Can brands feel more human?
Brands are something we can have some type of feeling toward. Positive, negative or neutral. And while brands and people have a lot of similar traits, they are not the same thing. Steve Jobs isn’t Apple, even though it sometimes feels that way. And that’s an exception. Henry Ford started his company, but he is not the brand. And yet, brands are fueled by humans, our efforts. They can’t exist without them. So the questions is, can brands feel more human? Should they? Or should we just let them be the brands of old. The way it’s always been? Can People Scale? We are reaching a point where successful examples of people powered service, and experiences are still not all that common. A few examples stand out, Comcast, Dell, Zappos, Southwest, Cha Cha, Starbucks etc. But they’re not perfect and each have their own challenges. The fact is that it’s more business friendly to outsource your call center, automate services and systematize process. Human powered efforts can be immensely powerful a
