Making it Human

Seth Godin had a post about "If you want to get noticed, don't be so polished."

I couldn't help think about my post regarding the Slurpee machine at 7-11 with the terribly misspelled sign.

I think Seth has a good point, but I think there is a middle ground that works the best. While the UPS truck has a SAFETY sign hanging from the back, it still looks professional enough to stay on par with the brand, while still being a little more human. Imagine if UPS gave their drivers each a can of orange spray paint and said go ahead and write the word SAFETY on the back of your truck for us. That would probably be very noticeable, but I believe it would tarnish the brand of UPS. It likely just look like some kid tagged the back of the truck.

The middle ground here is to be human enough to be noticed, but make sure to stay within your branding parameters.

A good idea to remember here is that you at least want to look genuine or your efforts are in vain. You've probably seen the Enterprise Rent-a-CarTrucks around town where the car is crossed out and Trucks is written in a font made to look like human writing, but is obviously not.