Developing Brand Personality

Like we learned in Snapple, a brand is not just a name, logo, a shape or a color. It can mean a lot of different things. It’s a complex entity. It could be about speed and recognition. Like if you see the iPhone, the way it looks and feels, you know it’s an iPhone or Southwest Airlines from the way the colors are on the plane, you can easily identify Southwest. It could also be Affect. Think about the Etch A Sketch, how you feel about the Etch a Sketch when you see it.

It brings down all the memories that you have of your childhood and all the beautiful moments, they’re wrapped into this Etch a Sketch that is representative of all of those good things in your childhood. Or it could be Red Bull, what meaning it could mean, an energy drink. It could mean what kind of Red Bull, it could mean extreme sports. Red Bull stands for all those relationships it has with its consumers. So brands are a complex entity, and any measurement of a brand and the value of the brand has to include all these complexities together. So, two simple ways to understand them, even though they’re are complex entities. Let’s see if there are simple ways in which to understand them.

So two ways in which people have talked about that is that brand is the capitalized value of trust between a company and the consumer. Or it’s a tax that a company puts on a consumer for giving the peace of mind and trust that a brand provides consumers. And now if you go from simple to actually blowing it up and understanding brands as beepers, and a lot of researchers have done work on this and come out with the fact that brands have five dimensions of their personality. They could be sincere or down to earth, honest, wholesome and cheerful. It could be exciting, daring and spirited. This could be a Red Bull. Or they could be competent, reliable, intelligent, successful.

This could be IBM, it could be sophisticated, upper class, charming like Louis Vuitton. That could, it could have that dimension in there, or they could be rugged. It could be outdoorsy and tough. So Patagonia really tries to merge the rugged and sophisticated. So brands have these different dimensions that they develop over time partly because of marketers, partly because of how consumers use the brand, and partly because of who the consumers are that use this brand.

And so, this whole personality needs to be understood, and the efforts that companies put in developing this personality have dividends in terms of what the brand means in terms of the value to the firm, and how they lead to additional sales because of the personality that resonates with the consumer. So, let’s work with these brand personalities and let’s work on a few examples. Let’s get our hands dirty, let’s work through this. Let’s think about Red Bull. What would Red Bull be if Red Bull was a person? What is the age of the person? What is the gender? What are the traits of this person? So take five minutes, work on this, write it in a piece of paper.

What comes to your mind if you think Red Bull is a person? What is the age, gender and traits of this person? And we’ll be back in five minutes and I’ll work with you through that.