Relationships and the Faceless Brand

Guess Who. Source 5 – Relations

Do you accept friend requests from people with fanciful avatars? I have a collection of unsorted friend requests from cats, knights, celebrities, and all kind of strange creatures. The point that is always stressed in this regard – the use of an avatar frees some people from shyness; it helps them to express themselves more openly. How about businesses?

It comes as no surprise that businesses have everything to do with their brands (logos, slogans, information, offerings, announcements), but not with real people who represent the brand in social media. The desire to articulate the brand is quite understandable, but who do I talk to? As a consumer I don’t want to interact with a faceless organization. The situation businesses are confronted with now is how to build relationships with the audience – that’s why a human touch to social media branding is really necessary. After all, the audience wants to know who is behind the avatar with the brand logo on it.

One solution is to let customers know the brand’s community manager(s). For instance, how ASB bank does it on Twitter (screenshot). BNZ used the same approach, but recently they excluded this information from their social media profiles and not for the good.