I was on the tube yesterday and I experienced a fullscale KISS. moment about how personality changes everything.
It was a fairly average journey. The carriage was about 1/3 full and everyone’s outward appearance matched the grey skies outside and the drizzle on the dirty windows.
We were just coming to the end of the line at Wimbledon when the driver started to go through the motions on the loudspeaker. However, what he came out with was quite out of the ordinary and included stuff like…
“Waaaakey wakey!!! Rise and shine my lovely passengers. We will shortly be arriving at the end of the line - Wimbleydon. That’s Wim-blee-don. Please remember to take everything with you when you leave the train and have a safe onward journey home.” and “While you’re at home enjoying a cup of tea and a nice biccy spare a thought for me as I’ll be on my way back to Upminster. Although perhaps you’re off to see your aunt Mable - if so wish her all the best from me and save me a slice of that cake.” and later “It’s been fun chatting with you but we are now approaching platform two which means that the doors to your right as you look in my direction will be opening when I push the button. I’m in charge here so they’ll open when I say and not before…..oooookay we’re now on the platform….is everyone smiling? good [opens doors]….a smile will open many doors for you in life. It’s been fun! Cheerio”
By the time we left the train, most of the passengers were beaming, some were clapping and some were even starting conversations with each other.
The simplest of human touches and something unexpected broke up the monotonous, mechanical, utilitarian journey and injected personality into our experience. There was a connection with the driver and we all felt the warmth of his humour and…well…human-ness.
This is a pretty simplistic analogy but it is a nice demonstration of how we can be affected by exposure to real personality. Social media allow brands, even big, clunking, dreary monoliths, to engage with consumers and show that they have personality. By this I don’t mean a personality in old-school, broadcast terms like the masculinity of Marlboro or the playfulness of Dr.Pepper, I mean lifting the veil on a personality that we, as consumers, could have a conversation with.
Obviously companies have been able to show a human side through various advertising media in the past but social media allow them to extend this concept to actually engage and use this personality to make a real difference in engagement terms.
A couple of examples?
In my previous post I mentioned Zappos and they are relevent here as well. They have placed trust and power in the hands of many of their employees and allowed them to be the first points of contact that consumers have with the brand, mostly on the phone but also through Twitter. They are encouraged to be the best in customer service, but also to be themselves. In return, Zappos employees seemingly have the same pride and inclination towards truly accommodating customer service as that of a small business owner.
Zappos’ blog pages: http://blogs.zappos.com/blogs
Another example is Innocent, the UK company that makes smoothies etc. Not only do they have a very strong brand ‘personality’ but they expose their ‘human-ness’ to back up this broadcast personality. This is taken further in their blogs, online community activities and customer service.
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