If there’s one thing that the last year’s confirmed, it’s that we certainly are social creatures.
There’s something about the human touch that makes us want to keep communicating and which makes us miss the contact when it’s not available.
Our social nature is the simple reason why “people buy from people”.
And while you might have heard modern marketers dub this phrase an old myth, insisting that sales can be made purely through automated processes, “people-free”, I can reveal a secret that proves the opposite is true.
Virtually every successful company you know use people to sell.
By giving their business a personality for consumers to relate to (think Ronald McDonald)…
With smiles hidden in their logos and pumped throughout their branding (just look at all of these)…
And with pictures of real human people all over the shop.
But if you think that simply adding a smile to your logo will always be a winner, don’t get too comfy…
Take Amazon’s logo for example. It’s nice enough at a glance but look a little closer at that smile and you can see it’s not all there.
In reality, it’s what we’d call a “half-smile”.
And in facial topography, a half-smile suggests contempt.
(Probably not what Amazon intended when they settled on that.)
Contempt’s a cold emotion, it makes people feel belittled and inferior, and it’s one to be avoided if you’re going through a rebrand.
So rather than doing as Amazon did, talk to a facial expressions expert instead to make sure you avoid this simple mistake and to get your brand truly smiling.