Everybody wants to be liked in one way or another – both companies and people hope to be liked by their peers and surroundings. Sometimes I feel like the ways of the web today resemble the gladiator battles of ancient Rome, where your actions and person leads to a thumb up or thumb down to make you either live or die in the mind of the spectator.
Anyway, people should like you because you are likable and fun. Now, if you are a person this is easy – but for companies and brands it can turn out that you need to develop something that isn’t a part of you yet. You need to develop your core so it’s likable and virally spreadable. It’s not enough just to produce products anymore – we want to see the personality behind the company we’re buying from.
A great way to start is to develop the mission statement of the company into the style statement of the company, and then use the style as the red thread of the company’s authenticity and brand, and then you keep nurturing it, every day. You give people hints all the time about what you stand for as a company. it’s one of the things you can do to show the world that you practice as you preach, and practicing what you preach gives you a lot of substance. Now substance is a hot buzzword these days.
So here’s one of the ways I worked my personal style statement into Toothless Tiger:
A while I was browsing through my blog feeds I stumbled over this little blog piece on style from yes and yes. It reminded me of one of the coolest things I have done for my personal brand and my authenticity: to get the book “style statement” written by Carrie McCarthy and my homegirl Danielle Laporte. It’s like doing the mission statement of your company – but for yourself/ your personal brand.
My style statement became “grounded avant-garde” – something I’m following when I’m writing, working with clients, decorating my home, something that’s authentically me and I found through working with the style statement book.
It started out by being “cool avant-garde” but I wasn’t really feeling the word “cool” – so I decided to change it to “grounded” or “practical” and end up with “grounded”.
If I could turn my style into my personal mission statement – then it should be working the other way around as well. Turning a companies mission statement into a style.
“oh look there’s my favorite company guinea pig: Toothless Tiger” she said (cough my social web studio cough)
The mission statement of Toothless Tiger is “business unusual”.
Now if I take “business unusual” and turn in from a mission to a style: then it becomes something we arefeeling and living by everyday.
Something that changes hourly but what is our stamp on business so to speak. We’re having a new webpage coming up where we are implementing business unusual in design for us. Like having our signature touch. And we do stuff every day that is business but with a twist and an edge. It’s not for everybody – but the people it’s for they love us to pieces, and that’s how we make a living.
People should like you because you show with your style and mission that you have the personality, coolness, and fun to be likable – sometimes even loveable.
