We are now working hard to launch a L’Oréal professionnel online brand community. We had a look around and we didn’t
find any similar social network around.
The magic of doing something new is that you loose your time convincing yourself that something similar should already exist somewhere.
I didn’t find yet. But I will keep on searching ;+)
There was the Muniz article in 2001. Then nothing during a long time.
And for the last months, some new articles on online brand communities.
We see some examples of companies trying to use their corporate websites and add blogs (what is the point?). We see here (in Czechia) some telecom companies creating communities around … Music (I have to come back to university and study strategy once for good)!!! But no brand creating a real dynamism around their brand in using social networks.
Even Harley Davidson’s one didn’t convince me. The unofficial community seems to be more dynamic than the official one.
Of course, there are the online brand communities that Hide there brand (Sun type on Java language).
So my question is: Is there a reason why brands do not play the game of online brand communities or hide their brand? Is infiltration in Myspace or facebook the only way?
Maybe we’ve been very lucky to meet the right person (sure, we were) who shared our vision of what the community can bring to the brand.
Now we are looking at the calendar. In one month, we will start to test the site.
Too much to do. No time to think.
I reckon this sentence of an American author: “the innocents didn’t know that it was impossible. So they did it…”
It is our second social network website. I didn’t remember for the first one that it is such a pain…
Posted by frankcisar 
