The brand as individual
By Molly FlattPublicly accessible figureheads are increasingly important for brands. People build relationships with individuals not corporations, and word of mouth thrives on opinion and character rather than bland generalisation, so brands are trying to personalise their social media presences and give them a single, relatable, human focus for engagement. At last week’s Social Media Influence conference in London, our new business don Tim got stuck into an interesting debate about whether CEOs will increasingly come from PR backgrounds rather than industrial or financial specialities, as they will be cannier at embodying and expressing the company voice.
So you might think that it would be easier to promote good word of mouth when you ARE the service provider or product - except that this means that professional and personal sentiments blur even more easily. Doctors have apparently been asking patients to sign gag orders banning them from posting reviews at sites such as RateMDs.com or an upcoming NHS hub, fearing that “sniping comments can unfairly ruin a doctor’s reputation” (just in from Yahoo! Tech) . It’s a pretty dim move - how comfortable would you feel on the operating table after that? - but when you consider new US site Person Ratings, where you can publicly and anonymously rate anyone you like on categories such as intelligence, sex appeal and class, you start to realise just how hungrily people want to commodify and judge each other for less than altruistic reasons (more at El Reg).
But it is possible to get it right. Chris Rock is a great example of how to develop positive word of mouth around yourself as an individual professional, by building a great tribe of evangelists, engaging with them using a range of social platforms, and getting them involved in your success by being bold and experimental. It helps if you’re a comedy genius, of course. Read how he does it here.
