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Tupperware Parties: Early Forms of Social Networking

by Sheela Philomena on May 14 2011 2:36 PM

 Tupperware Parties: Early Forms of Social Networking
Parties hosted by housewives during the 1950s and 1960s across the world to sell their products were the early forms of social networking before Facebook and Twitter, claims Tupperware company.
"Facebook represents the same type of social get-together with like-minded friends as a Tupperware party, except that it's not in someone's actual home, but a virtual host-home instead," the Daily Mail quoted Roben Allong, market research consultant at brand consultancy and trend forecasters Reality Check Inc. as saying.

Earl S. Tupper, a former landscape gardener from New Hampshire, who was forced out of business during the Great Depression of the 1930s and took a job with the DuPont Chemical Company, founded Tupperware Brands.

In 1946, he patented the famous 'burping seal', the means of keeping containers airtight that was for decades the most famous aspect of the Tupperware brand.

The company's success exploded in the 1950s thanks to its army of self-employed female hosts, who sold the products directly to their friends and neighbors through parties or 'jubilees'.

The word-of-mouth model of direct sales and marketing developed by Tupperware relied upon trusted relationships between women.

Now the 65 year-old brand is embracing the modern-day equivalent, launching an ambitious social media strategy to 'coolify' the company's image.

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The Tupperware Brands Corporation will launche a new Facebook page and Twitter handle on Thursday in a bid to increase brand awareness among a younger generation who may have no relationship with the company and its kitchenware containers with their famous 'burping seal'.

They've drafted in former American Idol winner, 29 year-old Kelly Clarkson, as one of the faces of the new strategy, who will feature in online videos for the campaign, which carries the tagline 'chain of confidence'.

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"It is a very smart move on the part of Tupperware to go back to its roots in a sense, although those roots have been updated for a digital age," said Allong.

Source-ANI


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