Cluetrain Day 3: Conversations Among Human Beings Sound Human. They Are Conducted in a Human Voice.

In order to fully appreciate this human voice concept, I think that you really “had to be there” so to speak.  Be there, that is, in the world that the non-marketer authors came from back in the late 90’s.  They were technologists, not marketers, and were often on the receiving end of the marketing copy that many of us actually take pride in every day. The box copy on software, the brochure copy on systems and products, the well crafted page copy on our websites.  All of it – every word – is marketing speak.  Or, as David Weinberger calls it “happytalk”.

You have two choices. You can continue to lock yourself behind facile corporate words and happytalk brochures.
Or you can join the conversation.

You would think that this would be, well, easier than it is.  We can let our guard down, speak freely and just let it all out.  Yet, it doesn’t work that way!

What about brand?

Well, you see, that’s just the thing.  Brand still matters. Emotion connects. Persona connects. Brands drive sales. You don’t see people walking around with Nike logos or wearing T-shirts with funny sayings for no reason or because it was the only thing on the shelf (personally, I’m a no-logo kind of guy, except when I have little choice as in Mountain Hardware jackets, Patagonia vests, my North Face ski pants and so on…All of those are overtly logoed…and I wear them proudly)

Brands are concerned about diluting their language, losing their identity and transforming into something (or someone) that they’re not.  Those are all valid concerns.

That said, in Perspectives on Social Media Marketing (affiliate link), Stephanie Agresta talks about what it means to be a human brand by stating that the days of the faceless monolithic brand are over now that we can all become individual brands.  More to the point, when you read Open Brand (affiliate link) by Kelly Mooney (one of my favorite books of 2008…and today) she positions today’s brands as needing to adopt the O.P.E.N framework in order to “get human” with today’s new socially engaged authoritative consumer.

To relate to this authoritative new consumer who creates, shares and influences via the social web, a brand must be O.P.E.N. — on-demand, personal, engaging and networked. Open branding requires a cultural shift within every company to clearly understand and embrace this new reality. Openness needs new talent, new thinking, new models, new risks—and new interpretations of ROI.

Finally, Stephanie states the today’s brands harness people’s passions in a ways that brands from the past didn’t do.  I think that is mostly true, and very human of them.  Passions sound human.  Brands that engage on a level of passion sound much more human than those that engage on merely a transactional level.

“To err is human, to pickup the conversation with the customer after the err is to be a clued-in brand”  Yes, that’s a blatant rip-off and an adaptation of Alexander Pope’s famous comment, but it gets at the heart of what it means to be a conversational, human brand. We need to keep the conversation going, engaging as humans do, in a dialogue.  Always listening, always learning, and always adapting.