Creating a brand personality

At the turn of the century, corporate communication professionals experienced their finest hour: in the world of branding the concept of ‘identity’ was the centre of attention. For many years corporate communication had been regarded as the department in charge of ‘very important things’ - but without direct relevance to profit & loss results. The strategic reputation based long-term focus of the corporate communication professional entered the core of modern marketing-theories. The concept of identity connected the ‘inside-out’ way of thinking of corporate communication to the ‘outside-in’ of marketing for years the predominant principle in business.

The strategic shift towards identity was not surprising. The traditional marketing approach had lost its effect. Marketing professionals had become a bit too much mechanical, executing the accepted rules and processes of brand building, marketing communication and product innovation.

Marketing itself became a mass produced product, a commodity lacking spirit and authenticity.

And the consumers at the receiving end grew tired of the traditional approach of push marketing. They literally didn’t buy it anymore. We all know the effects: declining brand loyalty, declining market share for well-known brands, more room for out-of-the-box ideas, no-brand products. This gave rise to new techniques like guerrilla marketing, pull marketing, experience marketing, niche marketing.

Identity prism

Thought provoking was the Identity Prism of academic Jean-Nol Kapferer in his bestselling book STRATEGIC BRAND MANAGEMENT (1995). His theory had a profound impact on how companies viewed the very nature of brand building. Of course the French professor didnt create the shift to identity single-handedly, but he can be seen as one of the visionaries who ignited the process. Companies soon acknowledged that identity was one of the essential keys for building successful brands. The focus in companies shifted away from the stereotype marketing mantra: doing and communicating whatever the consumer wants according to research. Business and marketing professionals started to pay attention to their own, inner values as a company, as a brand.

You can observe this shift in thinking from a historical perspective. Over the past fifty years the mentality/approach of companies has progressively evolved in several stages:

• product based
• sales based
• market based
• marketing based
• (brand)identity based

Brand personality

Just like people, all brands have a personality. Whether it is shallow and instrumental or deep, emotionally charged and carefully managed.
This personality is crucial. Why? To put it boldly: personality is a key issue in our society. Look at politics: the popularity of politicians and government leaders is personality based. It is not about their identity, it is not about their views, which are elements of the overall concept that matter most: their personality. Was Tony Blair so successful because of his identity, his views, or his overall personality?

In my view, the situation for brands is no different. It is all about personality. Personality is the concept to give life to a brand, to manage ‘identity and image’, to create likeability.

Identity <-> Personality

So what is the main difference between identity and personality? Lets set the record straight: of course they are not complete opposites, like Mars and Venus. It has to do with a fundamentally different approach. Identity as a term refers to background and facts in most languages. Your identity is about characteristics you share with others, like the country and culture you come from, your race, your religion, and facts, like the place where you live.

In communication it mostly refers to your true inner self - as a company or a brand. To quote Kapferer: “Having an identity means being who you are, following your own, determined, but individual path”. Be who you are. This is the paradigm of identity.

The concept of brand personality combines inside-out and outside-in; identity and image. A personality has it’s roots in the identity but is strongly externally focused. It is not ‘be who your are’. Personality is: Become who you should be.

In the words of Carl Jung: “Personality is the supreme realisation of the innate idiosyncrasy of a living being. It is an act of courage flung in the face of life, the absolute affirmation of all that constitutes the individual, the most successful adaptation to the universal conditions of existence, coupled with the greatest possible freedom of self-determination.”
[C.G. Jung, 1875-1961]

In psychology, three elements are defined as a part of personality:
-private personality (thoughts, feelings, fantasies, ambitions, talents)
-public personality (how you want others to see you)
-attributed personality (how others see you)

The private personality overlaps identity; the public and attributed personalities indicate the external aim and nature of personality.

Identity -> Personality

In historic perspective, the shift from identity to personality was organic and logical. Identity-based thinking was a logical reaction to marketing-based thinking. Forgive me for dropping names, but in many dynamic processes, I use the theory of dialectic development of the German philosopher Georg Hegels to explain the developments that took place: thesis -> antithesis -> synthesis. It also applies in this matter: the thesis is marketing (outside-in), the antithesis is identity (inside-out), the synthesis is personality.

This is an ongoing process that, fortunately, never stops. I am curious to see what will come next.

The use of brand personality

OK, now we have established the logic behind the concept of brand personality: what should we do with it? We use brand personality to bring brand strategy to life. Don’t forget, consumers demand a brand of flesh and blood. The consumer will treat your brand like you treat the consumer. If your brand has no personality and no warmth, the consumer will treat it likewise: zero loyalty, high price sensitivity.

The fact of the matter is that brand-strategy models are extremely important to modern business. But they are an intellectual piece of work, not necessarily a practical one. They are vital in telling what a brand should be all about and why; but less useful in helping professionals finding out how they should manage to achieve, follow and contribute to this strategy in the day-to-day business environment.

The brand personality should be clearly defined; like you would describe the personality of a real person. Obviously this does not apply to every brand. You can choose other verbal concepts to express the brand personality. It is most important to define a brand personality without using any professional lingo.

Use peoples language, simple words, create a lively picture of a personality that is absolutely clear to anyone. It will be a big contribution to what I call the internal governance of your brand. It brings you beyond the strategic words that are too abstract to manage a brand in daily business and beyond the strict guidelines that are too inflexible.

The power of paradox

One essential thing I would like to add to this outline about personality is the power of paradox. The point is that organisations are not one-dimensional, markets are not one-dimensional, people and personalities are not one-dimensional. So.....: why should a brand strategy be worded in one-dimensional keywords? Why is it that three or four keywords should stand for the eternal truth about the brand? Life isn’t as simple as that. And you limit yourself from a commercial perspective. Unless, maybe, you are talking about a very simple fast-moving consumer product. Any brand with more richness and complexity (and therefore: power) in its personality can achieve more by crossing the line of one-dimensional key words.

Right now I am involved in the strategic development of a European brand. One of the keywords of the brand strategy is ‘innovative’. This word is meaningful and meaningless at the same time. After reading and talking about the project we defined the paradox ‘innovative - mainstream’ to replace the singleminded ‘innovative’. And then you feel energy: a brand that should be innovative and mainstream. That is much more like real life, much more exiting, much more strength and power. And: much easier to conduct creative reviews in developing the brand and to organise internal governance once the brand is on the market. I can tell you from experience.

If you determine and define precisely the two or three fields of paradox that are crucial to your brand; you will have a unique and strong compass to build and conduct it.

Note to all readers:
Apart from your opinion, I am interested in interesting examples of what I am writing about articles or remote literature that I should know of (please be specific, up to the page)