Putting people first means stopping to think about a business model made by and for human beings. Brands need to stop putting their preferences ahead of what works for consumers.
And why does this work?
It works because the end is delighted, it solves the problem of those who need it. The customer is the protagonist and decides whether the color, for example, is good or not. Your business is there to make their life easier. So the decision has to be made together. When it doesn't, the feedback channel must be active, agile and problem-solving.
According to Humanstation there are 4 steps to make sure that your company is being more assertive in putting people at the center:
1. Put yourself in the consumer's shoes
2. Listen actively
3. Make an impact in a digitally noisy world
4. Grow with customers, employees and stakeholders
Understanding the human side of customers through anthropological studies is the first step. Another very important step is to reveal the human side of brands that can attract customers.
According to Stephen Sampson in his book Leaders without Titles, horizontal leaders and human centric brands have six human attributes that attract other people to them: Physical, Intellectual, Social, Emotional, Personality and Moral.
These six attributes make up a complete human being. Their combination becomes one of the 12 existing archetypes. When brands want to have customers as friends, they should work on these six human attributes to make themselves interesting and desirable.
Focus adjustment
Observation is a very valuable evaluation stage for putting people first. Every service, product or platform is made for people and that's why it's so important to make sure that they are benefiting in the best way. If we are interested in the human factor, we must look at all aspects of it: physical, cultural, sociological and psychological.
That's why brands are increasingly adopting human qualities to attract customers in the human centric era. This requires unlocking consumers' latent anxieties and desires through social listening, netnography and emphatic research. To deal with these anxieties and desires, the human side of brands has to be increasingly developed. Brands must be physically, intellectually, socially and emotionally engaging. Every detail of the consumer journey must be taken into account.
Some brands even enhance these experiences by associating human senses to connect even more deeply. If you want to learn more about this subject, we have a episode of our podcast about. It's worth a listen!
A brand's environment - whether it's a store, an office or even a stand - is an important point of contact with the public, of connections that can be created immediately and, more than that, of offering quality work or experiences that add to people's lives and memories.
People First
When starting a project, before thinking about the brand, we think about the people who will use the space. What they like, what they are looking for and, above all, what makes them feel good in a place. Making this real reading of the public was fundamental to the design of the Conexa HubA space capable of connecting agriculture and technology, predominantly frequented by programmers seeking innovation. The environment therefore needed to be inspiring and technological. In another totally different project developed for Bebê Kids, a children's clothing store, we had to face up to the fact that the public doesn't like to buy or get clothes, but rather to play. The result was a totally playful store, which stimulates children's sensory aspects through games that develop motor coordination and arouse curiosity. Totally geared towards human centric era.
Understanding people and their behavior is fundamental to how we relate to each other. For a brand, being clear about what is really important to its audience becomes a determining factor for assertive actions and investments.
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