What if the brand was a human?

How many friends do you have in your life? I hear your answer 'do you mean close friends?' So, let's start with - what kind of relationships do you have in your life? For the sake of this essay, let's set the family aside. My attempt on making that list would look like that:

1. Samwise Gamgee, aka the BFF - those are friends, who know you inside out and stick with you, no matter what. Maybe you know them forever, maybe you met later in life but immediately hit it off. You are in regular contact, spend a lot of time together, go out, take holidays, celebrate things together... there's not many of them. Maybe 2 or 3. But those are the ones you can count on in every life situation.

2. Gandalf the Grey, distant and yet so close. Some people are just coming and going in your life. Do you know this feeling, that you catch up with a person after half a year of not talking to them and it's like you were never apart? You start off exactly where you left, it seems like things between you haven't changed. However, you don't share with them your daily struggles, you won't call them if you need help to go to ER. Mostly, because they live far, or your lives went just different directions and there's just not that many touchpoints for you to connect on regular basis. So it happens that even if you don't call them, sometimes they do tend to pop out of nowhere in some most difficult life moments to actually help and support you. Overall, those are great people you love and admire and you feel close to them.

3. The Fellowship of the Ring. Aka life-stage friends - when you go through life, it happens that you simply build connection with people, who are sharing the same reality. Other expats when you are on a contract abroad. Parents from your birth class. Parents from the school of your kids' class. What connects you are the similar experiences at this very moment - you are going through the same ups and downs. But the high probability is that once that life stage is over, there is not much that binds you so all of you will move on with your lives with not much interest in one another and no hard feelings. You completed the mission. Time to move on.

4. The Avengers. Aka friends from work. The moment you enter any job, you are grouped with people you didn't choose, most of the time you didn't know before, some of them you like, some of them you admire, some of them are annoying, but you just have to get along to complete the task that is in front of you. You are spending a lot of time together, which can create the sense of familiarity, that many people mistake for friendship. And, rarely, those relationships can turn into something closer, but mostly, at the end it is just business.

5. Genies and Aladdins. Aka you-want-something-from them, they-want-something-from-you acquaintances. Those are relations you keep in your life and you take care of not because you particularly bonded with a person, but they may be simply useful. It sounds cynical, but just think about it... all people you have to invite to your wedding party 'not to offend them' or 'because it's good to know them'... usually, the further you go in life, the more balance will be changing and you'll be surrounded by more and more people who want something from you (as, with time you tend to acquire resources that others find valuable). Many of them come and go easily back and forth in your life, sometimes leaving you frustrated, sometimes leaving you offended, but most of the time, you forget them as soon as they disappear. And yes, I do believe Genie and Aladdin never met again. Each of them got what they wanted from another and lived happily ever after. Far away from one another. The end.

6. All the crowd. There's just so many people you meet every day. On the bus, in a cafe, on the street, with some you will have an accidental chat, others will honor you with a rude exchange of words, some of them will notice you, most of them you will see only once and forget they existed, there is just as much human capacity for relationships that each of us can carry. Also, not everyone is your piece of cake, not with everyone you will get along, we are all different people and it's ok.

Where am I going with this? Now back to business. So you are a brand manager. Imagine, for a sake of argument, that those who you call 'shoppers', 'consumers' or 'users' or 'fans' are actually human beings. And, as human beings we form relationships not only with one another, but also with dead objects or even concepts. That's how wonderfully complex we are. If we assume that, we also need to recognize that brands can have more and less appealing personalities, just as people do. Some will be more 'likeable' than others, but it is not always appealing personality that makes one popular. The same goes for the brand.

When you design your marketing plan, draft your budget, in order to build a successful brand you need to understand which types of relationships you need to focus on. The common mistake is that most of the brand managers dream of creating an army of 'Sams Gamgees' - loyal to death brand advocates that will love the brand and stick with it every step of the way. But, as in life, this is simply impossible. People have limited space for being obsessed about something and rarely they are going to become obsessed about a brand. If you are lucky, you will get couple of those loyal users. It is very important then that you give them the right focus - to appreciate what they are doing for you. It is time-consuming but not really budget-heavy exercise. 'Gandalfs' are more common - those are people who are the brand fans, but have a lot other matters to attend to, so they keep coming back and forth, sometimes more active with you, sometimes representing more 'passive' relationship, but still purchasing your product fairly regularly and showing positive attitude. For those, keep welcoming back - sharing special offers, or get them to a loyalty scheme, to make sure you keep this relationship alive.

Most of people who use your brand will be either in the 'Fellowship of the Ring' or 'Genies/Alladins' bucket. For the 'Fellowship' type brand users, it simply happens that they will 'friend' you on specific life stage and they look for some solutions to make their life easier on that new chapter on their lives. No one is buying a baby stroller because your brand has a great social media content. They buy it because they just got a baby. So here you should focus on showing that you understand them and the right targeting tools to capture those people in the right stage. If you are too early or too late, you missed the train, they won't see a need of interacting with you. The same with 'Genies/Alladins' - it is a give/take relationship. They have clear expectations of what they 'need' from you. They want their dishes clean, not a birthday card from a dish detergent. They don't wear your super-expensive phone because they like your logo really... The phone makes them look good and cool and trendy. Or it has functions that they need (yea, right, cause all of us these days are professional photographers that really know everything about camera quality...)

The 'Friends from work' are your brand users who are somehow 'forced' to interact with it, due to some life circumstances (e.g. they received your product as a gift, there was nothing else available at the store and they really needed the toothpaste today, or they got the laptop from your brand from their employer to use for work). And, as in real human case, it can happen that you turn some of them into 'Best Friends' category (rarely), but what you should really aim for - is a decent endorsement for the next user, if someone asks them for opinion about your performance.

What I find particularly puzzling is that, even in the today's world of endless possibilities of customization and multiple targeting tools, so many companies are still talking about 'reach' and 'impressions'. As in the real life, there are going to be billions (yes, billions) of people out there who will NEVER try your brand (or that you won't be friends with in the real life). And yet, we design campaigns and we set KPIs for them as if we were standing in the corner of the busy road screaming 'Please friend me! Friend me'. So many times I would hear people quoting how many millions they 'reached' with the campaign. It is like claiming that I 'reached' all 50 thousand people who visited the shopping mall today because I also walked there - on all the floors. All the people must have seen me and wanted to be my friends immediately, right? WRONG.

The only way to build sustainable business is the same as building sustainable life relationships - identify the types of relationships you are dealing with, decide which ones are important and focus the resources on the right tools that help you to keep those relationships alive.