The Importance of Brand Humility

By Ted Rubin

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. They are, after all, the market!

“Brand 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.” – Seth Godin (in a recent blog post)

In my opinion, Seth’s message is right on target. Brands simply cannot compete in this marketplace if they don’t make an ongoing effort to put aside ego-driven campaigns in order to genuinely engage with their consumers and potential consumers. Relationships require humility, whether it’s personal relationships, business relationships, or brand/consumer relationships.

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

A humble brand also needs to stay engaged with consumers. 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! A one-time Tweet, a quick Facebook posting, or an email here and there is an announcement, not engagement. Engagement requires a brand to reach out to consumers by asking questions, offering useful content and solutions to relevant consumer issues, providing useful community forums and feedback venues, etc.

A humble brand focuses on the relationship before the sale. 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. The sale then becomes a natural part of the ROR (Return on Relationship) instead of a “hard sell” effort.

It is a new marketplace out there – let your brand be an example by modeling how effective true brand humility can be!

Ted Rubin, Collective Bias Board of Advisors and Chief Social Marketing Officer, has a deep online background beginning in 1997 with Seth Godin, as CMO of e.l.f. Cosmetics, & recently as Chief Social Marketing Officer, OpenSky. He is a leading social marketing strategist and coined the term ROR: Return on Relationship… a concept he believes is the cornerstone for building an engaged multi-million member database, many of whom are vocal advocates for the brand. With e.l.f. Cosmetics from 2008-2010 and OpenSky from 2010-2011, Ted has become known for his active use of Twitter where he has in excess of 50,000 followers and grew 60,000+ followers for e.l.f. Twitter handles and over 100,000 for OpenSky, both with deep engagement and interaction. Ted is the most followed CMO on Twitter and has one of the deepest networks of any marketer in the social arena. To learn more about Ted, visit http://www.tedrubin.com/about-2/.

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