Bringing Your Brand to Life on the Web
Friday, January 16, 2009
If you describe your brand's personality as youthful, fun, optimistic, sophisticated, energetic, humorous, irreverent, or any other general term that people rarely use to describe themselves, then, in the words of Seth Godin, "you're boring."
As brands are brought to life online, through blogs, YouTube, Twitter profiles, and Facebook pages, they need to show as much personality as the real live human beings they interact with.
If you're a silly or funny brand, then you need to choose a particular kind of funny. Are you funny like Dane Cook? Or are you funny like Zach Galifianakis? (And, NO, you can not be both.)
If you're cool, are you cool like Kanye's blog? Or are you cool like Pitchfork?
If you're a fancy brand, then either be fancy like a fur coat or fancy like a new pair of Bathing Ape kicks.
The hard part is making choices. But, once you've made some decisions, the good news is that the internet makes it really easy for you to tell other people about yourself.
This is what we all do everyday across all these new communication platforms. We are cultivating and defining our identity through the information and content we choose to share.
As Rob Walker likes to point out, we are constantly striving to show each other how we're unique and how we fit in. I'm like these people, and I'm unlike those people. I like this movie, but I hate that movie. I like this presidential candidate, but I can't stand that one. I really care about helping children who are living in poverty, but I don't really care about the new Apple product announcement.
We carefully curate our personality as it comes to life on the web through every link we post, every message we send, every email we forward, and every blog we read. We cultivate our identity by choosing certain sources for our information, passing all of that information through a very personal filter, and choosing certain things to pass on to the people who follow us.
It's time for brands to start thinking this way, too.
As brands are brought to life online, through blogs, YouTube, Twitter profiles, and Facebook pages, they need to show as much personality as the real live human beings they interact with.
If you're a silly or funny brand, then you need to choose a particular kind of funny. Are you funny like Dane Cook? Or are you funny like Zach Galifianakis? (And, NO, you can not be both.)
If you're cool, are you cool like Kanye's blog? Or are you cool like Pitchfork?
If you're a fancy brand, then either be fancy like a fur coat or fancy like a new pair of Bathing Ape kicks.
The hard part is making choices. But, once you've made some decisions, the good news is that the internet makes it really easy for you to tell other people about yourself.
This is what we all do everyday across all these new communication platforms. We are cultivating and defining our identity through the information and content we choose to share.
As Rob Walker likes to point out, we are constantly striving to show each other how we're unique and how we fit in. I'm like these people, and I'm unlike those people. I like this movie, but I hate that movie. I like this presidential candidate, but I can't stand that one. I really care about helping children who are living in poverty, but I don't really care about the new Apple product announcement.
We carefully curate our personality as it comes to life on the web through every link we post, every message we send, every email we forward, and every blog we read. We cultivate our identity by choosing certain sources for our information, passing all of that information through a very personal filter, and choosing certain things to pass on to the people who follow us.
It's time for brands to start thinking this way, too.
4 Comments:
Great post.
"We carefully curate our personality as it comes to life on the web through every link we post, every message we send, every email we forward, and every blog we read."
You touch on it when you refer to the blogs we read but I'd build on that and suggest that, in a general sense, 'we are who we associate with'. Your friends, both on- and offline, say a lot about you.
After all, if we strive to be good listeners then who we decide to spend time listening to is going to reveal a great deal about us...
Interesting post, Mike. I'm not sure I get how the idea of making a singular choice - either you have to be funny in this way, or funny in this way - works with the cultivation of this unique node personality. Wouldn't you rather be like Dane Cook in one way and like Zach in another way, mixed in with something else totally unique?
Instead of the top bottom approach (choosing a personality, then telling others), how about something bottom-up?
Could you encourage enough community and dialogue about your service to allow the consumer to determine your personality?
I have feeling that this is what happened on woot, and the personality is now a major business driver.
Nick, you sparked an important thought for me: for brands online: if I don't see who you read and which things you think are important enough to pass on, then I don't know who you are. digital identity is created by the information we collect and choose to share.
Arthur, you're one step ahead of me. As a brand's online personality evolves it should take on the kind of nuances you're describing. But, for most brands they need to start by just making some basic choices about taste.
Matt, you're absolutely right that your brand identity needs to be inspired by the culture of your audience. But, I don't think that this has to happen in any formalized way. For most brands, it probably makes sense to take a more intuitive approach. Listen closely to your consumers on a regular basis, and simply evolve your personality to stay in tune with their interests.
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