Press For the Agency

Inform: Speaking Human

This article is courtesy of LS:N Global (download the original).

 

The time has come for small to shine, says Eric Karjaluoto, author of Speak Human. In the Turbulent Teens, small companies are in a prime position to engage with consumers seeking the intimate, the personable and the approachable. Often community-focused, they are also well placed to serve as necessary anchors in challenging times – great news for our Betapreneurs. Yet larger brands can also adopt the principles of small companies, Karjaluoto contends. The same principles hold true. Be polite. Work well with others. Tell a story. Speak, well, human.

‘We’ve learned ways to abstract things to make them sound more sophisticated and more complicated,’ Karjaluoto tells LS:N Global. ‘Isn’t it better if it’s simple and everyone knows what you’re talking about?’

In Speak Human, Karjaluoto, a founding partner of Vancouver digital agency smashLAB, shows brand managers how to find the strategic advantage in the small.

 

‘After a lifetime of ridiculous advertisements, phoney marketing and outrageous exaggerations, we need to step back and relearn how to communicate – in a way that works,’ he writes.

The need for effective communication has become particularly pertinent as the reach and popularity of social media grow. As we explore in our report on Brandtocracies, the new mood is one of collaboration and conversation, and the new consumer expectation is that brands big and small open themselves up to real-time dialogue.

Small, independent companies are increasingly showing the way forward – mostly because they can. Flexible entities, they are often unhampered by hierarchies of management and other corporate limitations. These human-sized businesses are ideally placed to forge ahead in a Brandtocratic era.

‘In a company of hundreds or thousands of people, [the] legal [team] always has to look at everything you do, or people want to put a disclaimer on a blog post that’s longer than [it should be],’ claims Karjaluoto. ‘It just isn’t conducive to making content that’s engaging to the audience.’

Yet consumer engagement is essential when brands find themselves competing for people’s attention in an increasingly saturated marketplace. On this crowded stage, the spotlight is turning to companies with ‘human’ voices, such as Kit cosmetics, Method cleaning products, Gü desserts and Pieminister pies.

Common among these brands, too, is their ability to infuse everyday products with the sparkle of a special something – their capacity to embody human ideals and ideas. Kit’s fun-loving, accessible take on beauty makes it the girl-next-door with whom everyone wants to be friends. Method’s natural, eco-considerate products and simple branding suggest a summer-tanned neighbour you want to grab by the hand as you run through the fields. Gü puddings invite you in with a twinkle in the eye. Pieminister is reminiscent of that group of cool boys up the street, all good-natured and whole-hearted and trading jokes as you pass by.

But speaking human goes beyond a brand adopting a personality. The next step is using this personality to engage with customers. And the internet is a good place to do this, says Karjaluoto. Social networks and voting platforms (such as Digg and Reddit) help spread messages around the world and back quicker and more widely than traditional media. Importantly, messages passed on through social media are generally judged as being more credible than those on tv or in magazine advertisements, for instance, because they come from a trusted source.

The most successful brands ensure that their online presence is as human as their offline persona. As Karjaluoto puts it, ‘act like people first and corporations second.’ For those concerned that the new technology seems at odds with the warmth of a personal touch, Karjaluoto demonstrates that the first rule of the social web is about an utterly human instinct: telling stories to make a connection.

 

‘You can never entirely reproduce a sensory experience on the web – you can’t replicate drinking an espresso online – but I think you can hit a lot of the right markers for it,’ he says. ‘And you can tell a story that elicits the sensory experience that heads in the right direction.’

Online or offline, storytelling is key for brands learning to speak human, and Karjaluoto suggests that a good story spreads faster than even the most well-rehearsed marketing song and dance.

‘Stories are likely to be shared,’ he says. ‘I think what it comes down to is giving people something that they can easily tell someone else about. We’re all looking for stories to recount, and few of us want to share a pitch.’

Our top five take-outs

1: Size doesn’t matter. ‘With all of the attention [that brands such as] Google, Nike and Coke get in the press, we often think the only measure of an operation is its size,’ Karjaluoto writes in Speak Human. ‘This is changing, and I think we have technology in part to thank, in conjunction with the buzz we see around startup culture.’

2: Speaking human means resonating on an individual scale. ‘We’re starting to demand design and better experiences because the baseline is so high,’ says Karjaluoto. ‘Anyone can own a Mercedes or have a high-end coffee – whatever they want, they can afford. As a result, we look for more personalised or unique experiences that make us feel special.’

3: No one likes a phoney. ‘It’s not that [big brands] can’t behave in a more human fashion, but they have to be realistic about who they are,’ explains Karjaluoto. ‘There’s nothing wrong with me dressing well if I go into a meeting with a more upscale client, but it’s going to feel weird if I walk in wearing a pinstripe suit and cufflinks – that’s not me. And it goes the other way: a 60-year-old executive walking in wearing streetwear is not going to look more streetwise than if they came in a suit.’ In a recent publicity campaign, Swedish furniture giant Ikea showcased its collections in four metro stations in Paris, including sofas so weary commuters could rest their feet. The brand, a global retailer, effectively positioned itself as a very local, very human enabler – without trying to be someone else.

 

4: Shared values draw humans to other humans. In 2007, smashLAB spearheaded Design Can Change, an initiative that brought together designers to address climate change. The effort created buzz from all over the world, and galvanised the designer community around the issue. ‘We were doing something that we felt was important, and it brought a lot of people to us,’ Karjaluoto says. ‘It was inadvertent, but it was interesting to see that by putting our values out there, we didn’t scare people off – we drew them closer.’

5: Despite its advantages, the web is not the answer to all your woes. Think about what your customers want, and provide it. Bells and whistles may distract and annoy. ‘Sometimes people should look at the web in a purely utilitarian fashion,’ believes Karjaluoto. ‘There’s a restaurant up the street that has a flash website with music and sounds. And all I want is a take-out menu. I already know their food is good – all I want is their phone number to place my order.’

Speak Human: Outsmarting the Big Guys by Getting Personal (smashLAB, 2009) is out now.