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The problem with “human brands”
I had the pleasure last Thursday of attending Jeff Pulver’s BrandsConf at the 92nd Street Y in New York City: a virtually non-stop firehose of short-format sessions focused on brands, branding, and more specifically, “exploring humanization of brands” [emphasis mine].
While the conference was a little short on “how to,” topics ran the gamut from philosophical arguments about the importance of “human brands”, to the difficulties inherent in balancing personal and professional brands, to case studies about brands in social media (though in Sesame Street’s case, that was more about the “monsterization” of brands…), to examples of organizations that had effectively “humanized” their brand through the judicious, and clever, use of human-like characters or mascots.
As you might imagine, though, when you’ve got 50-something speakers in 40-something slots, it takes a little while to process all the information you’ve taken in… and then figure out what it actually means to the current state of branding.
And so: as much as BrandsConf — and even we here at Sametz Blackstone — have been talking about creating “human brands,” my biggest takeaway from BrandsConf is that “human branding” isn’t possible.
It’s simply not possible to make a non-human thing, human.
In fact, what you get when you aren’t honest with yourself about that reality are weird mash-ups of plainly corporate and almost-human behaviors (“Frankenbrands,” as my colleague Meg calls them) or, perhaps even worse, brands that appear human in most ways, but lack the soul, the quirks, and the randomness of actual humans — mostly because all the real humans that work for them have been forced into a narrowly defined mold of what a “human” is (in other words, “Brandroids” — also Meg’s term!).
More often than not, it seems, attempts to “humanize” a brand just lead to character-izing it instead.
The problem is, I think, that there are so many different ways to be human. Unless a company hires a veritable army of identical people (which is obviously not possible), or hires a bunch of different kinds of people, and then legislates their human behavior into a Borg-like cybernetic unit (the being otherwise known as Brandroid), it’s impossible for a company to act, react or respond the same way a human would in every situation.
Yes, companies are made up of people, and people are human, but that doesn’t make the behavior of companies human — nor, I daresay, should it.
Essentially, companies are ideas, at their core: ideas thought of by humans, maintained by humans, and supported and sustained by humans.
But, again, they’re not human. Why?
Because humans don’t scale. They can’t. The growth of your company, while undoubtedly positive, will put an unavoidable dent in your “humanness.” Which, in turn, means “human branding” can’t scale, either.
But — and here’s the real challenge — branding at a human scale does.
So the question changes: instead of wondering how to create a “human brand” (though we could stand for brands being a bit more “humane“…), we have to explore how we might create a human-scale brand.
What does that look like? What could it look like? What should it look like?
I’d love to hear your thoughts.
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Image credit: Swami Stream
Categories Branding, Outside the Square, Strategy and Management
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[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Amber Naslund, Frankie De Soto, Tamsen McMahon, DuncanRhys Liancourt, Reese Ben-Yaacov and others. Reese Ben-Yaacov said: The problem with "human brands" http://bit.ly/f9Nubc (great post via the @sametz blog) [...]
So is your hang-up the useless language that’s being implemented? Or is this more of a xenophobic reaction to the evolution of personal brand?
I guess I’m not understanding. Are you concerned that people are being used as cattle to parade the business under the guise of humanizing your brand? Or are you saying that brands can’t be personal? Or are you saying that someone can’t experience humanity digitally?
Because as I think of your comments, I think of my personal brand site. It’s humanizing to me, in a certain sense when I demonstrate things that are unique to humans, such as vulnerability or weakness. It’s also humanizing in the sense that it amplifies my strengths into new dimensions of reach and influence. Which tell people things about me that they didn’t know. But, I agree, it’s not human, nor does it’s not the vicar of my humanity; that’s silly. So, I guess I don’t understand what you’re saying and I really want to.
All good questions, Josh. My thoughts above are directed at the humanization of corporate or organizational brands. Personal brands (though that’s a sticky wicket as well…) are human, because they’re about, by, and for an actual person.
I’m reacting mostly to the false expectations raised by the idea that corporate brands can somehow be human, and/or operate like a person would. It’s not possible because you can’t turn an idea (a brand) into a human. Attempts to, by creating mascots or spokespeople, are avatars at best and caricatures at worst.
What I’m thinking on — and the idea is far from complete — is that instead of thinking “how can we make our organization more like something it can never be?” organizations’ time would be better spend thinking, “how can I think about my brand, and my branding efforts, in pieces small enough to connect with people, on their terms, and on their scale?”
Tamsen,
Such an interesting topic! Okay, thinking out loud here. A human-scale brand could look like:
-Instead of one corporate voice and tone in marketing and communications, a diverse and distributed voice.
-Many-to-many interactions and entry points for connection
-Sorry for the cliche term- micro-marketing instead of mass
-Strong internal communication of the vision or ideal
A few ideas for now. Thanks for taking this discussion in a unique direction.
Tim
I think you’re onto it, Tim. We’ve long been talking about brand systems, but usually that means the system of messages and graphic identity elements that play together to represent the brand.
I’m increasingly thinking that the term is (and has to be) considered in a much broader sense. Brands are both their unifying idea AND all the small interactions that make that idea real. Both feed each other, and both are equally necessary when considering how to build, refine, or renew one’s brand.
The challenge, in other words, is figuring out how to see the forest and the trees — and that neither is possible without the other.