An especially dismal summer movie season means you tend to hear the same complaints at the office Monday mornings – specifically, groans about one dimensional characters. There isn’t much love for flat, one-note characters slapped together with a single trait and an eye-patch. And yet, can brands get away with coming off as one-dimensional in the social space?

In a recent Mashable post titled HOW TO: Pick the Right Social Media Engagement Style Matthew Latkiewicz details the five most prevalent styles that brands use when connecting with their audiences across social networks. Latkiewicz claims that nailing an engagement style is important because it “goes a long way to define the long-term relationship consumers have with that brand.” He then breaks down the top five engagement styles, which he dubs the Game Show Host, the Service Rep, the Beehive, the Community Builder and the Friend. Each style mixes a brand’s approach to social media with the resulting personality. While the Service Rep style focuses entirely on answering customers’ questions and complaints with tweets or on forums, the Community Builder style is about constructing a platform for social action.

While I find Latkiewicz’s categories and descriptions apt, I’d be hesitant to steer any brand towards adopting a single style. Why be so one-dimensional? To adopt a single engagement style at the expense of another is usually an enormous missed opportunity. For example, The Game Show Host, Latkiewicz’s first engagement style, describes brands who use social networks to broadcast deals, coupons and contests. Clearly this is a powerful strategy, as plenty of data shows that customers Follow/Like brands primarily for discounts. However, why use social networks merely to announce specials? What about developing a brand voice? What about customer support? Most importantly, what about developing a community of advocates, fans and evangelists? It’s challenging to do any of those when your social media channels have a single, overriding M.O.

Examining the top ten social brands, I don’t come across any that adopt a single, definitive engagement style. Starbucks, often ranked the #1 social brand online, employs a mix of four engagement styles through their social media channels. Among Starbucks’ most recent Facebook status updates there are contests and deals (Game Show Host), socially conscious messages and campaign announcements (Community Builder) and a brand voice that always feels personal and grassroots (Friend). Moving over to Twitter, we see the Service Rep personality emerge as well, with helpful tweets to specific customers supplemented by MyStarbucksIdea.com where the company crowdsources ideas about improving their brand. Picking through Latkiewicz’s examples, I notice that Virgin America peppers their Game Show Host tweets with Service Rep tweets, and Staples does the opposite.

Are there certain brands that would do well to adopt a single engagement style? Otherwise, how do you see engagement styles playing out when brands go social?