Here’s an interesting video ‘Humanising brands’ put-together by Faster Future. In it Clay Shirky discusses how perfection in brands can be off-putting to audiences. Brands themselves don’t interact: they are inert. Rather, interaction takes place at a human level. We don’t want to interact with perfection: perfection can make us feel uncomfortable because our own lives aren’t perfect.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jjiXevb11Rk&eurl=http://www.psfk.com/2008/10/flawed-brands-the-key-to-success.html

Certainly it’s quite clear, I think, to understand the points Shirky makes, for example, with brands in the entertainment industry, in particular TV. TV production isn’t as fussy as it once was say back in the 80s. In many productions you will see cameramen, wires, overhead lights and so on. If anything this informal / imperfect type of production draws us in, especially if it a production about music, the arts and so on. It doesn’t matter if a presenter makes little mistakes here and there. It adds a human dimension to the whole thing.

Of course there are some brands (purely utility / functional brands, for example) that require a certain kind of perfection more than others (i.e entertainment brands).

This topic reminds me of working with other people. Most people, in most jobs, would rather work, closely, with someone who they really get on with and who score 8/10 for their work, as opposed to someone who they don’t really get on with but scores, say, 1/2 a point more, or whatever.

The same goes for blogging and social media in general. We want to interact with human beings.

Plus there is the important area of consumer generated content as well as customer-made advertising / brands now as well. If a brand is perfect then there is no opportunity or little opportunity for audience contribution to that brand. Since consumer generated content and customer-made advertising / branding is becoming such an important part of new marketing (remember / like to point out  Time’s ‘You’ person of the year - about how the ordinary public are now playing a key role in contributing to digital media content in general), so it’s well work considering the negative effect that ‘perfect’ brands could have on this, as well as the negative effect that perfect brands could have on brand interaction in general.

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