What Are Social Media Good For? Putting a Face to a Brand

(Ad Age) — 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 and behave 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?

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