warmth and confidence model en social media (adage)

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Chris Malone

What Are Social Media Good For? Putting a

Face to a Brand

Exude Competency and Warmth, and Consumers Will Respond

ByChris Malone

Published: August 10, 2010

When marketers use terms like brand "personality," "character" and "manner,"

they're more accurate than they know. New research into consumer brand

purchase and loyalty behavior has revealed that the way humans respond to

brands is simply an extension of the way they instinctively perceive, judge andbehave toward one another. In short, people were the first brands; faces were

the first logos. That insight could revolutionize brand and social-media

strategies.

Over the past several decades, social psychologists deduced that as humans struggled for survival

they had to develop an ability to make two kinds of judgments with great speed and accuracy:

What are the intentions of other people toward me? How capable are they of carrying out those

intentions?

Researchers call these two critical categories of human perception "warmth" and "competence."

Through studies across 36 countries, they have validated warmth and competence as universaldimensions of human interaction. They have further determined that warmth includes an array of

traits such as friendliness, helpfulness, sincerity, trustworthiness and honesty. Competence is

reflected by traits such as intelligence, skill, creativity, efficiency and effectiveness.

To find out whether the warmth and competence model applies to brands, my firm and a team of

academics led by Susan T. Fiske and Nicolas O. Kervyn, renowned researchers on warmth and

competence at Princeton University, examined eight brands: McDonald's, Burger King, BP, Shell,

Tropicana, Minute Maid, Tylenol and Advil. For each brand, our study captured the warmth and

competence perceptions and priorities of a demographically balanced sample of 1,042 U.S. adult

consumers, as well as their purchase intent, brand loyalty and social-media usage.

Advertising Age http://adage.com/print?article_id=145324

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What we found is that consumers' perceptions along key traits of warmth and competence are

highly predictive of both purchase intent and brand loyalty. Consumers instinctively judge brands

just as they do other people. To turn our earlier formula around: Brands are judged as people;

logos, perhaps, like faces.

Yet the profession of brand management, and in large measure the advertising industry, has been

built on the delivery, measurement and communication of the features and benefits of each productor service. These are certainly important, but it turns out they're an incomplete subset of the much

broader and more powerful categories of warmth and competence. What this indicates is that

brands and companies that deliver on critical warmth-related and competence-related traits, rather

than limiting themselves to traditional features and benefits, will create stronger and longer-lasting

bonds of customer loyalty.

This model may also hold the key to one of the most vexing brand challenges companies now

face: how to most effectively use new media that have aptly been named "social" -- those virtual

gathering places where people interact with each other and, increasingly, with brands.

Similar to others, our study found that some 77% of U.S. adults are members of social networks --67% in Facebook alone. Because social-media use has proliferated so dramatically, most

companies are trying to establish a marketing presence there. Few have been able to figure out

how to monetize all the friends, followers and fans they've collected. But because we now know

that consumers evaluate brands with the same criteria they do people, social networks by their

very nature offer particularly fertile ground for putting warmth and competence insights to work.

Our study found that two of the most critical but under-delivered dimensions of brand loyalty are

"acts in my best interests" and "is honest and trustworthy." Without these, genuine human trust and

brand loyalty are impossible. Brands and companies that want to build lasting consumer loyalty

can begin by following these simple guidelines as they develop their social-media strategies:

Use social networks to better personify your brand and put a human face on it. Nothing is

more powerful than real people demonstrating genuine warmth and competence in real time.

Focus on social networks as your preferred medium for delivering customer service to

consumers whenever possible. Putting service-related honesty and selfless intentions on display

for consumers to comment on and share with others will surprise, impress and inspire them.

Rethink your customer-service policies and practices to focus on building trust, goodwill and

loyalty, rather than on minimizing company risk, cost and involvement. For consumers, these

are often the truest reflection of your honesty, trustworthiness and commitment to their interests,rather than your own.

Social media are simply the most obvious place to apply insights about warmth and competence.

This universal model of human perception has the potential to significantly reshape almost every

aspect of the way companies build, manage, service and advertise their brands.

Although some successful companies, such as Zappos and USAA, instinctively employ warmth

and competence principles in building legendary customer loyalty, the model and its potential are

virtually unknown outside of academic circles, where its power is recognized by eminent social

psychologists around the world.

For those unfamiliar with the model, perhaps the best way to immediately grasp its significance is


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to consider the recent experience of Tropicana -- the highest scoring brand on warmth and

competence in our study. After only two months last year, the packaging redesign on its Pure

Premium orange juice was dropped after passionate consumers cried out for a return to the

longtime Tropicana brand symbol, an orange with a straw sticking out. Those fanatically loyal

consumers weren't asking for a return to some feature or benefit of the product. They wanted its

familiar face back.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Chris Malone is chief advisory officer of Relational Capital Group, a

researchbased, professional development and advisory services firm

based in Philadelphia. Previously he was CMO of Choice Hotels

International and prior to that senior VP-marketing for Aramark Corp. He

was also a co-founder-principal of Zyman Marketing Group.

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warmth and confidence model en social media (adage)

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