The elements of brand personality

In part three of this series, we are looking at the elements that combine to create your brand’s personality. The elements of brand personality are considered intangible, and on the table of brand elements they are classified as feelings. The feeling elements are important because they work to explain why people buy brands for more than just their utility.

By Nancy Gray

Clinical Assistant Professor, Marketing  

Hi, I’m a Mac. And I’m a PC. — Apple 2006

Those of you who are smiling knowingly likely recognize this quote as the opening to a successful advertising campaign that Apple launched in 2006. For those of you too young to remember these humorous sketches, simply type the above quote into your YouTube search window and enjoy viewing the results. These advertisements worked so well because they play on human personality traits that we (seemingly) automatically associate with these two brands — Apple and Microsoft.

In part three of this series, we are looking at the elements that combine to create your brand’s personality. I will guide you through an interactive exercise that I use, other researchers at ASU use, and that you can use to get to know your brand’s personality. Once again, it is important that this personality be built on elements your customers ascribe to your brand, not on your own aspirations.

The elements of brand personality are considered intangible. On the table of brand elements they are classified as feelings. Many research articles have been published on the tendency to personify brands. One of the most notable is by Jennifer Aaker, a researcher now working at Stanford University. The feeling elements on the chart extend from her in-depth work into brand personalities. Your customers combine these to form their own take on your brand’s personality. Researchers such as Aaker have demonstrated that brand personality is a powerful way to distinguish your brand from other, similar brands. This is particularly important if there is a great deal of parity in your brand’s marketplace.

The feeling elements are important because they work to explain why people buy brands for more than just their utility. People form bonds with — have a greater affinity for — brands that they imbue with personalities that they like (even love). These are brands they want to be seen with. So, I encourage you to make the acquaintance of your brand. This relationship will be beneficial to you in designing advertising, packaging, and even products that are in harmony with your brand’s personality and therefore viewed as authentic and believable by your audience.

Getting to know you

In part two, I introduced the method of free association to uncover brand elements. In this article I offer a second, more structured approach that still leaves room for unearthing new insights. This is useful if your customers find it difficult to effortlessly articulate how they feel about your brand. The following method was a great help in my own research into the Vespa brand and its loyal followers.

Begin by writing the feelings elements onto index cards — one element per card. Alternatively, you can print out and enlarge the attached element chart then cut-out each element square. Next, give the element cards to your customers and invite them to pick out the feeling elements they associate with your brand. Finally, ask your customers to attach their selections to your product. I do mean literally. Tape works well.

In researching Vespa scooters and their proud and faithful owners, I printed the elements onto colored paper, which I adhered to magnets. Vespa owners placed the applicable magnets on their scooters to represent the elements they considered most consistent with the feelings they connected to their scooter. When a feeling element was associated with a particular feature, I asked the owners to place the element on that feature. I video recorded (with permission) the process in order to capture the stories these Vespa brand loyalists as they participated in this brand research exercise.

I highly recommend this step. I also encourage you to take photographs of the element labels on your products as a reminder.

What if your product is a service? Ask your customers to select and attach their feeling elements to a piece of paper or poster board. Yes, you could just ask them to circle the elements that most apply on the chart, but I don’t recommend this because I have found that the act of individually selecting and physically placing each element increases customer engagement and encourages insight-filled conversations.

Extra tip: Include a few blank cards. This allows people to write-in their own feeling elements.

The final step is to create a personality statement for your brand based on the elements your customer selected and any stories they told. Use this as a guide in your brand-building efforts and to define expectations on how your brand needs to behave. For example, if your brand’s personality embodies sincerity, warmth and a strong family orientation, you would not associate it with a death metal band (except in an ironic way).

In this article, we focused on how you can use the feeling elements your customers associate with your brand to serve as a strategic tool in developing strong, lasting relationships. But this is only the beginning. Ahead we’ll consider the brand element categories of awareness and image. While on the surface they may seem abstract and difficult to determine, they are some of the most revealing and important.

"Getting Started" is an entrepreneurship column by the faculty of the W. P. Carey School of Business at Arizona State University. Nancy Gray is a clinical assistant professor of marketing and a featured speaker at the W. P. Carey School’s 26th Annual Compete Through Service Symposium Nov. 4-6, 2015. First published in The Arizona Republic, November 2, 2015. Nancy Gray chart and image.