Love & Brands

A friend running brands for a big giant software company sent me a note asking if I knew someone who had 10 years of expertise doing FaceBook/Twitter marketing.

 

Anything strike you as seriously wrong about that?

 

 

Note-2
Just think for a minute and you’ll get it…. Yes, that’s right. Twitter only started in 2007; Facebook only in 2003. Any brand asking for 10 years of experience in either is telling their own story, just fine.

 

The recent Groupon, Kenneth Cole and VW ads showed us how social media’s interaction with traditional media is amplifying their messages — both good and bad — so that even those that didn’t watch the Groupon ad live heard about it almost instantaneously.  Brands all know they need to show up in the social world. And most of them are buying a clue. Charlene Li’s and Tara Hunt’s most fabulous work as well as Mitch Joel’s agency respectively teach and help a brand show up as their authentic selves.

 

But once they show up, do we like them?
More importantly, given the start of this week was Valentine’s Day, do we love them?
And what does love have to do with brands anyways?

 

Most brands spend time trying to get customers to Love Them. United, AT&T, or Comcast act with that aura.

 

Great brands manage to demonstrate Love Towards customers. Adobe’s graphic designers, Zappos shoe buyers, Netflix online consumers, and Google’s many interesting and free tools … these brands demonstrate love.

 

Greater still brands help people become awesome at what they do, so Customers Love Themselves*. Start-ups like SlideShare & ProFounder embody this. But big entities can do it, too, like Harvard Business Review, and Nike. After all, Nike’s tagline of “just do it” is what we say to ourselves not what Nike is saying to us.

 

That gets me thinking that while brands and companies do this, don’t people do this also? Maybe it’s worth thinking about how each of us spends time — to get love, to show love, or to help people become awesome at what they do….

 

Maybe that’ll help you to be more kick-ass!?

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