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Humanizing a Company
Earlier this year Kentucky Fried Chicken ran a commercial that featured a person claiming to be an actual KFC chef. While she was on the screen, a note at the bottom of the screen noted that she is an actress. I commented several times on Twitter that I wondered why they couldn’t pick one of their million chefs to actually star in the commercial and how good that would feel instead of some D-level actress.
Having worked in corporate America for a long time, one of the things that I always found interesting was companies that tried to humanize the company and what it did for employee morale. Even just simple little things made such a difference. From what I’ve read, Zappos seems to be a good example of humanization today.
Patrick found the video below from insurance company Geico. It’s a great example of humanizing the company and I think it goes further than the money they spent on the numa kid video. More companies need to create videos like this. You might be wondering why I am sharing this on a startup/technology blog. Because as your company grows, the ability to humanize the company will help you to grow further and faster.
My apologies. It’s Kaplan University, not University of Phoenix.
Yes – you are right – she did say cook! Sorry about that… I haven’t seen the Phoenix commercial you note but did see one where the students call themselves Phoenix (what’s the plural lol).
Correction – the lady in the KFC commercial never referred to herself as a “chef,” she referred to herself as a “cook.” I know that, because I remember thinking “what’s so special about the fact that KFC has a cook in every kitchen… Shouldn’t every restaurant have a cook? Otherwise, how does the food get cooked?”
Your post also made me think of the University of Phoenix commercials that try to get across the message that learning doesn’t have to happen in a classroom. There’s one commercial that features a “professor” telling his class that he and the university have failed them by trying to teach them in traditional classroom settings. The problem is, the “professor” is James Avery (Uncle Phil from Fresh Prince of Bel Air). It loses a lot of it’s impact (at least, for me) when they use a well-known actor to play the part of one of their professors.