By Colin Heward (Senior Art Director)
Today more then ever, people are focused on personal brand. We live in a time when brands are trying to act like people, and people are trying to act like brands.
There’s no doubt, social media has changed the marketing landscape forever. Social media has made it infinitely easier for brands to act like people — talking directly to customers; expressing feelings by sharing an opinion on Twitter or adding a teardrop to their company logo.
The flip-side is people thinking of themselves and every selfie as a branding play. Think back to the 2015 Supreme Court ruling for same-sex marriage, or the series of mass shootings around the world this year.
How many of your Facebook friends did you see with a rainbow or French flag over their image? With each new tragedy or social cause comes a new branding opportunity.
Of course, individual brands are nothing new. Einstein was probably the original. Granted, he didn’t have Facebook or a selfie stick at his disposal, but he built a pretty powerful brand.
Case in point: When I say the word “genius”, who do you think of?
In behavioral science parlance, you just experienced Priming. My earlier mention of Einstein “primed” you to think of him first when you saw the word genius. Though, truthfully, wouldn’t he be your first choice anyway? That’s the strength of his brand.
But for brands, there’s another layer of difficulty that people don’t have, and that’s coming off as sincere. Every decision comes off as strategic, whereas people like you and me, and Einstein in his day, don’t have those concerns.
Then there are companies like Jones Soda. Created in Vancouver, BC in 1995 from the vision of founder Peter van Stolk and photographer/designer Victor John Penner, Jones was launched with the idea of incorporating random photographs onto bottles using shots taken by Penner.
Yet when consumers began submitting their own photos, they quickly realized that user-sourced participation made the brand even more special and personalized branding was taken to another level.
This is a perfect example of Liking. The principle of Liking states that things that remind us of ourselves are things that we prefer.
Jones Soda = Picture of Me! (Which feels good.) Their tagline reads: Jones Soda. Your photo. Your soda. Your brand. That about sums it up, doesn’t it?
In 2014, other brands such as Coca-Cola followed this trend. Their “Share a Coke” campaign allowed you to search store shelves for YOUR NAME on a Coke bottle.
Or you could go to buy.shareacoke.com, enter your name, and purchase a customized bottle of Coke for $5.00 plus shipping. Not a bad markup for 8oz. of sugar water.
This limited time offer directly plays into the Scarcity Principle. Opportunities seem more valuable to us when they are less available. It all boils down to this: we want what we’re afraid we can’t have, and the fear of losing out on something (like a Coke bottle with your name on it) can be an extremely powerful motivator.
Of course, if you were lucky enough — I unfortunately was not — you probably could have found your name on a bottle at the local grocery store and paid a more reasonable price for your own “personal” branding.
Not to be outdone, Pepsi started a campaign this year in which they used emojis to invite consumers to “Say It With Pepsi”. The #PepsiMoji campaign brought a provocative and fresh take on the cultural phenomenon of emojis, serving as another way for a major global brand to become more personalized with their consumer.
All of these products fall into a new behavior science principle Dr. Robert Cialdini, the “godfather” of persuasion science and the creator of the celebrated Six Principles of Influence, calls “Unity“.
By that, he is referring to a shared identity that both the influencer and influenced are part of. The more we perceive that people (or a product) are part of “us”, the more likely we are to be influenced by them.
With products, influence often equates to dollars, and it recently did with me.
I’m what you’d call a beer snob. I only purchase craft beers. Not because it’s cool and trendy, but because they taste so much better then the Coors Lights and Budweisers of the world… So it came as a shock to family when I recently purchased a case of Bud Light.
Wait, wait, let me explain! Budweiser recently teamed up with the NFL to produce Bud Light cans for different teams, so if you live in New England like I do, you can proudly show your team support by drinking a Patriots Bud Light! Just as soon as you finish your personalized Jones Soda, Coca-Cola and Pepsi.
You never know, YOU could become the next brand sensation.
Colin Heward is a Senior Art Director for Wilde Agency. Earlier this year, he shed some light on “The Many Hidden Meanings In L0G0 Design“, and in the process, he made anyone who never noticed the arrow in the FedEx logo feel like a gigantic doofus.
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