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Listen "Why Real Brands Can’t be Invented (Part 2)"
Episode Synopsis
A reputation for lying is the only thing worse than a reputation for bending the truth.
Either way, getting caught doing it obliterates everything—trust, careers, and not the least of all, relationships. From the still-smoldering fallout of the Ashley Madison email hack to notorious, tabloid-worthy cover-ups, lying creates a situation no person, business, or company ever wants to be in.
And as we’ll see in this blog, the same principle applies to branding.
Last month, we looked at why brands can’t be arbitrarily invented. From the carelessness to pretentiousness, we touched on the importance of building a meaningful brand identity.
Aside from working gradually, and thoroughly, to understand every aspect of what your organization does, there’s no way to capture and present a brand identity that tells the full truth. As we’ll discuss in this blog, being fictitious, or outright deceitful, is the fastest way to destroy a brand or company that people can trust.
https://youtu.be/Gn3_G4rKEds
In dating or branding, misleading people is just plain creepy
Imagine for a moment that you’ve been trying for a long time to find that special person, so you decide to download a dating app. You’ve heard some success stories, so you’re giving up on the real world and heading online.
So you open up the app and search some profiles, swipe left a few times, and find some others interesting. Then you find one profile and you say, “Oh wow! That person is really cute. I like that photo.” You read the bio, and you think: “Yeah, definitely, it seems like I'll click with them. What they’re saying resonates with me. I like The Lord of the Rings too?! I’m excited to get to know them.” You send them a message, and they send one back. Before you know it you’re on your way to your first date.
And on that first date, you discover that . . . they look nothing like their profile photo. You’ve been catfished!
The bio you read? Most of it was fake. Some of it was exaggerated and some was made up to sound good.
That sense of connection? The feeling you could relate with them? A complete illusion. You just happened to be in the “target demographic” this person was hunting for a date with.
You find yourself wishing you could swipe in real life.
Even if they turned out to be pretty cool in their own right and had an interesting life story, or even if they had a lot in common with you, it wouldn’t matter to you anymore because they lied to you. Any potential they had for being trustworthy would be gone.
The whole charade is just plain creepy.
Lying About Your Brand is Just as Bad
That is how your customers feel when you try to form a fake relationship with them.
You can’t just arbitrarily decide you want to connect with a certain demographic and then change your branding to try to fit what you think they want. It might get them in the door, but they’ll leave quicker than they came in. You can’t present your business as something it isn’t.
Real people are naturally adept at spotting fake people. We can recognize the stock photos on a website and artificial smiles from employees who hate their jobs. We feel cheated when the fun-loving tone of your Twitter feed doesn’t match the robotic operator we get when we call expecting to talk with a live person.
The way you express your brand publicly, whether through a website, a newsletter or social media, is an invitation to extend a relationship. But a business can’t simply invent the people who are part of its team or the kind of relationships it wants with the customers it serves. It has to carefully and painstakingly hire and train that team to align with its values, and it has to grow relationships with its customers through authentic and honest communication.
“Dating” your customers in the real world takes a lot more work than creating a profile page with some beautiful photos and inspiring text, but those genuine relationships will pay off in loyalty and commitment.
Either way, getting caught doing it obliterates everything—trust, careers, and not the least of all, relationships. From the still-smoldering fallout of the Ashley Madison email hack to notorious, tabloid-worthy cover-ups, lying creates a situation no person, business, or company ever wants to be in.
And as we’ll see in this blog, the same principle applies to branding.
Last month, we looked at why brands can’t be arbitrarily invented. From the carelessness to pretentiousness, we touched on the importance of building a meaningful brand identity.
Aside from working gradually, and thoroughly, to understand every aspect of what your organization does, there’s no way to capture and present a brand identity that tells the full truth. As we’ll discuss in this blog, being fictitious, or outright deceitful, is the fastest way to destroy a brand or company that people can trust.
https://youtu.be/Gn3_G4rKEds
In dating or branding, misleading people is just plain creepy
Imagine for a moment that you’ve been trying for a long time to find that special person, so you decide to download a dating app. You’ve heard some success stories, so you’re giving up on the real world and heading online.
So you open up the app and search some profiles, swipe left a few times, and find some others interesting. Then you find one profile and you say, “Oh wow! That person is really cute. I like that photo.” You read the bio, and you think: “Yeah, definitely, it seems like I'll click with them. What they’re saying resonates with me. I like The Lord of the Rings too?! I’m excited to get to know them.” You send them a message, and they send one back. Before you know it you’re on your way to your first date.
And on that first date, you discover that . . . they look nothing like their profile photo. You’ve been catfished!
The bio you read? Most of it was fake. Some of it was exaggerated and some was made up to sound good.
That sense of connection? The feeling you could relate with them? A complete illusion. You just happened to be in the “target demographic” this person was hunting for a date with.
You find yourself wishing you could swipe in real life.
Even if they turned out to be pretty cool in their own right and had an interesting life story, or even if they had a lot in common with you, it wouldn’t matter to you anymore because they lied to you. Any potential they had for being trustworthy would be gone.
The whole charade is just plain creepy.
Lying About Your Brand is Just as Bad
That is how your customers feel when you try to form a fake relationship with them.
You can’t just arbitrarily decide you want to connect with a certain demographic and then change your branding to try to fit what you think they want. It might get them in the door, but they’ll leave quicker than they came in. You can’t present your business as something it isn’t.
Real people are naturally adept at spotting fake people. We can recognize the stock photos on a website and artificial smiles from employees who hate their jobs. We feel cheated when the fun-loving tone of your Twitter feed doesn’t match the robotic operator we get when we call expecting to talk with a live person.
The way you express your brand publicly, whether through a website, a newsletter or social media, is an invitation to extend a relationship. But a business can’t simply invent the people who are part of its team or the kind of relationships it wants with the customers it serves. It has to carefully and painstakingly hire and train that team to align with its values, and it has to grow relationships with its customers through authentic and honest communication.
“Dating” your customers in the real world takes a lot more work than creating a profile page with some beautiful photos and inspiring text, but those genuine relationships will pay off in loyalty and commitment.
More episodes of the podcast Resoundcast - the branding podcast from Resound, a creative agency
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15/03/2023
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