{"id":3011,"date":"2011-05-27T02:16:11","date_gmt":"2011-05-27T02:16:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thesocialcmo.com\/blog\/?p=3011"},"modified":"2011-05-27T02:16:11","modified_gmt":"2011-05-27T02:16:11","slug":"the-importance-of-brand-humility","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thesocialcmo.com\/blog\/2011\/05\/the-importance-of-brand-humility\/","title":{"rendered":"The Importance of Brand Humility"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Even if you are absolutely certain that your product\/service is one of the best on the market, what you<\/em><\/strong> think of your brand is not nearly as important as what your consumers<\/em><\/strong> think of it and say about it.\u00a0 They are, after all, the market<\/em>!<\/p>\n

<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cBrand humility is the only response to a fast-changing and competitive marketplace. The humble brand understands that it needs to re-earn attention, re-earn loyalty and reconnect with its audience as if every day is the first day.\u201d<\/em> \u2013 Seth Godin (in a recent blog post<\/a>)<\/p>\n

In my opinion, Seth\u2019s message is right on target.\u00a0 Brands simply cannot compete in this marketplace if they don\u2019t make an ongoing effort to put aside ego-driven campaigns in order to genuinely engage with their consumers and potential consumers. \u00a0Relationships require humility, whether it\u2019s personal relationships, business relationships, or brand\/consumer relationships.<\/p>\n

To be a humble brand, you need to first listen.<\/strong> Thanks to social media, brands can gather vast amounts of valuable information about consumer preferences\u2026 but the humble brand needs to go well beyond data gathering and actually listen<\/em> to the consumers.\u00a0 True listening requires a willingness to place consumers\u2019 opinions above the brand\u2019s own (usually biased) view of itself<\/strong>, and to even make product\/service changes based on that feedback.<\/p>\n

A humble brand also needs to stay engaged with consumers. <\/strong>Brands tend to fall short on this one because real engagement takes time, attention, and overall effort, but I can assure you that working in a vacuum is one of the biggest mistakes a brand can make! \u00a0A one-time Tweet, a quick Facebook posting, or an email here and there is an announcement, not engagement.\u00a0 Engagement requires a brand to reach out to consumers<\/strong> by asking questions, offering useful content and solutions to relevant consumer issues, providing useful community forums and feedback venues, etc.<\/p>\n

A humble brand focuses on the <\/strong>relationship<\/strong><\/a> before the sale.<\/strong> When a brand adopts the marketing philosophy that it is all about relationships, they automatically begin paying more attention to the consumer needs and preferences to learn who the consumers really are. Consumers who feel valued by a brand will in turn assign value to the brand by buying the product\/service and passing recommendations on to their networks.\u00a0 The sale then becomes a natural part of the ROR (Return on Relationship)<\/strong><\/a> instead of a \u201chard sell\u201d effort.<\/p>\n

It is a new marketplace out there \u2013 let your brand be an example by modeling how effective true brand humility can be!<\/p>\n

Ted Rubin<\/p>\n

Originally posted at<\/em> <\/em>Collective Bias<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Even if you are absolutely certain that your product\/service is one of the best on the market, what you think of your brand is not nearly as important as what your consumers think of it and say about it.\u00a0 They are, after all, the market! \u201cBrand humility is the only response to a fast-changing and … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[137,7],"tags":[1249,1184,1251,854,32,120,479,147,1248,30,1029,3,1250],"class_list":["post-3011","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-all-posts","category-tedrubin","tag-brand-humility","tag-collective-bias","tag-consumer-engagement","tag-customer-experience","tag-marketing","tag-roi","tag-ror","tag-seth-godin","tag-shopper-listening","tag-social-media","tag-social-media-marketing","tag-ted-rubin","tag-the-exceptional-brand"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thesocialcmo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3011","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thesocialcmo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thesocialcmo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thesocialcmo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thesocialcmo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3011"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.thesocialcmo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3011\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3014,"href":"https:\/\/www.thesocialcmo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3011\/revisions\/3014"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thesocialcmo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3011"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thesocialcmo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3011"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thesocialcmo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3011"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}