By M. Isi Eromosele

In order to better connect with customers, brands themselves need to become more real. Real people, real situations, real benefits are three factors that resonate with customers. Companies need to practice real branding because customers have become a lot more sophisticated in an age where the advent of social media and networking has made instant communication about products a lot more streamlined.

In increasing numbers, customers are rejecting the artificial appeals that many brands make to them.

Real branding will not work for all brands. Selling imaginations and fantasy have become outdated. Customers are now demanding more integrity and a sense of reality from their brands. When brands become real, they move from hype to buzz.

Buzz builds brands up, making them seem as part of everyday life instead being a method. Real branding takes brands back to highlighting trust as a key element of the brand. As such, marketers face the challenge of making real branding larger than advertising.

Brands are a company’s strongest assets. To sustain them well into the future, they must be made more relevant to customers. This will make it more feasible for customers to identify with and maintain their loyalty to brands. Trust had been a hallmark of branding with differentiation in quality as a key point of recommendation.

Today, the seal of quality has been relegated to the dustbin, a big mistake. When trust is built into a brand, it creates a resonance with customers that go well beyond the functionality of the brand itself. Apple is a great example of this.

Emotional promises by themselves do not work anymore. Customers are seeing the artificial hollowness of most brand messages, enabling them to ascertain that they are being sold things that do not connect with their lives.

As customers continue abandoning brands that seem unrealistic and false, brands have to start connecting with customers through realistic messages they can easily understand. The long standing premise that said, in effect: "buy this offering and it will change your life" has worn thin and consumers do not believe them anymore.

Brand differentiation in the future will require connecting more effectively with real people. Branding should be about real people and real benefits. To achieve this, actions should be taken by companies to make their marketing less of an intrusion in their branding programs. Additionally, the barriers between organizations and their customers must be broken down.

These barriers include overly optimistic role models and unrealistic advertisements. The use of celebrities to promote brands need to be greatly reduced. In many of its branding, Dove has successfully used real women to promote its specialty soaps. People tend to connect more easily with other people they believe live like them.

The important thing is to increase consumers’ connection with brands in a way that engenders real and long-term loyalty. This way, brands will have more real meaning for people. If brands are real and use real people to communicate real messages about the brands, people will feel a sense of authenticity and engage with them.

M. Isi Eromosele is the President | Chief Executive Officer | Executive Creative Director of Oseme Group - Oseme Creative | Oseme Consulting | Oseme Finance

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