The Risks and Rewards of Brand Personification Using Social Media

Social media can increase customer interest in your brand — if used wisely.

Jay I. Sinha Reading Time: 4 min 

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Sinha Social Media Brand Personification

It’s hard for an average company to achieve the level of brand differentiation that icons like Apple and Nike enjoy. But Jay I. Sinha, of the Fox School of Business of Temple University, argues that “technology, often seen as the bane of customer relationship marketing, may also be its savior.”

Image courtesy of Flickr user Anthony Stone. Artist: Sarah Massie, Pioneer High School, San Jose, CA.

In this era of economic uncertainty, buyer apathy and product obsolescence, businesses need to take a fresh look at how consumers view the company’s brands and what makes a brand compete better in the marketplace. For the average company, it is quite hard to achieve the level of brand differentiation that the recognizable business icons like Apple and Nike enjoy.

The key problem, according to academic researchers and industry practitioners, is that many companies have become too disengaged from their customers by relying on cost-saving, self-service technology solutions. These tend to dehumanize the customer experience and distance the firm from its buyers, causing them confusion and frustration, as happens when a call placed to a company’s toll-free line is answered by an automated voice offering a relentless sequence of vague or impersonal options.

Fortunately, technology, often seen as the bane of customer relationship marketing, may also be its savior. The rapid advent of social media tools provides a ready mechanism to engage customers, talk to them, soften a brand’s image, and present a friendly and accessible “face” to the public.

Research shows that when brands are given an emotional identity through advertising and social media tactics, consumers tend to attribute human traits to them in a phenomenon known as anthropomorphism. They may view a given brand rather like a person and describe one as “cool” and “fun,” another as “kind” and “sensitive,” and yet another as “snobbish” and “aloof.” Brands that have been anthropomorphized in a positive way have been empirically found to enjoy more favorable consumer attitudes and command higher loyalty than those that do not.

Consider the upmarket hospitality chain Kimpton Hotels. To portray a warm, friendly and empathetic brand image, Kimpton created a social listening desk, which is a panel of employees whose principal job is to listen to what customers are saying on social media and find novel ways of attending to their needs.

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About the Author

Dr. Jay I. Sinha is associate professor of marketing at the Fox School of Business of Temple University. He can be reached at isinha@temple.edu.

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Comments (3)
Ravi Jain
Great article. One wonders whether investing in the brand's image is important and relevant in this age of discounting models for customer acquisition and customer responses being left to AI fueled bots! A few points which I have penned down: http://www.genymedium.com/brand-personality-age-bots/
daniel falco
This article is interesting but it doesn't go far enough. Personification needs to be seen and felt in a very literal and clear fashion. We believe that it goes beyond social media and can permeate all levels of media. 

Brand Personification, as defined by Tap Creative, is a form of embedded (integrated) advertising created that places a brand or product into a story arc as a character with a continuous presence that drives the plot. 

We believe that personification should be tangible inside of content. This allows for easier attribution to emotion and human characteristics. One thing that is absolutely true is that brands need to endear themselves to consumers. It can be an intense and highly effective method to engage.
Adam Garey
Social media should be used to interact with customers, to solve their problem and make them familiar with your brand. I have seen so many brand using social media just for promotion purpose. You have mentioned some great tips in this article and I completely agree with all of them. Very useful article, gonna share it.