Humanising the brand!
Rajesh Gopal
Creating a Talent Pool of Entrepreneurs|Advisor-Business & Brand Strategy |Set Up & Scale up Specialist|Start-Up Mentor & Coach| Micro-Learning Evangelist|Ex-President & Country Head| INSEAD
My post last week was focused on raising some important questions that e-commerce players need to find answers to. It is obvious that these players have a challenge when it comes to providing the “human” element to the buying experience. So is humanising the brand just a concept that CEO’s of these companies will discuss in board room meetings….is it just a pipe dream? Or are there actually approaches that can be adopted by e-commerce players to achieve this objective?
To understand this aspect, one has to go back to basics. We do know that people develop relationships with others over a period of time and with repeated interactions. If we extrapolate this to the world of e-commerce, then it does appear that there are two important dimensions that e-comm players must consider when they go about “humanising” the brand:-
- Relationships develop with repeat purchases
- These repeat purchases happen over a period of time
So what do e-comm players need to do to make this happen? They need to recognise that fundamentally a brand is much more than a product. It has to go well beyond “Product”/”Service” features which provide a set of functional benefits at a certain price-value equilibrium. It needs to have a distinct personality of its own and more importantly, it needs to also provide some “emotional” benefits….it needs to invoke a feeling in its buyers.
A good way of understanding this is to imagine that the brand is actually a person. Each of us have relationships of various types with other people and these relationships are developed because:-
- We “like” the other person’s looks and personality
- But more importantly, we appreciate what the other person can do
- We also share a common set of beliefs, either because we belong to the same nation, state, college, share similar social status, similar religious dispositions etc
Just as any human being has a set of “strengths” and “areas of improvement”, the same is the case with brands-and hence brands cannot be “everything” to “everybody” because there will always be a few things that a brand cannot do. It is important to recognise this while going about “humanising” the brand. This is also important in the context of defining how a brand will “emotionally” connect with its TG. So can e-commerce players differentiate themselves by improving the quality of the “human” touch??
■ P&L Leader and Market Strategist driving growth across Asia ■ Packaging & Coatings ■ BITS Pilani (Finance) ■ INSEAD (Leadership) ■ Bangalore Uni (Chemical Engg.)
9 年Very well articulated, Rajesh Gopal. This is indeed an important bit for e-comm players to work on in order to build those repeat customers. On an online market place that offers myriad products to consumers across various segments, building a robust feedback mechanism about the feel & experience of products used is utmost critical to establishing that 'humanising' aspect. A positive user experience creates a 'brand' spot in the mind of the consumer and there on begins the positive brand recall journey for the product. And this user experience extends, as you rightly pointed out, beyond just stating the product/service features & benefits, into actually meeting those commitments in letter & spirit.
Sourcing | Quality Assurance | Consulting | Apparel, Fashion & Retail
9 年Interesting thoughts Rajesh ..