Why brands ought to humanise
Some of the best brands are so described because they make you feel…human.
Early last year, I recommended a financial service to some of my friends who were looking to improve their finances. As a social experiment, I asked them a few months later what they liked the most about the service.
Their answers varied from “the simplicity of the process” to “the transparency of the service”. But the one that stood out the most to me was from a friend I met during my service year.
“for me, it is the fact that they make an effort to be human. No pressure, they just want your finances to be better and for you to use their product/service. The language, the tone, the entire idea of making their communication so personal makes me fall in love with them more and more”.
When was the last time a brand made you feel its pain and struggles? Or made you feel its joy and satisfaction? When was the last time you engaged a brand in a business transaction and felt satisfied with how they made you feel during the process?
Reflect on the answer and you’ll realize the startling reality of what “branding” is in today’s digital world — a whirlpool of content and more content created for machines and forced into the faces of human audiences.
There are very few brands today who really give their time and effort towards humanising their brand. Of course, there are brands who run social campaigns on how they care about the environment or about their people or the people who they create for, etc. But these do not imply that a brand is human.
In fact, they often detract from the idea of humanising your brand and contribute only to the mechanical nature of digital content.
When brands start to humanise, they generally start from the way they perceive their users or customers. From understanding the processes of their business that are alien or mechanical to their users/customers, they can commence on the journey of building a more humane brand. And they should.
Whether you run a small business or head a corporate enterprise, this is something you should think about when thinking about your brand this year.
To be fair, people will still be willing to do business with you whether or not your brand is humanised, however, they’d only do it for as long as it takes a more human competition to rise up.
In 2021, your brand strategy should consider the human that makes your business what it is.
