The same could be said to brands, with regard to social media. This form of marketing has opened up two-way conversation with consumers. But to take full advantage, brands have to start establishing and employing social-media voices that match their perceived personalities.

Every product has a personality. Advertising and PR are crafted tell consumers “who” the product is and why they should fall in love with it, take it home, be its best friend, spend time with it and introduce it to their friends. But what happens when fans can talk directly to the product, and the product has to talk back? How is that product supposed to sound and act? What if the product says the wrong thing? What if fans find out the product isn’t who they thought it was? What if it ignores them, speaks condescendingly or, worse yet, just bores them to death?

This goes for all brands and products, but with the Electronic Entertainment Expo rolling up on us, June 5-7 in Los Angeles, I’ll use video games as an example. The games take chances and go places you can’t go in real life, yet once they have to carry on conversations in real life, they often become shy, careful and conservative. Games are by nature entertaining, unexpected, controversial and edgy. Shouldn’t conversations between games and their fans be that way too?

An agency or internal social-media team lays out a digital-marketing strategy and crafts and shares videos, social-media updates and other forms of digital content designed to spark conversation, encourage sharing, raise awareness and ultimately sell more video games. Then the fans get to talk back.

This is where many game publishers get nervous. Much of the daily back-and-forth involves the publisher saying a few things to let the fans know the game’s “down” with them, and then getting out before saying too much or drawing fire from unwanted directions. Rather than challenging and even provoking fans, responding to negative comments with flair, or flat out telling idiots to shut up and go away, publishers run their social-media channels along a strict set of legal-department-approved, politically correct guidelines. What’s fun about that?