Brand Humanization: Who’s Doing Business with a Logo?

I’m sure you’ve heard it. Whether you believe it or not is a different story altogether, but piggy-backing on the prevelance of social influence marketing is the thought/saying, “consumers don’t want to work with logos – they want to work with people.”

A large number of brands have been very intentional in putting a name, face, personality and/or voice (which we were always supposed to have) behind their brand. Zappos has Tony. Apple has Jobs. GE had (and still has to most of us) Jack Welch. Comcast has….Frank?

Before we even had the option of using Twitter for a brand or developing a facebook fan page, certain companies recognized the need and capitalized on the opportunity to humanize their brand. I believe and hope I would have always argued in favor of this approach. But now, it’s getting painfully obvious. Most, including myself, would make the assumption that the face and personality of the brand should be the CEO (and if your CEO just isn’t that charismatic, you get a celebrity to do it for you).

In many cases, as I detailed above, this is the case, but the successful variations are ever-increasing. Tony Hsieh had a tremendous business model with a unique (and simple) philosophy to which he’s unwaveringly committed. But here’s the thing with Zappos: he’s not the only face of the brand – his whole company is. You can find every single Zappos employee on Twitter, tweeting about whatever their hearts desire. One would assume that there’s some level of governance, but it doesn’t come through that way. They come through as people who fit into a well-defined culture that’s about people.

Sweet Leaf Tea, out of Austin, TX, is another perfect example. CEO, Clayton Christopher, is all over Twitter. But he’s not tweeting behind a logo. I was recently in the audience for a panel with Sweet Leaf’s social media lead, April Riggs. April cites the unique culture at Sweet Leaf that allows for this model (Zappos, obviously, falls into this category of having a strong and well-defined company culture). I think she’s right. However, if we accept that consumers want to buy from and work with people, not logos, then shouldn’t brands adopt this model whether they have a unique culture or not?

Onto Frank. Frank has added a little bit of white paint to the bucket of evil jet black that Comcast has been for so long as it pertains to customer service. Use Twitter as a customer service tool! Frank proposed. Frank’s not a CEO. Frank’s not a celebrity. He’s a person, and that’s ultimately what we care about. We don’t want a logo, an automated recording or even a person reading a script. We want a person who will listen and intelligently respond. A person who may be a master in his or her industry but who also loves the Boston Red Sox.

We have a greater opportunity to humanize our brands now more than ever because we have the tools to do it. Edward Boches, of Mullen, has qualified consumer desires to work with people as a consumer trend worth blogging about, and in our interaction, he specifically makes the point to say that the CEO may not be the face of your brand. I agree with him. There may be a lot of faces behind your brand. You need to (1)trust them and (2)ensure they fit into and represent your culture (if they work for you, they should anyway). It’s yet another reason to become a student of these new tools and platforms.

As a student, I don’t have this all figured out yet. Here are some questions I’m still dwelling on:

1. Governance seems to be an obvious need for individuals representing a brand. But does that contradict what this is all about? Is governance trying to create a person that doesn’t really exist?

2. I recognize that developing a web ‘personality’ is key. If 20 people are representing my brand, am I disconnecting that personality?

Lessons Learned from Zappos

I’m a little late on this. The headline of the day that I should be discussing is Disney’s acquisition of Marvel, but my mind is still focused on the news of Amazon’s purchase of Zappos for a cool $800M. I’ve never made a secret of my admiration of what these guys have accomplished – Zappos and Crispin Porter + Bogusky references have become commonplace at my agency. Now this broke about a month ago and has certainly been heavily discussed, but I’m that guy at the end of every meeting who asks the question, “what are the takeaways?” or “what are our action items?” (you can imagine the look of disdain I get from my wife when I tell her we’ll have to “sync-up” later or take this conversation “offline” – oh what have I become?)

First, I think it’s important to mention, briefly, that Amazon purchased a brand for $800M. They didn’t need the fixed assets or the shipping relationships…they wanted a brand. An $800M brand. A brand defined by uncompromised customer service and a strong internal culture. What’s new about that? Is it really that simple? I believe the answer is yes. What makes Zappos unique is its unwavering commitment to these values. CEO Tony Hsieh put a stake in the ground. For some it pays off, in a BIG way. Here’s what I take away from Zappos’ success:

Obvious alert: Every interaction with your customers matters. If you’re not committed to ensuring every touchpoint is a positive one, you may not only lose a customer, you may find him writing a song about his negative experience with your brand that gets millions of views on YouTube.

You can win with the best tech or product; you can also win by actually caring. Zappos sells shoes. Shoes! But they’re passionate about their business model from the top down. My guess is they’ve passed on some brilliant people that weren’t necessarily passionate about what they were trying to do.

It’s important that the best want to work for you. I’ll be singing songs about the importance of internal culture when I retire. These guys got that and were committed to implementing it.

A strong internal culture is a pre-condition to a true customer service commitment. This one is my favorite. I’ve seen it reaffirmed over and over again, and Zappos is just the current poster child. Starbucks is another huge brand that has always been committed to this idea. How many times have you been shocked at how much those baristas seem to love their job? It’s not because they went through a class teaching them how to smile and interact when they were hired. It’s because Starbucks has created a culture those baristas are proud to be a part of (all employees referred to as “partners”, benefits for part-time, etc.). I’m not going to do the search, but I’ll venture to say there aren’t many profiles on Monster or CareerBuilder that show current employment by Zappos.

Great investments are often immeasurable. Hold back the verbal assaults digital marketers; this just isn’t going to change.

Good people > good processes…EVERYTIME.

Great leaders have to be willing to commit and make decisions consistent with that commitment. Enough said.

This is obvious but rarely emphasized:

Strong culture leads to happy employees who fit into that culture leads to higher productivity, better customer service and better ideas. Not a bad end result.

Am I overstating? Not taking enough variables into account? Being idealistic?