Humanizing brands

A recent article in Ad Age made me step back from my skepticism about the value of social applications (like Twitter). On one hand, they're the rage. On the other, they can be creepy (Remember way back, like, a year ago, when it wasn't that desirable to have someone following you wherever you went?) The question persists: How do we connect with a growing online audience? The answer offered by the article is to simply be human, rejecting the hyped-up, aggressive marketing models for pushing your corporate reputation. Connect with your audience members on their terms and engage them rather than attack them with a targeted message.

When I created a Facebook group and page for Amalgam, as well as this blog, I was apprehensive that we would be perceived as trying too hard, but in truth, we are showing that we're not just a company on a directory list. We are not just faces on a website. We are people with viewpoints!

Related to reaching an audience on its own terms, Fallon just launched Skimmer, a new free app that gives users one interface to keep up to date with their various social networks. Emphasis on "free". This humanizes Fallon as a brand because they recognize the need of consumers. Said Fallon creative director Chris Wiggins in a MinnPost article today: "Our overarching philosophy at Fallon is that for ad agencies to continue in the same direction — interrupting people with what they're engaged in to deliver a message — isn't effective now and is becoming less so all the time, especially with today's socially connected people online. Interruptions work if the message is entertaining enough (which also hints at deeper meaning with the brand), but it's just not enough and is far too limiting."

Generation F -- Twit version

Here, from current.com, we have a counterpoint from within Generation F: a video hilariously deconstructing the Twitter phenomenon as vacuous, a false religion even.

clipped from current.com Twouble with Twitters

Generation F -- Heroic version

Here Wall Street Journal blogger Gary Hamel portrays corporate employees in the Facebook generation (Generation F) as harbingers of a new sort of meritocratic Utopia. Be sure to click into the article (below, next to the paper clip) and check out his list of "12 work-relevant characteristics of life online."

clipped from blogs.wsj.com The Facebook Generation vs. the Fortune 500 By Gary Hamel The experience of growing up online will profoundly shape the workplace expectations of “Generation F” – the Facebook Generation. At a minimum, they’ll expect the social environment of work to reflect the social context of the Web, rather than as is currently the case, a mid-20th-century Weberian bureaucracy. If your company hopes to attract the most creative and energetic members of Gen F, it will need to understand these Internet-derived expectations, and then reinvent its management practices accordingly. Sure, it’s a buyer’s market for talent right now, but that won’t always be the case—and in the future, any company that lacks a vital core of Gen F employees will soon find itself stuck in the mud.