Your Brand has an Image, but Does it Have a Great Personality too?

Your brand is not what you think it is! It’s what your customers think it is; its brand image, personality and its value to them.

I was lecturing at Miami University a few years ago on brand image and personality. These are two vital elements of branding. They need to be clear and consistently represented in all your communications.

If you’re having issues with your own brand in either of these areas, then you’ll find the following article both interesting and valuable.

 

Why We Buy Brands

According to Wikipedia, a brand is:

“a set of marketing and communications methods that help to distinguish a company from competition and create a lasting impression in the minds of customers.” 

Although this definition in my opinion, is a little sterile for something as exciting as branding, I do appreciate that it mentions customers. However, for me, a brand is created in both the minds and hearts of its customers.

There has been so much said about the importance of emotions and resonating with the customer, that we shouldn’t forget it. But be honest we often do! And this is where image and personality play vital roles. They are both more or less created in the heart, rather than in the mind of the customer.

We usually buy brands without even knowing why we buy them. We can, of course, provide a clear, reasoned answer if asked, but explanations come from the mind. The heart is what makes us buy.

We often buy brands without even knowing why we buy them. We can, of course, provide a clear, reasoned answer if asked, but explanations come from the mind. The heart is what makes us buy. #brand #Marketing #BrandImage #BrandEquity Click To Tweet

 

Branding Elements

A brand is made up of a number of components, with which people learn to identify and recognise it. These include its logo, colour, pack, shape, taste, aroma, sounds and feel. There may also be other things that are directly associated with the brand, such as a celebrity, an event or a cause it supports.

A brand needs to have a clear image, personality and equity in the minds of its customers. These come not only from these branding elements, but also from the customer’s own personal experience with it.

All these factors must be both respected and complementary in order to build a strong brand with which customers can identify themselves. If they’re not, then the brand is at risk of not developing correctly, or even worse, of becoming just a commodity.

Therefore, It is vital for marketers to know and understand what their brand means to its customers. Not just what it means for their organisation. And then, of course, to follow it over time through regular measurement.

It is vital for marketers to know and understand what their brand means to its customers. Not just what it means for their organisation. #BrandBuilding #Brand #Marketing #BrandImage #BrandEquity Click To Tweet

 

Brand Image Essentials

A brand is associated with many thoughts and ideas, that we translate into statements or attributes for measurement purposes. These are what current and potential customers think or feel about it. They may have developed from exposure to its communications, as well as from their own personal experiences.

These elements are usually grouped into three types: the rational/functional benefits, the subjective/emotional elements and the cultural/relational factors.

The third group was added by David Armano of Edelman Digital almost fifteen years ago. I like his additional idea because the relationships a brand builds with its customers have become vitally important in today’s social-media-dominated world. I have noticed that he recently started referring to these as societal rather than relational, in line with the more usual vocabulary.

  • Rational / Functional: benefits include things on which most people would agree and recognise. For example being crunchy, colourful, available everywhere or delivered in a glass bottle. There would be very little discussion or disagreement on these.
  • Emotional / Subjective: elements that can vary between customers based upon their own, personal experience and appreciation of the brand. These might include good value for money, better quality, or gives the best service.
  • Cultural / Relational (Societal): factors which are associated with a brand’s trust and responsibility. Customers today are increasingly interested in how a brand or corporation addresses its use of resources and whether or not they are sustainable and ecological. Brands also depend on recommendations from others, so word of mouth and opinions, especially online, have become vital additional sourcesof reputation. The attributes measured to cover these sensitivities could include trustworthy, a brand I’d recommend or cares about its customers.

 

The Power of a Three-legged Brand

David Armano showed that incorporating all three elements into a brand’s image results in a stronger brand. It is much more likely to have a better performance than those brands which don’t include the societal elements.

He reported that it is in recommendations and sharing brand content that the most positive impact can be found today.

Customers are also more likely to share their personal information with the brand and to buy it more often. Both of these actions demonstrate an increase in trust, a precursor to both loyalty and advocacy.

One further impact of trust is that it results in customers defending the brand. This is a wonderful support to have in a world where everything is known at the click of a button. A brand that has the trust of its customers will be more often forgiven for any occasional mishap.

You can read more about Edelman’s Brandshare Study in the slideshow “How brands and people create a value exchange.”

It is in brand recommendations and sharing brand content that the most positive impact can be found today. #Brand #BrandBuilding #Marketing #BrandImage #BrandEquity Click To Tweet

Measuring Brand Image

I am often surprised by the lack of understanding about how to measure brand images when I work on branding issues with clients. Even large companies don’t do a good job of it in general. And some have never even measured it, preferring financial to customer metrics to manage their businesses!

Even large companies don't do a good job of measuring brand image. And some have never even measured it, preferring financial to customer metrics to manage their businesses! Click To Tweet

Other organisations measure too frequently, in the hope that their latest advertising campaign has had the desired impact. This is rarely the case, as images take time to change.

Another problem I find with many clients when I first start working with them is that the choice of attributes is often sub-optimal, to be polite. The factors included should be selected to cover all the main elements of your desired image as well as that of the competition.

I have often seen clients happy that they are scoring better than their competitors. However, when I examine their metrics, I find that they are missing those attributes that would better represent their competitors’ brands. No wonder their own brand is doing better!

A further mistake I encounter is trying to measure advertising slogans. While it is important to understand whether your message is heard and understood, this should not be done in a brand image survey. Advertising slogans should be evaluated through a communications test.

Advertising slogans should be evaluated through a communications test not in a brand image survey. #Brand #BrandBuilding #Marketing #BrandImage #Advertising Click To Tweet

 

Brand Personality & Values

theory of basic human values
Source: Wikipedia, click to enlarge

Brands have personalities, just like people. It was Schwartz who first identified the ten human values which make up our personalities. They are important to understand especially for regional and global brands because they cut across cultures.

Our values also determine our behaviour. Plato identified the typical patterns of human behaviour, which he called archetypes. The Swiss psychologist Jung then used this concept in his theory of the human psyche. But it wasn’t until Margaret Mark that they were first correlated with brands in her excellent book “The Hero and the Outlaw.”

Brand Archetypes
Source: Visual.ly

The twelve archetypes are illustrated above, together with some sample adjectives to describe them. It is important to understand how customers perceive your brand. Do you know? 

The image on the right shows examples of brands with each of the twelve personalities. Where would you place your own brand?

The personality of your brand should resonate with your customers, either because they are similar, or because they provide the dream lifestyle your customers desire.

Either way, it is essential to understand what role your brand is playing. 

It is essential to understand the personality of your brand and what role it is playing. #brand #marketing #BrandImage #BrandEquity #Personality Click To Tweet

 

Brand Archetypes

Brands can represent any of the twelve archetypes, which are usually divided into four subgroups, as follows:

  1. Stability, control: Caregiver, Ruler, Creator
  2. Risk, achievement: Hero, Rebel, Magician
  3. Belonging: Lover, Jester, Everyman
  4. Learning, freedom: Innocent, Sage, Explorer

As the diagram above shows, there is no ideal archetype and brands can successfully grow by representing any of them. What is vital is that the archetype is portrayed consistently across all communications and visualisations.


Need Help with Your Brand Image Measurement?


Examples of Strong Brand Images & Personalities

During my lecture at the University of Miami, I shared many examples of brand images and personalities. These included showing how some brands have successfully managed to change theirs.

Two of the brands we discussed were Axe and Old Spice because they have both gone through some interesting evolutions over the years. Most recently it even appears that they are overtly challenging each other through their advertising. 

Take a look at the ads below and see if you can identify the archetypes before continuing to read the post. 

AXE: This Unilever brand has been portrayed as the Lover, the Hero and most recently as the Everyman. Here are a couple of their ads to show the transition from Hero (Fireman) to Everyman (Find your magic).

In particular, note the shower sequence at the end of the second Axe commercial (a slight – or is it a sly – dig at  Old Spice?) and the heroic fire demonstration in the Old Spice ad!

 

 

 

OLD SPICE: This P&G brand has been portrayed as the Explorer, Everyman (The Man Your Man Could Smell Like) and most recently as the Rebel (Rocket Car) – or is it, Hero? Let me know what you think in the comments below.

As I did for Axe, I’ve selected an older and a more modern example of its campaigns, so you can compare the change of approach.

 

 

I am looking forward to seeing how these two ad campaigns continue to develop. It is clear that Unilever and P&G are closely following and perhaps even being inspired by each other. Those are two of the actions of great marketers.

 

Finally, I couldn’t leave the topic of personalities without mentioning Apple. Often seen as the Creator archetype, Apple went as far as to visualise their persona and personality in their “Get a Mac” campaign. (see an example from AdAge below)

The ads featured two men, called Mac and PC, comparing their functionalities. The campaign ran from 2006 to 2009 and was a hilarious success, positively impacting the Mac’s image. In the ads, they describe themselves as:

Mac: Cool, trendy, young, friendly, casual, reliable, fast and looking for fun.

PC: Boring, formal, cold, old, unreliable, slow, not inspiring.

Which two archetypes do they suggest? Answers in the comments below, please.

 

Brand Equity

A brand’s equity is the value of the brand in the eyes of its customers.  It is the power it has derived from the goodwill and recognition that it has earned over time.

A strong brand equity comes from the development of a robust image and personality. Both of these need to be reinforced by every advertisement, communication and promotion that the brand develops. Consistency is vital to growing a strong equity.

Consistency is vital to growing a strong brand equity. How consistent are you in your brand building efforts? #Brand #BrandImage #BrandEquity #BrandBuilding #Marketing Click To Tweet.

Steadiness is vital to growing strong equity. The results of being consistent will be both higher sales and profits, due to being valued more than its competitors.

Global Brand Equity Rankings

The importance of a brand’s equity is clearly indicated by the many different sources of regional and global brand equity rankings published each year.

The two most well known, Interbrand and Millward Brown’s BrandZ, have slightly different algorithms and therefore results, but both include financial as well as consumer metrics.

 

Interbrand

Interbrand’s model has three key components:

  • analysis of its financial performance
  • analysis of the role the brand plays in purchase decisions
  • analysis of the brand’s competitive strength.

Together with extensive desk research and an expert panel assessment, Interbrand also includes data from Reuters, Datamonitor and media platform Twitter.

 

Millward Brown’s BrandZ

BrandZ, on the other hand, uses a mixture of financial information and customer surveys. Their proprietary research covers 3mio consumers and 100,000 brands in more than 50 markets. They too measure three things:

  • How “meaningful” the brand is, its appeal & ability to generate “love” and meet the consumer’s expectations and needs.
  • How “different” it is, what unique features it may have and its ability to “set the trends” for consumers.
  • How “salient” the brand is, whether it springs to mind as the consumer’s brand of choice.

BrandZ’s 2016 results showed Google overtaking Apple as the most valuable brand in the world. However, in 2019 Amazon has leapfrogged the competition to be crowned the BrandZ Top 100 Most Valuable Global Brand for 2019, breaking Apple and Google’s 12-year hold on the top spot.

So there you have it. All the major points a marketer should know about brand image, equity, personalities and archetypes.

A marketer’s role is primarily to defend and grow its brand’s image and equity through a strong personality and consistent communications. If you are not succeeding in all these areas then you are almost certainly being challenged by weakening sales.

It is an interesting and often overlooked fact that brand image usually declines before sales do, so it is an invaluable indicator of your brand’s health. If you would like to learn more about measuring and analysing brand image, there are several chapters dedicated to the topic in my book “Winning Customer Centricity”

Don’t forget to add your answers to the couple of questions I asked in the article, in the comments below. Let me know what you think about defending your brand’s image and growing equity. And I’d love to hear about your own brand’s pesonality and archetype, and whether or not you had trouble in defining it.

Top 10 Posts on Brand Building Strategies of 2018

A New Year tradition we started here at C3Centricity back in 2011, is to share our most popular brand building strategies and posts of the year. This gives everyone a chance to catch up on our best posts that they may have missed.

This year has been a particularly successful year for C3Centricity, with many of our newest post getting the top scores globally. This is quite tough for a blog that has been running for almost eight years and highlights the quality of the content we share with you! So have a look at our list and see if your own favourites are there. If not, then please let us know in the comments. Thanks.  

market research departments should deliver insights1. Is it Time to Do Away with Market Research Departments? 

This post shares the highlights of recent research into how market research departments can become true business partners, rather than being viewed as a mere cost center. It also shares ten steps to reinventing and upgrading your market research department. If you believe that you could be getting better support on your customer understanding and insight development, then these ten ideas will take you a long way to doing this in 2019.

 

 

CMO & Head of marketing keep your job2. Head of Marketing, How Can You Keep Your Job When Most CMOs Are Losing Theirs? 

Many CMOs are frustrated by their lack of recognition by their fellow c-suite colleagues. If this is your case, or you are new to the position and want to make an impact quickly, then this is a must-read post. It shares the most collon opportunities and challenges you may face and suggests five areas to (re)visit which will provide a new and fresh perspective on their business.

 

 

Top 2018 Infographics3. Top 10 Marketing Infographics to Smash 2018 (Inspiration for the Visual World)

These are the most shared marketing infographics of 2017. As usual, for each one we have added an action for you to take based upon the topic covered.

What was new for last year is that many marketing infographics that were shared were actually about content marketing. It’s as if “true/traditional” marketing doesn’t exist any more! That in itself says a lot about the focus of marketers these days! Are they right to do so? I don’t think so, but let me know your opinion.

 

 

Customer first strategy4. What a Customer First Strategy Is (And what it’s not!)

In its simplest form a customer first strategy is about thinking customer first in everything you do. Yes I know it sounds easy but it really isn’t. It doesn’t come naturally, at least to start with. And it involves a culture change to move the organisation in this direction. But I can assure you it’s worth it; its value is now well proven.

This post lays out the importance of being data driven, innovative, collaborative and agile to succeed a customer first strategy. It also shares the seven reasons most companies fail.

 

Customer journey map5. Do You Know Your Customer Journey Map & the Emotions Overlay?

This post shares the three lessons learnt from a personal (bad) experience with a hotel chain and its “guaranteed lowest price” promise. These are: 1. The customer journey needs to integrate all possible contact points. If it doesn’t you could alienate your customers before they make a purchase. 2. If you mess up admit it and correct the situation. People understand that mistakes get made. While they may forgive you if you quickly put it right, they will never trust you again if you pretend nothing is wrong. 3. Follow up to make sure the customer is happy. In the heat of the moment a customer may feel satisfied that something was done. However in the cold light of the next day, week or month they might feel that what you did was not enough.

 

Data helps you resonate with customers6. You’ve Got Data? Well Don’t Start There!

In working with clients around the world and in numerous industries, I have found that many are lost by the wealth of information that is available to them. In fact it seems to drown out their reasoning of what to do and they remain frozen in indecision.

If this is your situation, just follow the detailed steps of this post and you will soon be doubling, quadrupling, if not 10x the ROI of your data!

 

brand image and equity7. Brand Image, Equity, Personality & Archetypes: What Every Marketer Needs to Know

Your brand is not what you think it is! It is what your customers think it is; its brand image, personality and its value to them.

If you’re having issues with your own brand in either of these areas, then you’ll find this article both interesting and valuable. It covers why we buy brands, the different elements of a brand, the three types of attributes you should be measuring for your brand. It then goes on to review brand personality and the main archetypes with some great examples.

 

insight development8. Five Ideas to Improve your Insight Development

This article has been amongst the top twenty posts every year ever since it was first published back in 2013, a staggering five years ago! If you haven’t read it yet, then you really have been missing out on some surprising facts about insight development. Perhaps one of them is the reason that you are still struggling to develop valid and actionable insights? Check it out and see what you have missed all these years.

 

Provide better service and customers will love you9. The Revolutionary Marketing Challenge is Not Customer Satisfaction

We all know how extremely demanding consumers have become. Constant innovation and novelty has made us all more impatient and critical. We want things better, faster and sometimes cheaper as well. And customer satisfaction is becoming insufficient to drive growth alone. Marketing must deliver more!

This article shares three examples that provide a clear roadmap for anyone wanting to move their customer service and engagement to the next level, by offering more than mere customer satisfaction.

 

Golden nugget of segmentation10. Essentials of Segmentation and some Simple Alternatives

All brands and services need to choose a group of customers that they are going to satisfy, since it is impossible to satisfy everyone most of the time. This means that you need to make a choice and agree to ignore some of the category users you could appeal to, in order to totally satisfy your target customer.

Although this may sound counter-intuitive, segmentation is the only way to ensure you have the best possible chance to satisfy the needs of your targeted customers.

 

When I look back at these top ten posts I am proud that most of them are from 2018. After almost eight years, it seems that what I am writing today is more in line with marketers’ needs than previous posts which have been around for much longer.

There are a few exceptions to this, my evergreen content on topics that will always appeal to marketers young and old. This year, as in the past, they are on the topics of Brand image, equity and personality, Insight development and Principles of segmentation. I think this makes a lot of sense as they are fundamental skills that every marketer needs, even in this digital age. 

Now my question to you dear reader, is what topics you want me to cover in 2019? If you have reached the end of this post then you must be a keen supporter, so I will offer a free e-book to everyone who completes our short survey in January 2019. Just click on the button and you will be taken directly to the survey. Once completed you will receive an email with a link to download the ebook “Secrets to Brand Building” for free – it’s normally US$ 4.95!

Thanks for your help

I hope you enjoy reading this blog post.

If you want me to catalyse your growth and profitability, just book a call.

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