If you want customers to connect with your organization, they first need to feel emotional about your organization. They need something to connect with.

How do you get people to feel emotional about your organization? You need to do the same thing you’d do if you, as an individual, wanted to connect emotionally with another individual. You’d reveal things about yourself, you’d show them who you are. To reveal things about “who” the organization is, it helps to think of the organization as having human traits. This will not only help customers relate to your organization’s brand, it will help you to begin forming an authenticity for your organization that will become more real to you as you move forward. So start now to think of your organization as a person, for the following good reasons:

people know how to talk to people; people don’t know how to talk to organizations (so they invented “corporate-speak,” which you must avoid!)

organizations are like crowds, and crowds are impersonal — they tend to yell rather than communicate

an organization’s instincts for survival are different than an individual’s — a person’s first instinct for survival is to connect with people, not so for an organization, which will often retreat under stress

FOUR MAJOR QUESTIONS: DISCOVERING YOUR BASIC TRAITS
To get started thinking of your organization as a person, there are four major questions you need to ask.

What are your organization’s basic traits? Take a moment to think through this exercise. Close your eyes and picture your organization standing in front of you, then answer the following questions.

1. Is the brand male, female, or neither? (Most will be either strongly male or strongly female.)

2. Is the brand young, old, middle aged, or ageless? (Try to put an age on this “person.”)

3. Is the brand upscale, blue collar, or all-encompassing? (Be honest, here, if you want to attract the correct audience.)

4. Is the brand local, regional, national, or global? (This will also help you focus on the correct audience.)

Start now to think of your organization as a person, and watch the effectiveness of your communications rise.

[tags]brand strategy, emotional branding, authentic branding, basic traits[/tags]