The Human Brand

The human brandBranding people, humanizing brands

Karen Russell, University of Georgia

The Human Brand

• The Human Brand: How We Relate to People, Products and Companies

• By Chris Malone and Susan T. Fiske

The Human Brand

Susan Fiske: Eugene Higgins Professor of Psychology and Public Affairs at Princeton

Chris Malone: marketing consultant; worked with Coke, NBA, Procter & Gamble

How we judge others

Warmth

• Kind, friendly, good-natured

• Sincere, honest, moral, trustworthy

• Helpful, tolerant, fair, generous, understanding

• INTENTIONS

Competence

• Efficient, capable, skillful, clever, knowledgeable

• Confidence, appearance of ability to carry out their work

• ABILITY

Warmth & competence

Brands

BP

USPS Hershey’s

Rolex

Example: SWA

• After 9/11, the U.S. airline industry was in a dire situation

• No one wanted to fly

Southwest Airlines

• Three key decisions• No layoffs• No pay cuts• No-hassle refunds for any customer who wanted one

Other airlines

• Combined, shed 160,000 employees in the 10 years following 9/11• Laid employees off because people weren’t flying• Trying to balance supply and demand

• Took 10 years to return to year 2000 level of passengers travelling by air

Results

Southwest

• In 2003 earned more than all other airlines combined

• Best-performing stock• Fortune “Most Admired”

lists for years

“Big” airlines

• More planes• More routes• More revenue (less profit)• More passengers (if you

include overseas)

A question of loyalty

• “As anyone who has been frustrated with the service provided by their wireless carrier, cable company, or the dominant airline at their nearest airport can attest, our continued purchases are typically not a sign of our loyalty. Rather, they are more often a sign that we are essentially being held hostage…”

Repeat patronage does NOT equal loyalty

A comparison

Cheap grocery store

• You have a loyalty card • You are rewarded for

shopping there• You don’t enjoy shopping

there• You have “loyalty” cards

to multiple stores

Trader Joe’s

• They don’t offer loyalty cards

• You like shopping there, even if it costs more

• You are loyal without a loyalty program

The principle of worthy intentions

• A relationship-building strategy that involves attracting and keeping customers by consistently putting their best interests ahead of those of the company or brand

Loyalty formula

• “The best time to win customer loyalty is when you make a mistake.”

• IBM executive quoted by Arthur Fink

Mess up + fix it with good intentions = most loyal customer

Trust

We are much more predisposed to trust other people than we realize: our general expectation is to expect good things from someone until proven otherwise

Types of trust

Conditional

• If we believe the partner is self-interested (like a company) we behave with cautious trust, thinking harder about cost/benefit

• Not surprised if betrayed

Unconditional

• When we believe the partner has worthy intentions, our brains don’t have to think as hard

• But betrayal has a much higher price

Example: L.L. Bean

Lifetime guarantee on everything they sell

We think they deserve to be successful

Example: Chobani

Shared moral and cultural values = Choboniacs

Levels of loyalty

Compliance: we go along with a requirement

We buy Domino’s pizza because it’s cheap

Levels of loyalty

Identification: we feel inspired by the company

We buy Domino’s because the CEO admitted it used to be bad and we identify with his brave statement

http://youtu.be/AH5R56jILag

Levels of loyalty

• Internalization: we share the company’s values• We buy Domino’s because it exemplifies respect and

integrity

The Groupon effect

Based on what you know so far, how would a Groupon deal affect LOYAL CUSTOMERS, COUPON USERS, EMPLOYEES?

Drag picture to placeholder or click icon to add

ENTER THE INTERNETHow do warmth and competence work online?

Store vs. online

• Study of retailers: Sears, Walmart, Best Buy, Macy’s• Pattern: customers ranked each brand as more competent

than warm, but their websites were rated even more competent than warm than their stores

• Online stores seem impersonal, even if efficient and convenient

• Retail stores have more opportunities to demonstrate warmth (people, conversations, worthy intentions)

And then there’s Zappos

• Research on Zappos proves that websites aren’t automatically lacking in warmth

• Zappos actually ranked HIGHER in warmth than in competence, even though it has no physical stores

• A company can demonstrate warmth through policies, practices, and website functionality

Zappos customer loyalty team

• Encourages customers to call, email or chat

• Highly trained to “Deliver the wow experience”

• Prices are the same as retail

Contrast: Amazon

• Earns high scores for competence• Wins loyalty through low prices, speed and ease• There is no human interaction

CEOs can *be* the warmth

“…the mobile, social, and digital age leaves no place for CEOs to hide.”

CEOs in advertising

• AceMetrix research shows that good ads featuring CEOs out-perform other ads in effectiveness

• The most effective CEO ads deliver messages that are “direct, trust inspiring, communicate a no-nonsense style” and show the CEO to be “genuine and authentic”

Example: John Schnatter

http://youtu.be/PprzM__4nlc

The problem

• Most CEOs are hired to make money, not to build loyal, long-term relationships with their customers

• People who lack warmth and worthy intentions are incompetent to lead in a new, transparent century

Humanizing brands

Brand stories – “creation myths” (how and why the organization formed in the first place)

Parasocial relationships

• When people start to think they “know” someone they’ve never met

• Horton & Wohl (1956) "Mass Communication and Para-social Interaction: Observations on Intimacy at a Distance,” Psychiatry

• One-sided relationships

Brands the world likes

• http://www.apcoinsight.com/methodologies/tools/el-model.aspx#.UuPltP30BlA