Humanising your brand.

This has been a much debated and researched topic. When does a corporate decide to take the next level at engaging in a human manner with their audiences? Before social media, people had to voice their inquiries/complaints either by phone, mail, email or through a company website. What you would be getting back was a generic, corporate response that showed no unique human emotion that related to the brand. Uniformity is good, I believe. Every inquiry gets a response and is shown the same level of acknowledgement without discrimination. That is the supposed theory behind school uniforms, where each student is treated equally and not judged by physical appearances. 

As a consumer, how do you prefer a brand/company to respond back to your feedback? I personally prefer a customised and emotive response- but I understand that they go through thousands of emails a day. That's where social media comes in to play. This innovative movement has changed the way how brands communicate and market their products/services. It is one of the best tools for obtaining insights and listening to consumers feedback directly.

There appears to be 3 types of moderating styles I have noticed from brand pages.

1. The Corporate

These pages are not so much different from a standard response you may get from filling in a contact form on the company website. They reply back with "copy and paste" or templated responses and lack any emotive responses.


2. The Neglect-or

These brands don't bother to reply to the majority of their queries or engage with fans. This is quite common with International corporate giants such as McDonalds (who disabled their wall) and Dr Pepper.


3. One of the bros

These pages have successfully engaged with their fans, and make sure it is a priority to respond to the majority of comments on a human level. You may find this more commonly in smaller businesses who have time to actively engage with their audience.

Humans crave communication amongst other human beings. They don't want to communicate with corporate entity who doesn't share the same idiom/slang/conversational language as the common person. Some people out their have too much time on their hands and all they want to do is to talk to someone. If you actively engage with your fans, chances are they will regularly engage with your brand and talk to your brand as if they were a living entity. Twitter is a very good example of where Tweeters converse with brands on a human level.

So what is my opinion on humanising brands? I say yes- social media platforms enable us to do so, so why not jump at the opportunity to do it?

- Enna