Social Media and the human innovationDeepak Goal, Drizzln

The Essence

Deepak shared with us his thoughts and insights on ‘Humanising Brands’. The approach is informed by the insight that we humans form first impressions based on two questions:

1. What are the intentions of the person towards me (friendly / hostile), referred to as perceived warmth

2. What is the likelihood the person can execute these intentions, referred to as perceived competence.

We know that these assessments happen very quickly (it takes about 7 seconds), very accurately, and that they are driven by the ‘old’ part of our brain. After this initial assessment we find out more about people’s values and what they stand for through conversations, stories, experiences, and we form relationships.

For brands, products, organisations we can use Social Media and the internet to immolate this kind of process, and create similar relationships, based on perceived warmth and competence.

Deepak’s Presentation

Social Media enable communication and interaction in different ways, somewhat more direct and personal. What Deepak has noticed, and is working on, is that Social Media can help humanise interactions between individuals and organisations. During his presentation he shared some examples of innovative uses of new technologies and Social Media, as well as explained how to recognise and influence a ‘human brand’.

To set the scene and illustrate what you can do if you use Social Media and new technologies imaginatively, Deepak started us off with an amazing video on a rather different way to pay for your cinema visit: paying per laugh! You have read quite right, and if you don’t believe it have a look at the video on Vimeo!31 (come on, it is really cool, and takes only about 2 minutes…)

This is just one example on how Social Media can support innovation; other areas where they come into play are,

• The development of new and improvement of existing products - by looking at emerging trends, what is being talked about, what is being criticised about existing products and services etc.

• Crowd sourcing ideas - companies such as Statoil have set up dedicated platforms to invite ‘outsiders’ to contribute to their innovation process32

• Setting up innovative CRM channels33

• Intra organisation collaboration - for example via Yammer

From Wikipedia (11.09.14):Yammer is used for private communication within organizations and is an example of enterprise social software. The tool was originally developed as an internal communication system for the genealogy website Geni. Access to a Yammer network is determined by a user's Internet domain so that only individuals with appropriate email addresses may join their respective networks.

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31 http://vimeo.com/97708026

32 See http://innovate.statoil.com/challenges/Pages/default.aspx

33 I found some tips on how to use Social Media in the context in CIO‘s online magazine - you can find them in Appendix XX.

So there is a lot that can be can be done with Social Media in the context of innovation. What Deepak and his company are much more interested in thought, is, as he put is, “the softer side of what makes social media special, and a perfect ground for innovation’.

So Deepak introduced us to Joshi, a cuddly giraffe-blanket. Joshi belongs to the 4-year old son of a chap called Chris Hurn.34 After returning home from a few days at the Ritz-Carlton hotel in Florida the family realised that Joshi was missing. Anyone who has children with a their favourite cuddly toy that helps them go to sleep know what a disaster this can be! In order to enable his son to go to sleep Chris told him not to worry, Joshi was just taking a couple of extra days vacation.

When the family got a call that evening from the hotel who had found Joshi, Chris explained the white lie he had told his son, and asked whether the staff could send a picture of Joshin on a sun lounger to verify the story. What the staff at the hotel did was much more than that! They took not one but many pictures which they sent to Chris and his family together with Joshi himself.35

So what do Social Media have to do with emotions? As Deepak said, “In the truest sense it is a wonderful story telling medium; not the way we told them in advertising; but stories of real situations, real initiatives and true intentions.”

The point is: emotions matter. As I like to say: we tend to pretend we are rational beings (particularly in the business context). However, emotions play a critical role in our decision making, conscious or not. I therefore believe that if we accepted and admitted that we are highly emotional beings, our decisions would become more rational as a consequence!

The question Deepak is interested in, and has been working on over the past years, is: How do emotions matter, and what could they really do to a brand,36 and what is the role of Social Media? Social Media and the internet are some of the best story-telling media. They make it possible to tell others about who you are, what you are about, share experiences and feelings - and not just in the way that advertisements do. The internet and Social Media enable us to tell REAL stories, not made up ones.

When looking into this Deepak came across insights from a study conducted in nearly 40 countries around the world which showed that the perception of Warmth & Competence (the ability to demonstrate the warmth in actions) account for over 80 percent of our judgments and behaviour toward others. Perceptions of warmth and competence are the universal foundation for all human behaviour and relationships. And, as Deepak pointed out, that includes our relationships with brands.

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34 Chris Hurn is CEO, Mercantile Capital Corporation; Author, 'The Entrepreneur's Secret to Creating Wealth'

35 While I have summarised the story somewhat here, you can read Chris Hurn’s account, published in the Huffington Post in 2012, in Appendix XXI. The story went viral - though unfortunately the video that Deepak was able to share with us is no longer available online (at least not that I could find).

36 Emotions clearly ARE important when it comes to brands - it is certainly difficult to argue that the price premium paid for luxury brands is based on rational considerations…

There are usually two question at the back of people’s mind when meeting someone new: (1) what are the other person intentions towards them me; are they good intentions? This is the question about warmth. (2) Is he or she really capable of caring out those intentions? This is the question about competence. All of us have a subconscious sense that judges others, with high speed, and accuracy. Indeed, research indicates that it takes us all of 7 seconds to form first impressions, and that this happens in the ‘old’ part of our brain!37

Of course, having two dimensions you get 4 different combinations - as shown on one of Deepal’s slides (see right). Each combination evokes a different emotional response, with different resulting behaviours. While some may argue that warms and competencies can be faked, I do not believe so - at least not sustained, over time. I believe that most of us are too ‘ tuned in ‘ to be foo led . Bo th inauthentic warmth and inauthentic competence would be found out in the actions. In the Ritz Carlton example you clearly had both, a lot of warmth and a lot of competence: the staff were very effective, responded proactively and very fast as well as going well beyond ‘the call of duty’ by putting together a story book.

Deepak explained that apply these concepts to brand as they believe that the right combination of warmth & competence is a secret weapon for developing strong business relationships; it helps explain why some brands inspire loyalty and some don’t. So when they are talking about humanising the brand, they are talking about the ‘Warmth & Competence Principle.”38

He also shared with us a chart where they had mapped a number of different brands onto the 2-by-2 matrix of ‘Warmth’ and ‘Competence’. In the lower left corner you will see mostly oil companies, banks and financial institutions, organisations in which, after 2009, we have lost faith regarding their competence, and which a l s o d o n o t c o n v e y wa r m t h . Companies such as Porsche, Mercedes or Rolex we grant high credibility, but consider them to be low in warmth. Companies that have our sympathy - we perceive warmth but don’t believe in their competence, include public

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37 See Appendix XXI and XXII for some articles on “How many seconds to a first impression”, published in the Observer, the Journal of the Association for Psychological Science, and “Ancient brain circuits light up so we can judge people on first impressions” published in The Guardian.

38 If you are interested in finding out more, there is the book “The Human Brand: How we relate to people, products, and companies” by Susan Fiske and Chris Malone; you can watch a 75 min lecture by Susan and Chris, given 3rd April this year at Princeton on www.youtube.com/watch?v=puK8AGFcFGo as well as read an interview with Chris Malone in Appendix XXIII

transport in general and Amtrak in particular. Where brands strive to be is, of course, the top right corner, with both high perceived warmth and competence. Here you find the Salvation Army, Tropicana, and even Burger King and McDonalds, companies we feel we can trust and care about us. Deepak pointed out that brands that exhibit both warmth & competence experience a relationship with their consumers that is based on trust and admiration, and that we humans seem to place more weight on warmth than competence.

What has all of this to do with Social Media? As Deepak explained, in order to achieve recognition for both warmth and competence we need to (a) understand our own identify, and (b) express it. Social Media can help with both.

Understanding your own identify

Monitoring what is being said about your brand in Social Media helps you understand the current perception of your brand, and what drives these perceptions.39

Deepak shared with us the example of fashion brand Chanel. On ‘The Purse Blog’ he found an wrote an article about the ‘Top 5 reasons to buy a Chanel bag’ which had over 400 comments. Looking at the comments help to understand how customers view the brand, and what they value: exclusivity, feeling special. Also interesting were come comments about living within one’s means, and being too hung up about wanting to have such an expensive item of luxury - immediately countered by someone arguing that you would have to own one to understand why it is so special. One thing is clear, it is a highly emotive and desirable brand.

Identifying the emotions the brand evokes also helps to shape customer clusters, and hence direct products, advertising and stories towards them, achieving higher rates of identification with such customer clusters.

A second example was Harry’s who introduced a subscription-based business model to the industry. The product and its presentation resulted in Social Media activities, including a 25 minute youtube video about un-packaging and reviewing the product (as well as comparing it with an incumbent product).40 In fact, there is a whole host of videos about un-packaging and testing… Social Media provide feedback - you might way they do some of the consumer testing for you; they provide a constant feedback loop, if you care to look and listen.

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39 In Appendix XXIV you can find an article on “5 tools to monitor your online reputation”

40 If you are interested, have a look at www.youtube.com/watch?v=WYBjRNT3w5g :-).

Deepak summed his thoughts on how Social Media helps you to understand your identity up with the following: Is not just about peripheral change; it helps you understand,

• Why does the brand exist?

• Who is the brand (defining a brand personality, values, tone, colours)

• What is its Relationship with its employees

• What is its Relationship with customers and society]

Expressing your identify

A second aspect that Social Media help you with is to express your identity. Deepak’s example here was a company called “Truly Madly”, an Indian dating site - a daring approach in a society where dating is popular but not spoken about at all. Indeed, it is a taboo to say that you are dating someone. To decide how to position the company in the first place was a challenge as the prevailing approach to finding a partner is through friends and family, from marriage brokering websites, or a reference in the family, and it is strongly influenced by stereotyping. Truly Madly started by running an awareness campaign called ‘breaking stereotypes’ in which they had individuals talk about the various stereotypes, and demonstrated how untrue they can be. A young population who questions the established model and the fact that it resonated with how so many felt stereotyped personally meant that it went viral.

The graph on the right shows the success of the ‘Breaking Stereotypes’ campaign: in about two weeks it became popular enough to start conversations amongst young people about their own stereotypes and awareness.

In this case the three things that triggered emotional intensity were:

1- Intensity – how much does it matter to people in the culture reference that one is working with; what is the connection point? This requires to understand the purpose and values of a company, and where these intersect with customer groups.

2- Share-worthy – what is the likelihood of somebody wanting to share the story? If the story has nothing to do with me, if it does not connect somehow I am less likely to share with others.

3- Surprise - coming from something unexpected happening, something that might go counter to common expectation.

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Humanising Brands

Deepak closed his session with summarising his thoughts on how to humanise brands, which is divided into the following phases:

1. Listening

a. How do they perceive your brand on warmth and competence?

b. What are they talking about?

c. How do they connect with the brand? socially, culturally & emotionally.

d. What are the aspects of the brand that create a strong warmth resonance with the consumer?

2. The Understanding Phase:

a. How can the brand use these parameters of warmth to craft communication?

b. Where can the brand talk?

c. How should the brand communicate?

d. Creating key messages that will define the brand's intervention on the web from a warmth & competence stand point

3. The Humanising Phase:

a. Building a comprehensive action plan to enhance warmth & competence perceptions among the consumers.]

Meeting someone for the first time, seeing their face and hearing their name is like encountering a brand for the first time. As human beings we then find out more about each other, what we value and what is important to each other by talking, telling stories and exchanging experiences. Social Media can support a similar dialogue and exchange between brand and customers, identifying shared values, interests and stories.

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