The Condescending Corporate Brand Page on Facebook has given us all the chance to chuckle at ourselves self-depreciatively in recent weeks. And while not every post appearing on there is necessarily ‘condescending’, the page has undoubtedly shone a light on an issue that’s seriously troubling the industry – why on earth do so many brands continue to talk to their Facebook fans and Twitter followers as if they’re a bunch of illiterate eight year olds?

OK, that’s a big overreaction – but this is a big problem, and it needs to be addressed before it spirals out of control. Read more on Why can’t we carry brand tone of voice into social spaces?…

London’s hosting of the 2012 Olympic Games caused an inevitable deluge of sport-related advertising – whether the brands in question were ‘Official Partners of the Games’ or not. Amidst the monsoon of press ads, all featuring desaturated shots of sportspeople looking a bit too serious, I noticed something: almost all of these sport-focused brands’ expensive creations signed off with nothing more than a hashtag as a call to action.

Whether we were being told to #makeitcount by Nike, #takethestage by Adidas, #winfromwithin by Gatorade or #witnessmyrevival by Lucozade (whose revival exactly?), it was clear that it was all about the hashtag. When this dawned on me, I was – despite working in digital advertising – rather taken aback. Read more on Is a hashtag enough of a call to action on a press ad?…