Human to Human Marketing in a Digital Era

This is a bit of an opinion piece, so bear with me.  

The folk at CMI inspired me to think about marketing from a purely human perspective. With all these marketing tools, social media channels and digital immersion, we sometimes lose sight of the obvious. That we are always dealing with people (at least until androids, drones, nano-bots and machine learning automation make our cities cybernetic jungles). Welcome to the human era, enjoy it while it lasts!

In Marketing, it's called human-to-human marketing (H2H). No joke. 

The idea is that customers need a human touch to ellicit the emotion to want to purchase the services and produces you are offering. So are you listening to your customers? Are you meeting them where they live, not just digitally and via tools and information layers?

Last Few Years of the Human Era

The debate about the decrease in face to face human contact is building steam with increasing automation and the digital revolution that we are at the infancy of, it's on its way, it's changing more every few years. This is the same debate about a social scene, where everyone is interacting with their mobile device, and not each other. This is the same debate as young people developing social skills, but mostly in a context of texting, snap-chat, facebook and not the intimate grounds we'd expect. 

In branding, there's even a name for this: 

Human era brands are rooted in authenticity and speak to the humany story. It's important for your brand to humanize itself and not get lost in the digital and mechanical machine-leanring Era that is coming. 

Advertizing Theory 

The theory goes, humans want to buy into something and not simply buy something.  Brands that they can connect to on an emotional level have greater weight and they may be more loyal towards. This requires to bring the customer journey to a personal level that sparks emotional connection from the audience. In organizations, it definately does require hard work — establishing organizational values and commitments that are customer driven, while also driving them toward daily leadership decision-making and employee behaviors.”

Human to Human brand marketing, promotes an idealism of the brand that appeals not just to the user but to the citizen in us, stimulating our values and need for: 

• To live meaningfully and contribute to a greater good
• Towards stability
• Trust
• Responsiblity
• Freedom 
• Creativity 
• Altruism 

While as users, we want and strive for access, information, control, utility and mastery in the tools services or products provide. 

What are Vital Qualities of Humanzing Brands?

• They are personal 
• They can be conversational, you can discuss easily about them
• They're empathetic
• They're inspirational (you want to live by those mottos) 
• They demonstrate problem solving and being pro-active
• They're humorous 
• They make mistakes (they demonstrate vulnerability) 

 Towards a Cybernetic Society 

In the future, the question we'll be asking is, "are we sure we are speaking to a real human?" In Digital marketing, we know the perils of not having enough of a human feel. Advances in technology produce automated campaigns, with predictive analytics we can send you the content that will help you buy the thing you are already intersted in and at the right time! In retail, there are beacons that can tap into apps on your phone if you walk by a particular store you are loyal to, with the latest and greatest promotions. 

However, we have a responsibility to always keep things real and be in touch with our humanity, no matter the temptation to use technology and the absolute necessity to adopt the latest and greatest tools.  

So what does it take to maintain our humanity? When in 2050 there are 9 Billion people and our urban centers will be increasingly cosmopolitan and multi-ethnic. However by 2050, there will always be a host of AI all around us with perhaps layers of virtual reality as well. We'll be a multi-cybernetic society. From robots that 3D print to build and maintain stuff, to customer service that is automated by AI that knows everthing about you, we'll have to recreate our ideas about humanity and what it is to be a global citizen in a digital era. 

Are there any advances in the digital world that unsettle you?