When you meet someone, you know whether there’s a connection. Shared experiences, interests, and values can quickly bond total strangers.

Brands aren’t people, of course, but branding is about humanizing a brand in a way that helps consumers connect with it.

Today, brand authenticity and trust top shoppers’ priority lists. Sixty-four percent say shared values influence their authentic brand relationships, and 63 percent prefer to buy from brands they perceive as honest.

Just look at Warby Parker. “We believe everyone has the right to see,” its slogan proclaims. By selling designer frames with a socially conscious and a frictionless customer experience, the scrappy eye wear brand found friends in an overpriced, impersonal market.

Seemingly o...