Bringing Personality Back To Your Business

Today I was browsing the web and stumbled on There Is Grandeur In This View Of Life. It’s an hilarious blog written by Goofy Girl, where she tells us about her life and her thoughts on random things that tend to happen to most of us. What I specially enjoy about this blog is Goofy Girl’s tone: personable, unique and sometimes outrageous – basically, it’s a blog that you can immediately see that it’s written by real person. I guess you’re probably thinking “Well, all blog posts are written by someone.” But don’t you feel frustrated to see all these blogs using bland, general language so they won’t hurt someone’s values? This is particularly true for corporate blogs. How do we go around this? Is using insipid, nondescript language the only avenue for corporations?

I have to confess I have committed the same mistake. As a small business owner, it’s easy to fall into the trap of trying to get your message to resound with the general audience. As a marketer, though, I know this is plain wrong. So how do you find the balance between genuine, personable communications and the formality expected from you?

Last year I read Rohit Bhargava’s book Personality Not Included: Why Companies Lose Their Authenticity. Rohit identifies four reasons for why businesses lose their unique feel:

1. Adding lawyers (used to) inspire consumer trust. The more successful the organization, the more layers you could expect to encounter when dealing with it.

2. Advertising (used to) define a company’s identity. Before social media, most interactions with the company were either at the customer support level or through media placements.

3. Consistency is (or used to be) a successful business practice. Companies wanted to provide a consistent experience no matter how many locations or how big that business was. Needless to say, consistency is the enemy of individuality.

4. Risk management is (or used to be) the first priority, or simply put, protecting the business from negative situations – such as an employee sharing a real perception and not the company’s boilerplate.

Obviously, companies that did manage to stand out from the crowd enjoyed great success (such as Coca-Cola in the ‘90s). But nowadays, brands ARE expected to be full of personality (thank you, social media!). We’re done with the corporate talk! Ban it from your vocabulary – it’s dead. It should have been banned long, long time ago.

How do you stop the corporate communications blandness and inject some personality into your brand? Here’s how:

1. Apply the UAT filter to your brand. Identify what’s Unique, Authentic and Talkable about your business.

2. Give a voice to your employees. Let them talk about your business on social media and actually identify themselves as employees of your organization. Don’t forget to have a social media policy in place, though – one that is flexible so it allows employees to express themselves. The goal here is to foster individuality vs the big (faceless) behemoth that is a corporation.

3. Tell your story. Every business has its unique story. What’s yours? What makes you (the business owner, the marketing person, the customer support guy) passionate about what you do? Show your enthusiasm and motivation – something that goes beyond profit.

And if you one of your status updates/brochures/ads make someone mad? Or what if an employee shares information that is confidential or simply wrong? Just apologize – you’re only human. It’s time to drop the corporate veil and let that unique personality come out.

As for me, I just glued a post-it in my home office that reminds me to drop the “marketing talk” from my corporate years and let people discover… well, me.

Recommended reading:
How To Deal With Negative Word-Of-Mouth on Social Media
Confessions Of An Ex-Shopaholic: A Journey To Change Consumer Behaviour
Nature’s Path: A Quirkily Beautiful Shift Towards Sustainable Branding