Your guide to brand humanization — and the psychology behind it

If you’ve been following along with our consumer psychology blogs lately, you may have noticed one common theme: The human brain has a lot more to do with your consumer buying habits than you might think. It’s often those instinctual decisions (picking a product because you’ve used the brand before, running to purchase an item because time is running out, engaging with a brand that your friends love) that are heavily influenced by all sorts of psychological responses.

Another example? Interacting with a brand because it has a certain personal touch you can’t get enough of. This comes back to a psychology-based idea called brand humanization. Designed to help consumers form a greater level of connection and trust with a brand, brand humanization is created by attaching human personality and emotions to a brand in hopes of making consumer buying decisions easier.

Knowing how powerful this strategy can be, we called on branding expert James Pardoe, partner of Joie Brands, a boutique brand agency specializing in brand humanization, to discuss the power of human emotions, ethics surrounding this tactic, and the impact human tendencies have on consumer buying decisions. 

This is what he said about the marketing strategy:

Emotions build humanlike connections and promote strong customer relationships 

Whether you’re in touch with your emotional side or you’re more of the analytical type, there’s no denying that humans are emotional creatures.

We experience life through a wide range of emotions that help us better connect with the people around us. Our emotions are the guiding lights we need to figure out how we’ll spend those experiences. They also help us decipher what brands are worth connecting with. 

“Humans trust humans, not companies. So brand humanization is how you make a company more human. As social creatures who have evolved to survive through tribal behaviors and customs, we value human relationships above all else and make our buying decisions by weighing the emotional benefit of buying against a perceived level of risk,” Pardoe said. “Evaluating that risk is much easier when it's a human being with a personality, rather than an emotionless entity. Therefore, evaluating whether to buy becomes much easier when there's a personality to evaluate.”

When it comes to your marketing goals, you can pretty much bet that meeting them will require you to establish a long-standing relationship with your customers. Going about this sort of process entails a lot of guesswork — figuring out what your customers like, getting rid of what they don’t — but human psychology does give a little insight into what people often find attractive in their interpersonal connections. 

The good news is the human brain doesn’t discriminate; concepts like emotional intelligence are just as important to some consumers when they’re looking at brands as it is when it comes to friendships or other relationships. It’s part of why some consumers react so well to brand humanization.

“There is a concept in psychology known as mirror neurons; whenever you see someone expressing an emotion, your mirror neurons are triggered, which prompts you to feel the same emotion. In layman's terms this is empathy. We can't help but feel the emotions that we see in others. When a brand exhibits a personality, it can begin to trigger these mirror neurons and therefore trigger emotions within the buyer.”

Consumers’ emotional responses can be so influential during the shopping experience that they can impact buying decisions. 

“The second factor [why consumers appreciate brand humanization] is to do with the decision-making process. According to Harvard professor Gerald Zaltman, 95 percent of our decision-making process is subconscious and driven by emotions as opposed to rational thought. The most extreme example of this is when people suffer brain damage to parts of the brain responsible for emotion. They also become incapable of making decisions. They can't decide what to wear in the mornings, or what to make for breakfast. So we know that emotion and decision-making are closely related,” said Pardoe.

If you’ve thought your decisions were logically based, the fact that they’ve been heavily influenced by your emotions might come as a surprise. Pardoe says this is often because we feel an emotional benefit when we imagine owning a product or buying a service, and we then use logical reasoning to justify our decision to ourselves. 

“Think about the last time you wanted to buy a new phone. You thought about all the great features it had and felt positive emotions, then used logic such as 'my current phone is broken' or 'I will miss out on priceless memories if I don't upgrade my camera' to justify the purchase and satiate your emotional desires for the new phone,” said Pardoe. “Bringing these two factors together, we realize that decisions are led by emotions, and emotions are strongly triggered by humans. When you humanize a brand, you gain the ability to trigger emotions, which therefore strongly influences their decision to buy from you.”

Brand humanization is a case-by-case marketing tactic

Brand humanization certainly has its fair share of benefits, but that doesn’t mean it’s the end all be all for your marketing campaigns. As with any other marketing tactic, you want to be sure that the approach you’re taking is the best fit for your target audience.

“Different people resonate with different traits depending on their own personality and the requirements at the time. For example, when socializing with friends you'd resonate with a fun, playful brand, whereas in a work setting you might resonate with a professional, reliable and corporate brand,” said Pardoe.

When it comes to knowing your target audience, there may be no better time to have a clear understanding of who you’re serving than when you’re shaping your brand personality. Pardoe says it’s important that your brand personality is carefully created to resonate with your target audience and consider their state of mind when they're likely to interact with you. That might be cute and bubbly, or professional and corporate. Nevertheless, when you're building a corporate brand, the same principles apply. At the end of the day, you're still selling to humans who are wired the same way on aggregate.

The ethics of brand humanization

Marketing psychology is a vast topic, one that causes some to question just how morally sound each concept is. Brand humanization is no exception.

“As brands, what we're ultimately trying to do is attract attention and hold that attention for long enough to communicate a message of value and expectations to the prospective customer. Once we've conveyed our value, we then want to motivate them to make a buying decision,” said Pardoe. “Since the dawn of time humans have been doing this, in ethical and unethical ways. These days, we're armed with more insight into how the decision-making process works, and we can use that to our advantage. Is that ethical? I'd say the line has become blurrier.”

Serving your customers is top priority, and you’ll have to determine how you can do that as ethically as possible. Getting praised and rewarded for designing a brand that resonates extremely well with your target audience is great, but is it long-lasting if customers are only happy because of poor practices?

So how can you ensure that you’re using brand humanization ethically? Use what you know to truly provide value to your customers.

“My personal line in the sand is that the brand should genuinely be providing value. If that's the case, then using these insights becomes beneficial to society at large,” said Pardoe. 

Consider the expectations that you set. If you're setting realistic expectations with your brand, then your customers will be delighted, come back for more and tell others. If you're setting unrealistic expectations, you'll fall short, resulting in angry customers who spread the word. That tends to hurt the business. It becomes a self-regulating mechanism, which therefore rewards an ethical approach to brand humanization.

Tips for brand humanization

Learning how to humanize an inanimate concept like your brand can seem close to impossible. How do you make a business filled with products and services become so lifelike that consumers develop a personal connection with it?

Pardoe says the first step is figuring out your brand purpose and what you have to offer the right set of customers. Knowing what role you have in the world and what customers will benefit from your business will take you to the next step: defining your brand personality. 

Once you know your perfect customer, ask yourself what personality traits resonate with them. Consider the scenarios and mindsets they'll be in when interacting and buying from you. What do they need from you? What promises are they expecting you to deliver on?

Setting realistic expectations will help ensure your customers remain happy and loyal for the long term. You want to find the balance between making promises you can't keep and being so generic that you’ll fail to impress potential customers.

Your brand personality and brand promise dictate who your brand is as a person, how it communicates, when, and most importantly, why. Having both areas of your brand established will help to promote consistency at every touchpoint, reaffirming that this is a genuine part of your brand and helping to deter consumer doubt or mistrust.

“If done well, you'll find that every marketing touchpoint has a greater impact on a psychological level. You'll see higher engagement rates, more people moving along the buyer's journey, increased value perception (and therefore willing to spend more) and higher purchase rates,” said Pardoe. “Brand humanization acts as a lubricant on the gears that dictate growth ... You'll find that everything works better, and instead of swimming against the tide, you're gliding downstream, and that's so much easier!”

Humanizing your brand gives you the chance to meet your customers in their rawest form, appealing to their emotions and catering to their psychological needs. Meeting eye to eye allows you to truly see your customers and allows them to see you back.