How To Be More Human

I’m pleased to tell you that the secret of doing great business and building an awesome brand appears to be simple. Who’d have thunk it?

The secret? BE MORE HUMAN!

It came to me in a moment of clarity last Thursday when I received a particularly good email from a brand. (Bear in mind I’m an email marketer’s worst nightmare. Everything from subject line > body content > call to action has to be seriously captivating to bait me). Long story short, they were not selling me anything, they were just informing me. Boosting my brain.

Anyhoo, I then pondered the characteristics of certain modern successful businesses; some presentations I’d made in the last few months; some of my favourite books of the last couple of years etc etc and found some running themes…

Pretend for a second that your body is a company. Your company has to have good values. Every good company has good values. Just like every body should aim to have good values… It’s the only surefire way to happiness and riches — material or otherwise.

You can analyze business practices until you’re blue in the face. You can spend fortunes on books on everything from blue ocean strategies to digital strategies. Lord knows I do. But…
…the more human you can make your brand, the more chance you have of making your brand a success.

So here’s 13 human traits that you can check off against your brand:

1) COMPASSION
 Compassion is a key human characteristic. How can your brand show compassion? In many ways…

Do you have a post-purchase process which is full to brimming with compassion? If a customer has a complaint or a problem then go above and beyond the call of duty. Do more than refund. Refund with interest. Take the hit.

Make their problem feel like a blessing. No quibbles. When Amazon made mistakes the person affected got a 10% discount and an apology — every time. What is the MAXIMUM you can return to a dissatisfied person? Find it, and do it! The goodwill you’ll create is potential word of mouth marketing (or if you’re very smart, viral marketing) gold…

2) RESPONSIBILITY
 Taking responsibility for your actions and being a responsible person are admirable human qualities.

Is your business responsible? Make it so. Are you making sure that caring for the environment at your business is not something you SAY you do, but something that breathes through the company culture. Be green. Be seen to be green. Source responsibly. Be proud of it.

3) POSITIVE ATTITUDE
 Some people enter a room and leave with new friends, phone numbers and potential future romantic liaisons. Some people enter a room and leave with new enemies or — at best — make no impression at all.

The power of a positive attitude may seem clichéd, but smile and the world indeed smiles with you. Does your brand have a positive attitude?

A positive brand usually starts from business owners with good attitudes. Without good attitudes, it’s difficult to motivate people and far easier to anger them.

4) INTEGRITY

“Whoever is careless with the truth in small matters cannot be trusted with important matters”.
 Albert Einstein.

Make sure your staff show integrity from the smallest customer dialogue (a company tweet or Instagram comment perhaps) to the most in-depth contract negotiation. Give your brand a tone-of-voice and ensure all your staff are fluent. Hire a Brand Content Manager for this increasingly important role.

5) GRATITUDE
 Do you show gratitude in your personal life? I’m sure you do. You look like such a nice person. I ,for example, am grateful you’ve taken the time to read this far without falling asleep.

Can you go over and above the norm to show gratitude to your customers? Do you know their birthdays? What can you do to contact them and unexpectedly honor them — in a non-cynical and genuine manner?

6) ATTENTIVENESS
 Attentiveness is the scourge of a generation. We secretly seethe as our dinner partner / drinking partner / coffee partner / life partner tip tap taps away on their smartphone whilst we communicate with them. SO annoying! Unless of course we’re browsing Facebook simultaneously, then it doesn’t annoy us quite so much.

Does your brand listen? Yes — but really though. I’m not talking about a focus group every other year. Does your brand have listening tools in place? There are 100’s of online monitoring tools available — some good, some awful, some excellent, I’ll reveal my personal favorites in a future post.

Just installing these tools and getting a monthly or even weekly summary is not enough. The key to attentiveness is what you do AFTER you’ve listened. Did 20 people talk about that new flavour you just launched? What did they say? Did a discussion happen on Twitter that concerned your industry? Is it the seed of a dialogue that could lead to a new product or service that YOU can develop & own?

Attentive Brand Content Management should be your most important tool. Your new best-est Best Friend Forever. Ignore it at your peril. Do it wisely and it can fill that gaping void advertising used to fill (back in the day, when advertising was worthwhile… 15, 10, even 5 years ago…)

If you only remember one part of this article make it this part.

7) VISION
 Truly great humans have visions. Does your brand have a clear vision? As the wonderful Simon Sinek so rightly pointed out: people don’t buy WHAT you do… they buy WHY you do it. A whole number of companies can sell people computer equipment so why do so many people LOVE Apple? Their vision is a clear one. They stand for something.

8) KINDNESS
 Companies these days must aim to be “on value” as much as “on brand”. Your brand needs to have values and stand for them as much as any good human needs to have good values. Cheerio’s breakfast cereal memorably “sacked” some consumers for complaining about a mixed-race family Cheerio’s had used in a marketing campaign. Cheerio’s took a clear stand and clearly showed their values.

9) SELF-KNOWLEDGE
 “To see oursels as ithers see us” wrote Scotland’s poet Robert Burns in one of my favourite verses. I’ll save you the grappling with the Auld Scots tongue: he’s pointing out that if we could see ourselves as others see us what a wonderful thing that would be…

The strongest brands have self-knowledge and knowledge of the demographics of their target group: what their interests are and how they communicate.
 If you try to appeal to everyone you’ll likely miss everyone and dilute your company brand.

Make sure the marketing planner at your office is modern, multi-media savvy and can justify his marketing plan based on insights and actual problems the desired consumers have. If you’d like help with some ideas for workshops (certain workshop exercises we use here at POEM are fantastic when trying to uncover pearls of consumer insight) then don’t hesitate to email me — or book in a workshop with us if you’re near Gothenburg some time.

10) PASSION
 You can build a company which may succeed in the short term, but passion is required to build a brand that’s sustainable in the long-run. Examine the massively successful brand builders, such as Steve Jobs, and you’ll see that their infectious passion, joy and enthusiasm permeates the company from the top down.

This passion means consumers often in turn become enthusiastic about the brand, leading to word of mouth referrals which frankly boot the ass of (any type of) advertising black and blue.

11) RELIABILITY AND CONSISTENCY
 Humans build trust and authority by being reliable and consistent. When consumers come back to a business for repeat sales they expect the same level of quality and service as they received the last time.

In today’s climate inconsistency is your biggest enemy. With so many competitors to choose from, only one mistake can be reason enough for your consumers to take their business elsewhere.

Love them or hate them, McDonalds are a brand who perform consistency with great success. A Big Mac will taste the same in China as it does in Chattanooga.

12) ADOPT MULTIPLE PERSPECTIVES
 Successful humans are able to manage multiple life perspectives, respect other people’s point of views and adapt to change. Successful humans are able to communicate to people who may not necessarily come from the same school or social class as themselves.

A big part of being recognised as a distinctive, successful brand is the ability to reach consumers through multiple channels. Obviously, larger companies have an advantage gaining exposure because they usually have a bigger marketing budget and more existing connections.

However, the Internet and social media narrows the gap between small companies and large ones. There are more tools than ever before which offer any company a chance at establishing their brand. By developing a presence on networks like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Google+, anyone is able to reach almost any consumer. You just have to know how (that’s the hard part). For each channel a long-term plan and the adoption of relevant perspective to that channel needs to be adopted. Read about our Social Media Department or speak directly to Ida Nilsson (Sweden’s premier Social Media / PR expert) if this is something you struggle with.

13) GENEROSITY
 Humans who are generous and create abundance — without seeking something in return — are happiest and most successful. Give without expecting to receive, and do it with a happy heart.

How does that translate to your business life? Perhaps you’re a consultant or an expert in your field. Perhaps you’re the go-to-guy (or girl) and your bulging brain is just overflowing with industry and branch knowledge.

Don’t be a hoarder.

It may seem counter-intuitive but don’t be precious with your knowledge. Get it out there. Blog about it. Present it. Write about it. Give away your insights. All of them. All the juiciest bits. Don’t be scared — you’re picking up newer, juicier bits all the time — you’ll always be a step ahead. If you’re the expert then prove it — tell people what you know — and let a dialogue surround you. Let yourself ‘be the Google’ of your network. The person people ask for the answers.

When you become a fountain that squirts knowledge, tips, tricks and ideas you’ll find people crowded round to throw pennies at you.

– — –

Russell Clark is an entrepreneur, business owner, creative, start-up investor and piss-poor author based in Sweden but born and raised in Edinburgh, Scotland.