Are brands human?

Wendy had some smart things to say in her comment on my recent post, Brand Humanity.

...what we are both trying to accomplish is getting marketing to focus on identity statements and using the product to support her (the customer) in her various identities throughout the day. The consumer is human not the brand. The brand enhances her life. The brand fits her contextualized needs and neurally manages her life for her.

I agree with much of what she says... yet I believe that brands are, in fact, perceived as human. Or can be, anyway. The obvious examples are service firms, retailers, business-to-business... any business that has a human-to-human touchpoint. Customers project the traits of those employees onto the brand. Employees not only make up the company, each one IS the company. It's like a hologram where "the part is not only contained within the Whole; the Whole is contained in every part, only in lower resolution." (taken from this article)

So for example, my perception of the CompUSA brand was "incompetent and lacked initiative" based on my interactions with their computer repair department. I vowed to never shop there again. My perception was then salvaged (somewhat)  by interaction with an incredibly service-oriented woman who worked at the front counter, took initiative and resolved my issues. We all can tell stories about how a single individual not only represented a large corporation, but became that company in our minds. Bloggers like Robert Scoble are putting a likeable face on an often unlikeable brand. It's the associative power of our minds.   

But let's go beyond the obvious for a moment. In customer research, a common question is, "If this brand were a person, who would it be?" Customers are almost always able to personify the brand with such detail that you could clearly visualize him or her. All the way down to what car they'd drive, or how they'd interact with other brands at a party. And the interesting thing is, there's usually pretty good consensus in the group in personifying known brands.

So even for brands where there is no direct human interaction, we still tend to assign human qualities. Why? Because our choice of brands are a reflection of ourselves. If we like a brand it's because it has positive personality traits that we either have or want to have. Apple is cool. BMW is sophisticated and sporty. Unlikeable brands have unlikeable traits: Microsoft is bossy and arrogant, but we're stuck with them like a bad marriage. In a recent research study, Tivo customers were concerned about what their Tivo box thought of them based on their TV viewing habits, and would actively program "nice" shows that they didn't plan on watching  (if someone knows where I read that, please include a link in the comments!)

Companies need to think very carefully when outsourcing a human interaction, because it's the interactions that define the brand. And not just the obvious interaction like a call center; we interact with products as well. Be very careful in who is "speaking" to customers on your brand's behalf. As I mentioned in Brand Humanity: how do you want the brand to 'show up" to customers? Those values need to shine through in every customer touchpoint, in every product shipped.

Comments

[Tom Asacker]

Great posts and comments. Thank you. I'm glad to see the positioning "law" exposed.

Wendy and Stefan, my liking both of you (via your posts) answers - in part - the question about what a brand is. I like you (your brand) because you validate my view regarding this small part of my world branding/marketing). I also like movies, newspapers, etc. that do the same (although I don't personify those media). But a brand is more than "liking," even in a self-reflective kind of way. A brand is also an expectation of a feeling that someone is willing to pay a premium for or go out of one's way to purchase.

It is true that in the world of media, which blogs are quickly becoming (witness the flourishing Google ads), being a brand that someone is willing to watch, listen to, etc. - whether one pays for it or not - is also a means to profitable growth. Because others will be willing to pay for access to that audience. But I suppose that that's a different subject for a different blog. ;)

P.S. Who are you Wendy? Why incognito? ;)

[Stefan]

You wrote that "even for brands where there is no direct human interaction, we still tend to assign human qualities... because our choice of brands are a reflection of ourselves."

I'd say that the tendency to assign human qualities has a much simpler primary cause that eventually leads to that 'reflection of ourselves'. That is our tendency to personify everything around us, particularly things that have to do, even remotely, with other humans or human activities. Our brains are better fitted to deal with and understand other members of our species and their actions. With personification, we use pre-defined models that exist in our brain, thus allowing ourselves to work with simplified representations of reality around us. It's a natural, basic process that is indicative of superior (read human-like) intelligence.

So I'd say your causal chain should look like this:
1. we humans tend to simplify representation of our environment, hence 2. we tend to use pre-existing mental models for this purpose, hence, 3. in dealing with non-personal human-related matters, we tend to employ models we use for human individuals, hence, if you like, 4. in choosing brands (or whenever we have the opportunity to make a choice that relates to human matters), we employ parts of such models that we feel best match us and, therefore, these choices reflect our selves, real or desired.

[Wendy]

We're both in agreement that human touch is important, but I believe marketing and brands are conduits for people, conduits for their emotional futures. See, I believe brands are their to enhance a consumer's life and to enable her to feel however she needs to feel in her contextualized moment; she determines the feeling and she determines the moment. The brand has to understand her contextualized identities and the humans "servicing" her needs to understand her in this respect too. We all need to understand our emotions and our intellect.

Think of it this way, that hologram you mention, that is the consumer's emotional future and it is the brand's job to transition the consumer to it, transition her from one emotional place to another [the psychological need is just the layer above the emotional need]. Brands are conduits to helping consumers love themselves and fall in love with everyday life. Brands are their to awake OUR senses, make US feel alive, we are our own lovemarks.