From social media to AI to celebrity endorsements — brands interact with us on a more personal level than ever. But how does that change our relationship with the products we buy and the companies that serve us? In the latest episode of the Rotman Executive Summary, professor Pankaj Aggarwal explores how the way we anthropomorphize brands is changing, and why that matters.
From social media to AI to celebrity endorsements — brands interact with us on a more personal level than ever. But how does that change our relationship with the products we buy and the companies that serve us? In the latest episode of the Rotman Executive Summary, professor Pankaj Aggarwal explores how the way we anthropomorphize brands is changing, and why that matters.
Show notes
[0:00] “Think back to your childhood and the foods you ate. Did you enjoy Tony the Tiger’s Frosted Flakes? Lucky the leprechaun’s Lucky Charms? Snap, Crackle and Pop’s Rice Krispies?
As adults, we cook with Betty Crocker, eat at Wendy’s, clean with Mr. Clean. The products we buy and the food we eat are replete with mascots and human stand-ins.
It’s called anthropomorphizing — the act of humanizing inanimate objects or situations. Companies have long known that putting a human — or human-esque — face on a brand makes it more relatable.”
[0:45] Why Coca-Cola might be the post famous anthropomorphized brand.
[1:21] Meet Pankaj Aggarwal, an expert in marketing who has extensively studied how, and why, we we sometime treat brands like humans.
[2:45]: Why do we anthropomorphize objects as kids? And how does that change as we become adults?
[3:48] A brief overview of how we humanize products, think mascots and celebrities.
[4:32] When we treat brands like their humans, we tend to form more “human-like” relationship and start applying human norms on otherwise inanimate objects.
[6:00] For example, we use humanized products to be extensions of ourselves…
[6:41] …we’re less judgmental when it comes to anthropomorphized object…
[7:31] …and, we are less likely to haggle on prices…
[7:58] …and we really want all the parts to be from the same manufacturer.
[8:54] What are the implications in our social connected, "cancel culture" for when a humanized brand screws up?
[10:27] Gender-neutral products, and the unintended consequences of best intentions.
[12:09] Companies need to be more purposeful in how they talk to customers.
[13:13] The situations where you probably don’t want to anthropomorphize a brand
[15:36] "I think in some ways, it's better to be overtly clear to the consumers what gender for example, the brand has, what personality trait your brand has. Because that is the cue that people use to imbue on the brand. If you leave it abstract or vague, different consumers may think of it somewhat differently. And it's obviously going to be biased by say their own views of the world their own views of humans. And that's not ideal, so it's better to be as clear as possible, whether it's giving it a name, whether it's giving it a personality through advertising, through commercials, whether it's kind of showing the celebrity or the or the mascot, any of those things is better than just leaving it ambiguous."
Megan Haynes: Think back to your childhood and the foods you ate. Did you enjoy Tony the Tiger’s Frosted Flakes? Lucky the leprechaun’s Lucky Charms? Snap, Crackle and Pop’s Rice Krispies?
As adults, we cook with Betty Crocker, eat at Wendy’s, clean with Mr. Clean. The products we buy and the food we eat are replete with mascots and human stand-ins.
It’s called anthropomorphizing – the act of humanizing inanimate objects or situations. Companies have long known that putting a human – or human-esque – face on a brand makes it more relatable.
Pankaj Aggarwal: There are lots of such characters, or mascots, the Kool Aid man, or Mr. Clean, or the Green Giant. But I would say the most commonly used brand would be Coke, even though it's not as overtly anthropomorphized as one might think. But the shape of the bottle was inspired by the hobble skirt that women used to wear. It just gives this curvy look to the bottle, imitating the human body shape. Then there are, of course, more recent brands - the Apple, “I'm a Mac” campaign, which has this actual human model talking about the brand. There will be so many others.
My name is Pankaj Aggarwal, I did my PhD at the University of Chicago. And I've worked in advertising.
When I joined University of Chicago for my PhD, given my advertising background, I was really thinking of brands and how and why consumers buy brands and what goes on in their mind when they're comparing brands A versus B. And that led me to the dissertation area of thinking of brands as people.
MH Today, Pankaj is a professor at the University of Toronto Scarborough, with a cross-appointment to the Rotman School of Management, and he continues to study how people and marketers make products seem more human.
Today, brands talk to us on social media. We ask Siri, Alexa and Google questions. And mascots are most definitely still in vogue, but they’re joined by celebs and founders acting as brand spokespeople.
In the world of marketing, anthropomorphizing isn’t a new phenomenon. But the rules are changing. And brands need to keep up.
This is the Executive Summary – a Rotman School of Management Podcast and I’m Megan Haynes, editor of the Rotman Insights Hub.
Music fade in
MH: We often start anthropomorphizing objects as children. We pretend our toys come to life and can talk to us. We get upset when our dolls or teddy bears are injured. We see humanness in the clouds, the trees, the animals around us.
PA: Kids primarily want to make friends. And one of the reasons why kids anthropomorphize is to see this nonhuman entity like a friend somebody they can connect with. So social connection becomes a really important reason why kids anthropomorphize.
MH: But well into adulthood, we continue to give objects human characteristics.
PA: The second reason why people anthropomorphize is to make sense of the world around us. When we don't understand something that's going around us, we often use the human schema, as we call it. Because we are humans, we understand ourselves best using that humaneness to make sense of things that are non human.
MH: There are many types of anthropomorphization. Mascots – physical representations of a brand in a human-like form – are probably the clearest example.
We also project celebrities onto companies when they act as spokespeople – Jennifer Anniston and Aveeno or Michael Jordan and Nike. But we also imbue companies and products with human traits – think TD, the friendly bank, or Apple, the creative company. We impose physical characteristics on brands – the curvy Coke bottle or the meandering Roomba.
But however we humanize a product, it changes the way we interact with it.
PA: When we use the human lens to see a brand, we tend to relate to them as we relate to humans. We form relationships with brands, much like social relationships. Brands may seem like they are our committed partners, and we are loyal to them. And/or we may feel emotionally connected.
One of the things about relating to brands, or seeing them as humans, is we tend to almost unconsciously apply human norms. How we’re supposed to interact with brands ends up being borrowed from our social interactions with other people. So, this example of President Obama comes to mind where he was visiting Japan and he was being shown a robot, some latest technology. President Obama, his foot touched the robot, and he immediately said, I'm sorry. Obviously, that doesn't make sense to apologize to a machine. But when the robot looks like a human, we tend to use human behaviour, human etiquette.
MH: When we humanize brands, it means we’re less likely to throw a product away - can you imagine trashing your favourite, reliable aunt?
No – so why would you toss your trusty car whom you’ve lovingly named Irma?
Pankaj’s research even shows we use humanized products as extensions of ourselves. Take sometimes negative traits like dominance. When it comes to people, we often don’t appreciate these characteristics, but in cars, we might seek out “dominant” looking vehicles – those with wider headlights or aggressive looking grills – because it allows us to display dominance in a socially acceptable way.
PA: It's sort of like dominance by extension. And by using a dominant looking product to get that trait or personality that you didn't have.
MH: We’re also less likely to judge products on their features and functionality when we anthropomorphize them.
PA: Typically, the traditional way of looking at products is looking look at the features and evaluate it on the functionality of it. But if we humanize the product, rather than looking at specific features, we tend to look at the brand or the product in a holistic manner. For example, if I'm deciding to buy a car, and I think of Volkswagen Beetle as a human-like brand, rather than thinking of, oh, is it fuel efficient, is this high resale value, what is the speed at which it can go, I might just say, I like this brand. This is my kind of brand. And I just want to buy it.
MH: We’re also far less likely to haggle on prices, apparently.
PA: There's actually a project I have going on with a co author. We find that, Especially in the used product market, when there is potential for price negotiation, we find that people are less likely to haggle and people actually willing to pay a higher price if they are buying a product if it's anthropomorphized rather than if it's just seen as an object.
MH: And there’s the truly funny “body part analogy.”
PA: One of the things about anthropomorphism is, especially for certain products, there's some research that shows that when people are, for example, say buying a printer, if it is humanized, they would want the cartridge from the same brand because there is this intuition that the body part has to match the body type. And, that’s not necessarily true for non-anthropomorphized products.
MH: So, there are plenty of benefits to anthropomorphizing brands. But considering the socially connected, always on, increasingly “smart” world in which we live, marketers may want to take a beat before deciding to humanize their products.
Musical interlude
MH: There are some real implications for when marketers begin adding human qualities to a brand – and they don’t always result in higher sales.
Take celebrity endorsements or founder-brands – it can be almost impossible to disassociate a company from the famous faces that front them, and that can have catastrophic results – see the Jared and Subway or Trump and his hotels.
And social media is changing the conversation, with consumers holding brands more accountable than ever for how they present themselves. If a brand holds itself up as a good neighbour, a friendly bank, a trusted partner, what happens when it breaks its word?
PA: Pretty much the same thing when people break promises. If I trust you, and you break that trust, I am disappointed. And often I might feel, is this even the right relationship? Do I even want to talk to you again?
One aspect of humanness is that humans are seen as intentional. So, anything you do as a human is seen as what you intended to do. If you do something that violates the relationship, I may actually get really upset because now I think whatever it was not accidental, this is what you intended all along.
MH: When a brand or its celebrity endorser screws up, it’s not surprising that anthropomorphized products take a hit. But there are potential unintended consequences to humanizing an object – even for companies with the best of intentions. Take gender-neutral products. One of Pankaj’s latest projects is looking at how we, the consumer, impose gender on products, specifically on anthropomorphized items.
PA: There is this concept in social psychology called androcentrism, the idea being that most societies are structured so that men become the kind of norm and women are the other gender. So the women are otherized, so to say.
And that's true for brands as well. So that's what we find interesting that if you do not specify the gender, but anthropomorphize, most people will think of that as a male brand.
MH: Researchers gave participants a choice between three anthropomorphized products – one with an overt male gender, one with an overt female gender, and one that was considered gender neutral. Men overwhelmingly opted for the male or gender-neutral product, while women stuck with the female gendered one.
PA: In effect, what we are saying is that women have fewer options. If you think you're not genderizing, given the social structure, it's actually not true. Women still see it as a male brand. And therefore they don't like it as much as they might like a female version of a brand.
Musical interlude
MH: So what are the implications for brands today?
PA: I think the rules of marketing has changed, right. So the fact that the world is interconnected, the fact that we have so many different ways of interacting means that if you anthropomorphize a brand, you better be able to talk to customers in a more direct way, in a more one on one way, which was probably not possible 30 years ago. With every brand, having its own Facebook or Instagram page, and having access to individual customers data set, information, email, whatever, they should be able to connect with that person, almost individually. But it could also creep out some customers if it becomes too invasive.
That I think, puts a bit of a challenge on the marketers to really understand the nature of humans and not just humanization.
MH: And there are going to be clear cases where companies should steer clear of anthropomorphization, such as when they want a product replaced on some frequent basis. After all, if we develop deeper relationships with our toaster, we’re less likely to buy a new one. That’s not to say companies can’t work anthropomorphization into their strategies effectively, even when they want frequent product repeat.
PA: Let me give an example here. Apple has used personality, as you know, creative - something that I think people have bought into and that's a trait that humans have. So while the brand I think is anthropomorphize through communication, through campaigns like “I'm a Mac,” the product itself, the iPhone, for example, is not anthropomorphized. If Apple as a company wants consumers to upgrade their phone every year, every two years, then you want the brand to be anthropomorphize, because that makes me loyal to the brand. But you want to keep upgrading the product to get the new model. And you don't feel kind of guilty about throwing your old phone away and buying a new one.
MH: Pankaj also finds that for companies that need to be purely transactional – think banks that charge you a fee for a service, or cell phone providers that regularly raise rates – humanizing those companies can backfire. After all, a good friend doesn’t increase their friendship fee year over year to keep up with inflation.
MH: And companies that might need a rebrand in the near future should definitely avoid giving their products human qualities.
PA: Repositioning a brand is going to be a tough thing for an anthropomorphized brand to do primarily because if I see or I already think of that brand as a certain kind of human that I have a certain relationship with, and then tomorrow, you tell me, “Hey, forget about that. We are now are a different person. We have a different personality,” that is hard to reconcile with. So marketers might be better off either by rebranding it completely or having a different name or just not starting off with an anthropomorphized version if they think there’s a possibility of potential repositioning.
MH: That’s not to say companies should steer clear of anthropomorphization all together.
PA: I think in some ways, it's better to be overtly clear to the consumers what gender for example, the brand has, what personality trait your brand has. Because that is the cue that people use to imbue on the brand. If you leave it abstract or vague, different consumers may think of it somewhat differently. And it's obviously going to be biased by say their own views of the world their own views of humans. And that's not ideal, I think for marketers. So it's better to be as clear as possible, whether it's giving it a name, whether it's giving it a personality through advertising, through commercials, whether it's kind of showing the celebrity or the or the mascot, any of those things is better than just leaving it ambiguous.
Musical fade up
MH: This has been the Rotman Executive Summary, a podcast bringing you the latest insights and innovative thinking from Canada's leading business school.
Special thanks to Professor Pankaj Aggarwal. We’ll be back in a few weeks with Professor Rachel Ruttan to talk about how to give better advice – just in time to make your New Year’s Resolutions.
This episode was written and produced by Megan Haynes and Jessie Park. It was recorded by Dan Mazzotta, and edited by Avery Moore Kloss.
For more innovative thinking, head over to the Rotman Insights Hub, and subscribe to this podcast on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Google podcasts, or Soundcloud.
Thanks for tuning in.