Wall E and Johnny 5!

Chapter 8 - Human Centric Marketing for Brand Attraction

Building Authentic Brands as Friends

If one still remembers the 80's, there was this robot called Johnny 5. Despite him being made of metal, he had human feelings. He tried to be authentic. 30 years down the road Disney came up with a feature film called Wall-E. (Waste Allocation Load Lifter, Earth-Class)

Movie is about a trash compactor robot that is left to clean an abandoned city. WALL-E meets up with a probe called EVE. WALL-E soon falls in love with the probe and begins their rediscovery of how to save the humans and the environment

There is still this need to be human. Marketers should not forget the human side of the customers. Communities strengthen their positions. The robots still looked for the purpose. Brands need to build human-to-human connections.

Similar to E.T, human centric marketing is the key to building brand attraction in the digital era as brands with human character will stand out.

If we recall marketing basics, Marketing 1.0 focused on product centric marketing while Marketing 2.0 was on customer-centric marketing. Marketing 3.0 was an outgrowth into human-centric marketing. There was the need to fulfill not only the customer's functional and emotional needs but also the desires and latent anxieties.

Now that we move into the digital age of Marketing 4.0, there is an ever growing importance for human centricity. As mentioned in other reports, robotics now play a major role in today's society. From driverless cars to voice controlled bots, take a look at Amazon's Alexa which can practically do everything for your household and respond to each person's voice. It can distinguish yours from others!

The book focused on the need to understand the nexus between humanity and digital technology (Digital Anthropology) Here we rediscover our customers using 3 well known methods that marketers currently use.

Social Listening - proactive process of monitoring what is being said about a brand on the Internet. This is very useful in identifying leads and prospects in social selling. It is also advisable to make use of Social listening for Market research. Customers tend to discuss fellow customers what they feel and help them articulate their deepest anxieties and desires. At the end of the day, marketers must be able to capture the social dynamics of communities.

Netnography - developed by Robert Kozinets, this adapts the practice of ethnography (cultures) to understand human behaviours in e-tribes or online communities.

This requires a lot of immersion by the company an upgraded version of social listening. If we are to relate it to the BK tweets, they are tying to have that human-to-human connection.

With the number of tweets and likes, it shows that the community of BK eaters are loving the way Burger King would go out of its way to become members of the communities. There must be this notion for empathy. This is one good example of being deeply engaged as active participants of online communities.

Emphatic Research- involves human perspective and empathy in the research process. This normally includes collaboration with various individuals such as product designers, engineers, psychologists and anthropologists. Uncovering of the latent customer needs is the main purpose for this method.

Stephen Sampson explain in his book Leaders without titles , horizontal leaders have six human attributes that attract others to them.

1.Physicality

Look alone plays a major role in coming up with your brand identity. Well-designed logos or well-crafted taglines shall provide influence in making them unique

2. Intellectuality Think beyond the obvious. You must be able to innovate and generate new ideas. Solving customer's problems must be the main focus of this attribute as humans have that ability to think as they have knowledge on various subject matters.

3. Sociability Share interesting content using good verbal and nonverbal communication skills. You have to have that ability to listen and answer customer's conversations. Social media also plays a factor here.

4. Emotionality Connecting with customers through inspirational messages or humorous actions. Marketers can be very powerful influencers if emotions are used to connect with the customers.

5. Personability A company who is able to take full responsibility for its flaws shows great self-aware-awareness. They are willing to improve themselves.

6. Morality This is about having a strong positive moral character who has the ability to know the difference between and right and wrong. Marketers should have that strong integrity and ethical behavior on doing the right thing for the brand.

REFLECTION QUESTIONS:

What are the deepest anxieties and desires of your customers?

Our customers always demand for lowest price in the market. Our company is focused on being an ethical entity and would not take advantage of its customers. We strive to achieve the best products for the Filipino people.

Our customers demand for a bit more of intimacy in terms of our price increases and services. We need to connect to them in a more intimate level.

Does your brand possess human qualities? What can you do to make it more human?

We continue to do our Lakbay Alalay program to help motorists during their long weekend trips by offering. We also have a tulong Aral program which provides opportunities for less fortunate children pursue a complete education program all the way up to employment with Petron.

Our interactions are really more into the human-to-human experience of our gasoline stations but on social media interaction this is still lacking as many of our customers do not make use of our app. Our public affairs needs to revamp our company website to make it more enticing to the customers.