Why Some Brands Feel Human And Others Feel Like Marketing
What is the Human Factor Score™?
The Human Factor Score™ is a brand trust framework that measures how human a brand feels across five dimensions: People Visibility, Human Language, Trust & Transparency, Care & Values, and Distinctiveness. Each dimension is scored out of 2, for a total out of 10.
I built it because I kept seeing the same pattern in human-centered branding: the brands generating the deepest loyalty weren't necessarily the most refined. They were the most human. And polish alone doesn't explain why some brands convert better, retain customers longer, and generate stronger word of mouth. Trust does.
Most brands today look polished. Clean websites, good creative, well-produced content. And yet a lot of them still don't feel trustworthy. That gap exists because customer trust in marketing isn't built through aesthetics. It's built through behaviour; what a brand shows, says, and consistently demonstrates over time.
How to Measure Brand Trust Across Five Dimensions
The Human Factor Score™ framework assesses brand authenticity using five questions:
People Visibility: Are real humans — founders, team members, customers — visible across channels?
Human Language: Does the brand sound like a real person talking, or a corporation performing?
Trust & Transparency: Are decisions, mistakes, and processes openly shared?
Care & Values: Are values demonstrated through content and behaviour, not just stated in copy?
Distinctiveness: Is the brand recognisable beyond its visual identity?
Each dimension reflects a specific way brands either build or erode customer trust in marketing. Together they give you a clear picture of where a brand is genuinely connecting and where it's relying on polish instead of substance.
Example: FAYT The Label Brand Trust Analysis
I recently used this framework to analyse FAYT The Label, a fashion brand that consistently generates strong audience trust online. Here's how they scored and why.
People Visibility — 2/2
FAYT's founder Brittany Saunders is visibly present across the brand's entire ecosystem. Instagram, TikTok, podcasts, YouTube, campaigns. You're never left wondering if there's an actual person running things.
Audiences make trust judgements fast. When a brand feels faceless, there's nothing to attach belief to. When people can see founders, team members, and real customers, the brand feels safer. FAYT also has significant customer visibility through reviews, user-generated content, and community interaction, so the human presence isn't just top-down from the founder.
As more content becomes AI-generated and generic, visible human presence is becoming one of the clearest ways to signal brand authenticity.
Human Language — 2/2
A lot of businesses still write like corporations even when they're operating on platforms built for human conversation. Generic phrases like "elevating your wardrobe" or "innovative solutions" get tuned out because audiences have seen them thousands of times. They're not language; they're signals that nobody real is talking.
Brittany's communication style is conversational and specific, even when discussing operational or business topics. Specificity matters here because when someone speaks with real personality and detail, audiences read that as evidence of an actual person behind the brand. Vague language does the opposite.
Trust & Transparency — 2/2
Transparency is one of the most underused levers in how to build brand trust. FAYT has strong review and testimonial presence, but what's more notable is how openly Brittany discusses mistakes, difficult decisions, and operational realities. That openness reduces scepticism because audiences stop feeling like they're being constantly sold to.
There's also process visibility: audiences can see how decisions get made, how products evolve, what challenges the business has faced. Consumers increasingly want evidence, not just claims. Brands that provide it build credibility faster and reduce friction in the buying decision.
Care & Values — 2/2
FAYT's sizing policy is a clear example of how values can communicate without overexplaining. "Sizes 6–26 always" immediately signals inclusion and accessibility. The values are also consistent visually, reflected in how different bodies and people are represented across their content rather than just written into copy.
That consistency is what separates genuine human-centered branding from performative branding. Audiences can tell the difference. Educational content also contributes here: Brittany regularly discusses business, growth, and her own experience beyond product promotion, which creates value outside the transaction and builds longer-term emotional connection.
Distinctiveness — 1/2
The FAYT website itself looks similar to many modern fashion brands: clean, minimal, neutral. Functional, but not visually distinctive.
What is distinctive is Brittany's voice. Her personality is so consistently associated with the brand that it becomes recognisable through communication style alone. The longer-term question with founder-led branding is whether the brand can stand independently if the founder steps back. Some make that transition well. Others don't.
Total Score: 9/10
Why Human Brands Outperform Polished Brands
Marketing conversations tend to fixate on tactics: hacks, trends, algorithms. But the data on conversion, retention, and customer lifetime value consistently points back to trust as the underlying driver.
Brands that score well on the Human Factor Score™ share a few things in common: real people are visible, language sounds specific and natural, and decisions are made transparently. These aren't personality traits. They're strategic choices that directly affect how audiences decide whether to buy, return, and recommend.
The brands building for this now are the ones that will be hardest to displace later.
Key Takeaway
Brands build customer trust not through polish, but through visible people, specific language, and transparent behaviour. The Human Factor Score™ gives you a structured way to assess where your brand stands across each of those dimensions and where the gap between appearance and authenticity is costing you.
