The humanisation of brands
With a little help from Gary Vaynerchuk, the current opening slide in my keynotes and masterclasses outlines the fundamental impact social has had on brands (this includes charities, local authorities, schools, companies, even individuals) :
It offers us all (as MediaSnackers is a brand also) an opportunity to be human again.
Check out this great ad from Panasonic event highlighting the fact that “websites can’t tweet” :
Another example of this humanising idea is something we call ‘hardwiring conversation’ (into product lines or even ads) :
Instead of inviting people to the main Barclaycard site they steer them to their Facebook page, creating a chance to connect on a more personal level with prospective customers.
Then there’s Vitamin Water, which is the first we’ve seen of an actual product running with a Facebook logo on it (which is used instead of website) :
This water brand even used the online Facebook community to develop and create a new flavour called Connect.
And to finally nail the point home, this nice little screencast from Mashable chaps, illustrates how to use Twitters’ advanced search (check out how we used it to make finding customers/clients/audiences easy)—another glimpse on how the social web is being driven by content created by individual people :
Many leaders would agree that the most valuable asset in any organisation / company is the people. Not any of its products or processes. It’s communication policies or so called social media strategies. Allowing staff to take front and centre stage is a powerful step towards leveraging social media and is one of the major barriers of its adoption to date.
We already know that social media has killed B2B due to its peer-to-peer nature, this humanisation idea is broader manifestation of that concept.
Any other examples out there of brands being human through social media? Or hardwiring conversation into the products / services? Maybe you disagree… leave a comment and prove us wrong.