC, Hindustan Lever, Kellogg and other clients.

The current craze is to set up a special brand portal that grants space to bloggers to enrich the website with "logs" of their thoughts and emotions, often resulting in criss-crossing links and conversations between dozens of different people.

Typically, it takes very little time for bloggers to form cosy little clubs of common interests. "Interactivity and a focus on communities is changing the way people view and know websites," observes Carvalho.

Sunsilk, Nokia and Axe are just some of the brands that are trying to create such online communities that, they hope, will be positively disposed towards them as consumers too. Of course, each brand has a theme that helps reinforce its message.

Nokia's M-Blog, for example, maximises the use of mobile blogging via its own multimedia handsets. At just a few clicks, it allows you to post pictures shot by your phone, and invite all your friends to visit.

Hindustan Lever's portals, meanwhile, seem to focus thematic attention on the specific personal care needs that the brands address. Take Sunsilk, its haircare brand.

It once ran a site called sunsilknaturals.com. But sunsilkgangofgirls.com, its latest online campaign devised with BC Web Wise, is far bolder in engaging young women.

It unabashedly tries to do for women what Unilever's Axeland campaign did for men: serve as a platform to discuss the laws of attraction, with the relevance of the brand promise kept hovering around the site. Sunsilk's website offers such utilities as a makeover machine and gang blogs, and claims some 1.5 lakh members already.

Axe's online ideas have proved successful too. People visiting a fictional cyber island of never-ending bliss called Axeland can drop in to film studios, souvenir shops or even the Catfight Alley. Says Carvalho, "While old interaction techniques could get over in a matter of seconds, an online experience can last longer and help cultivate a better bond with the customer."

For brands addressing specialised needs, websites make exceptional sense. Take ItchGuard, an itch-relief cream. Its website, created by Tribal DDB India, has been an award-winner. It centres round the ailment that the ointment soothes "" the itch.

And it's done in a manner that wouldn't be possible offline. "Our role," says R Lakshminarayanan, CEO, Mudra Marketing Services, "is to ensure that brands have a unique presence online." Indeed, online campaigns work best where offline media are inadequate.