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News Release from: The Partners | Subject: brand personality
Edited by the Marketingservicestalk Editorial Team on 08 May 2008

Is brand personality a fraud?

Jim Prior, Managing Partner at branding consultancy The Partners, offers a controversial insight into why brand personality is no longer a good enough differentiator as consumers get smarter.

For the past 20 years, a fundamental fraud has been operating in the world of marketing Well disguised, it has perpetrated the minds of consumers, indoctrinated marketeers, spawned a generation of agencies, and fooled even some of the sharpest, hardest CEOs

But now, the game is up.

It's time for brands to get real again.

Around the start of the 1990s a new school of thought emerged about brands.

And it came from graphic design; from people who realised that there was a great opportunity to establish a connection between businesses and consumers through the visual language of (what was then called) corporate identity.

Brands like Orange and First Direct led the way.

They wrapped themselves in warm, engaging identities that positioned them not as distant, corporate businesses but as the consumer's best friend.

In these early cases this approach was wholly justifiable - both Orange and First Direct were supported by genuinely different product or service offers that deserved to be brought to people's attention in a distinctive, engaging way.

Their influence was so profound that their identities extended beyond the logo and started to shape the look and feel, and tone of voice, of a broader range of consumer touchpoints.

And therein the concept of brand personality was born.

And from here, the fraud began.

Too many people - brand owners and consumers alike - have become duped by the notion that the key, differentiating element of a brand is its personality.

They've come to believe this because for more than a decade they've seen a correlation between brands with distinctive personalities and businesses that have forged ahead.

Virgin, Apple, BMW have all helped to perpetuate this view.

The point too many have missed is that it is not the intangible personality that really differentiates these brands so much as the tangible product beneath it.

But by ignoring this they have given permission to other brands that do not offer any tangible advantage but which simply promise one through the way in which they look and talk.

The consumer has been too trusting, and the brands have been too selfish and idle to point out the error of their ways.

As a consequence, the world is now too full of businesses trading on a competitive advantage that goes no deeper than the thin veneer of advertising and design.

And we're starting to see the profound consequences of that in a very real and impactful way.

Consider, for example, Northern Rock.

Just a year ago millions of people considered it one the UK's strongest financial service brands.

Its friendly, engaging personality, and its apparent commitment to its home communities in the North East, persuaded many to trust it with their life savings and, hence, their future.

Today, those people have discovered that the brand was merely a facade over an unstable, unsustainable proposition that failed to deliver against its promises.

And Northern Rock is not the only brand for which this may be true.

Whilst they're hardly likely to go bust, the dominant mobile telecommunication brands are just as guilty of building a brand on differentiated style rather than substance.

They are asking consumers to choose between them based more on a colour palette than anything more meaningful.

Whilst Orange, when it launched, offered the innovation of per-second billing it now offers us nothing more than, well, just orange.

The good news is that, today, people are finally waking up to the fraud.

Catalysed by Northern Rock, the impact of the sub-prime crisis and other similar events, the realisation is beginning among consumers, and with the more enlightened marketers and CEOs, that the tangible offer of a business is what really counts.

People are learning to separate fantasy from reality and are putting the effort in to ensure that the delivery of the promise is at least as strong as the one that the brand personality tries to make.

For brand owners and their advisors, this means that the scope and focus of consideration must now be broader and more profound than before.

Brands need to consider the fundamental principles of their offer in terms of the tangible innovation and differentiation that they provide.

They must think about their added value not just in terms of superficial design but as a complete equation of product, service and holistic experience.

There of course remains a hugely important role for brand personality in helping a business in its dialogue with audiences - none of us want to return to the dull, grey, corporate world of 20 years ago - but personality alone is no longer enough.

Those brands or agencies that are unable to raise their game to this new level will flounder - their game is finally up: The fraud unmasked, and a new breed of stronger, more differentiated, more value-added replacements will surely emerge.

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