Online Branding from Hybrid Ads to Corporate Twittering

The book chapter illustrates how advertising genres have undergone major changes that reflect later trends in consumers and cultures of consumption, among them the adoption of social networks in corporate communication. The ways in which Twitter has soon become a key tool for a company’s ubiquitous branding strategy could not be better illustrated than by analyzing its multiple functions in the case of a major brand such as Coca-Cola. New text types like tweets do not supersede but rather co-exist side by side with previous advertising genres, borrowing from them and enhancing their mutual role, while maintaining their connoting features. Though microblogging may appear constraining, the oversimplification of linguistic features and rhetorical strategies it requires may turn into a communicative advantage. Whether under the shape of status updates, replies or retweets, tweets are shown to be highly effective in customizing promotional messages that are richly in tune with the underlying corporate ideology.