This is just in: H-Farm Ventures which is an Italy based Venture firm and Times group in India have partnered to launch a unique social network for brands to engage with partners and consumers. BrandPotion.com as its named aims to be a platform for brands and brand fans. It provides tools for fans to interact with their favourite brands and create ads, content and even participate in contests run by these brands.
I signed up for the site and it provides a my page feature where in a user can upload his artwork, creatives and even video ads for any brand. Currently the only brands that have any presence on the site is the times brand. There have been earlier similar attempts at building a brand centric community and there are players likebrandadda.com and an old horse in mouthshut.com which is more of a brand/product review site. Brandpotion on the other hand is a community site for fans to create content for brands.
Challenges for Brand Potion
The challenge here is how many people religiously worship brands in India? A site like this can only have a sizable impact if it conducts regular contests and competition for brands and the same is supported by offline media prowess of Times group. Besides for the regular contests the create an ad for a your favourite brand will get popular but only with small segment from the young ad student community who would like to try their hand at being creative.
