1-minute Summary: Key Concept Brand’s Purpose & Personality
Why Brand Purpose and Personality are Important?
How we want our consumer to view our brand. We articulate two interrelated aspects – the brand’s societal or cultural purpose and its character.
How do you Explore a Brand Purpose and Personality?
What is the brand’s role in society? Develop associated human characteristics that will influence and shape brand perception.
What Does the Right Answer Look Like?
An aspirational societal brand goal that engenders pride and passion. A brand character, creating a clear, expressive picture of the brand persona.
5-minute Tutorial: Key concept Brand’s Business
Meaning (why are we asking the question):
We articulate the feeling of a brand by considering two interrelated aspects – the brand’s purpose and character. Within this question, we consider the external consumer view of the brand. The consumer view is a perception made up of what they believe the brand stands for and the associations they attribute to the brand. These questions should, therefore, be determined from a consumer viewpoint. What do we want to communicate about our brand to the consumer? What do we want them to think and feel about our brand?
The purpose of a brand is defined here as a societal or cultural purpose. Close, but different from a more traditional ‘vision’. Often visions are defined as where the company wants to be (and the ‘mission’ is how it gets there). The terms vision and mission are, to my mind, a little dated and internally focused. Through the course of this process, there are internal focus points, times when we are driven by the business over the customer. But in this Formative Question, we are seeking our higher-order purpose to the consumer and their society or culture. We are answering the question: What is the ultimate idea of our brand to our consumer’s society or culture? What is the brand’s societal purpose? This should not be confused with a benefit. Previously we have examined benefits within the Brand Truth Core Concept. We examined the benefits of the relevant category, and we examined the product and consumer benefits of our brand. We have not yet examined the benefit of the brand at a societal or cultural level.
The second element is the ‘character’ of the brand. Like its purpose, which demands something more consumer-based than business-focused, the choice of the word ‘character’ is all-encompassing and free from technicalities.
We are concerned here, with the character elements of our brand that will influence what our consumers think and feel. These elements and the associations they create can come in any form; they’re not limited to profiles, personality traits or attitudes, but a mixture of them. It is the human characteristics that we want people to associate with our brand: a critical shortcut to how a customer describes our brand and the connection they have with it. In this part of the Formative Question, we are trying to build the key characteristics that we want our consumer to attribute to our brand.
Process (how to find the answers):
Defining our brand’s purpose immediately takes us away from business visions. It forces us to consider what is the brand’s role in society and culture for our consumer.
For some, a big thought. We might argue that running a local café versus, for example, McDonald’s, would have less impact on the world – and obviously, you do. But in terms of brand success (on a relative scale), the café still needs a purpose to be successful. No matter the size of a brand, it must have a higher goal beyond profit.
Techniques used here are asking yourself or the group: If the brand died, what might be written in its obituary? What were its most significant achievements for the consumer within society? We can also ask, if the brand was protesting for or against something, what might the placards read? Similarly, if the brand was to make the front page of a newspaper (try a local and national example) – what would the headline read?
Challenger or disruptive brand theory (Morgan and Dru) can also be very useful and applied at this stage. These and other brand positioning frameworks also look at questions to identify ‘enemies’ of the brand.
We can utilise these principles here to help us develop our brand purpose. Often a brand can define its role by finding and identifying its nemesis. The nemesis can take any form as long as it is big! For as any writer knows, the hero’s tenacity and courage is directly proportional to the enemy’s depth and scale of malice. Therefore, what are we fighting against on behalf of our consumer? What endemic social wrong do we want to put right?
Defining our brand’s character seeks to identify and project certain human aspects that will influence and shape your brand in public.
Anyone who has sat through a focus group defining brand perceptions will be familiar with the projective techniques used as a researcher: ‘Imagine brand X was a person. Who are they (gender, age); where would they live, work; what would they do in their spare time; what attitudes or characteristics does this person have?’ etc. Utilising this technique over the years has given brand owners incredible insight into how the consumer has positioned their brand (and that of their competitors) in their own personal brand universe.
Similarly, in brand workshops all over the world, I have asked clients to describe brands, separating the response into two columns (without naming them). Then, when complete, they title one column ‘rational’ (this usually includes design, range and product features) the other ‘emotional’. The emotional column always contains more words, and those words are human characteristics. The conclusions to this quasi-experiment are far-reaching but straightforward.
Brands are differentiated mainly within a framework of human characteristics.
Within consumer groups, you ‘force’ the personalisation – making consumers answer as if the brand has walked into the room in human form. Still, I suspect (from experience) that even without the ‘forced projective technique’, consumers would answer along the same lines as brand owners: primarily through defining human characteristics.
Like most observations, this is common sense. We utilise a framework we are familiar with when asked to describe something, so we default to the way we describe people. But understanding this puts enormous importance on defining or influencing the brand’s character.
Many of the world’s most successful brands work hard on establishing and maintaining a brand perception or feeling in the eyes of their customers. But too often, this side of brand positioning is not given the time and gravitas it deserves. We must embrace the more empathetic and emotional side of brand positioning. We cannot leave it unwritten or, worse, define usual uninspiring perception.
There are many approaches to defining the brand character. It is, of course, useful in workshops or alone to be guided by gut or spontaneous reaction. Most commonly, as described above, we need to transform our brand into a person. The first and often illuminating questions we can ask ourselves is what gender and age the brand is, then consider defining attitudes and personality traits. A rule of thumb here, based on saliency, is if your brand is younger or older than your core category target, something might be wrong.
Some people and groups find this easy; others are resistant. I suspect the variation has more to do with the personality of the respondent rather than the brand in question. Regardless, sometimes we must work hard to get to an answer, sometimes it comes naturally. Asking the same question in different ways can be helpful. It can, therefore, be useful to compare ourselves to the leading or closest competitor. Sometimes we find it easier to define our brand character in opposition to another (remember the ‘defining’ Apple versus PC television commercials).
However, other techniques differ from human characterisation. Exploring the brand through the five senses is an interesting approach, ‘When you consider our brand – what do you see, smell, hear, taste and touch?’ Another technique, which I have used frequently (and recently seen referenced in Brand Seduction by Daryl Weber [2016]), is the idea of ‘brand planets’. I like the large scope of this idea, it gives enough breadth to explore everything: atmosphere, environment, architecture, language, society, as well as the populace, who are they, what do they look like, what do they believe, how do they act, etc. I was originally inspired to use this technique after reading Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus by John Gray (1992). This highlights the creative concept for understanding how the difference between men and women is that they were originally from different planets! These planets had different social structures, attitudes, values and expected personality traits. Hence, it is a useful creative platform to understand and define your brand character.
What might planet Apple look like versus planet IBM? Or, more challenging but as interesting, what might planet Pepsi look like versus planet Coca-Cola? This technique can be used in isolation, but it does come to life in comparison. Importantly, when analysing the findings in this process, bring them back to human brand characteristics. Don’t discard or ignore the other non-human findings, just interpret them in a way to bring you back to human characterisation.
There are several practical considerations in answering this question. We don’t need to be too technical or concerned with classification here. It doesn’t matter what comes to mind; it just matters that it comes to mind. So, brainstorm or collect all the responses to the initial question in a group – If our brand were a person, what characteristics would they have? People answer this question with demographic, personality, attitude and value responses. There is no wrong answer.
Also, we need to beware of self-projection. Often individuals and particularly brand teams can project their own personal desired or aspirational characteristics into their brand. This can be useful, but the brand should outlast the team! We need to spend time considering contrasting characteristics. It is not uncommon for a team to disagree on certain aspects of character. We must mediate to a common shared answer.
Finally, and without apology, we need to trust in the process! We will have defined or evolved aspects of our brand up to this point. We must consider the impact on these definitions on our brand’s character. If we have significantly evolved the brand, we can’t ‘throw the baby out with the bathwater’. There will always be character aspects that have defined the brand in the past that we can bring forward into the desired future. We need to be comfortable with them within the new context.
This is a strategic process with far-reaching impacts on the practical running of a business. Decisions you make here should impact every touchpoint with the consumer. If you change, evolve or refresh the brand’s character, it must ultimately be reflected in the business – the product and service offering and experience, brand identity, website and marketing, through to recruitment and workspace environment.
The brand character must be considered with an understanding of its successful implementation. Do not be glib or treat this process as the ‘fun part’. It is usually much more important than anyone thinks
Outcome (what the answer looks like):
The reason this Core Concept comes later in the process is that we need the previous context to inform our answer. We should be looking for ‘cognitive ease’ – the flow of one concept to another, or one answer inspiring the next.
This question is designed to free us from the usual business-focused aims (we want to be number one) and elevate the conversation to how we help society achieve a broad and worthwhile goal or how we positively influence culture. It should feel big; it should make us proud. This is the ultimate ‘rule of thumb’ for our brand purpose. When we read it back or out loud, it should trigger a positive emotional reaction. I have seen this question galvanise brands through the creation of a common enemy or a shared positive purpose. It can focus, refresh or evolve a brand, giving it new energy and enthusiasm.
The difference between a ‘brand purpose’ and a ‘brand vision’ is important to consider before we look at some examples. It is possible to use some of the better iconic brand visons as illustration and inspiration for great brand purposes. However, not all brand visions can be used. Here, again, the carefully selected wording gives us direction. In too many cases (in my opinion), iconic brands miss the mark with ‘brand visions’ focused on themselves instead of what they do for their customer. Words and phrasing are critical in brand strategy, as is the consultant’s definition of them, if one is leading you through the process. A brand vision all too often becomes business, not consumer, focused. You can become too fixed on what you want the company to be, rather than what ultimate goal it plays in society for the customer. We use the word ‘purpose’ for this reason. It is a reminder that, while here to turn a profit, a successful brand will come from helping the society achieve a high-level goal. This is not to be confused with corporate social responsibility. The clue’s in the title! A corporation’s role supporting charities and the communities they operate within should not be confused with the brand’s purpose, although a good Brand Purpose will give direction to corporate responsibility.
My favourite example for inspiration (they are subject to change by brand owners) is Apple (sorry):
‘To make a contribution to the world by making tools for the mind that advance humankind.’
Although it might never have been Apple’s actual vision or mission statement (hence the urban myth grown around it), it is still a powerful illustration of the ‘level’ of purpose we should aspire to.
It is a single, short expression of the brand’s societal goal on behalf of the consumer. This, what I would term ‘brand purpose’, has been replaced with other turgid and corporate statements since, much to the concern and wrath of the Apple faithful.
There are, unfortunately, not many examples among the brands discussed so far. We need to look further afield for brand purpose examples. IDEO is a company that understands brand purpose. Reflected in their work for The North Face, on their US website they define (in part) The North Face purpose as: ‘We exist to encourage exploration’. (IDEO US website US/ blog / retrieved July 2020, retrieved from https://www.ideo.com/blog/design-an-organizations-purpose-statement-with-this-tool).
The IDEO strategy of considering the reason for the brand’s existence is a useful technique in defining a brand purpose. As we have discussed, both Apple and The North Face have identified their own reason for existing for their customer.
For further illustration, let’s refer back to our initial banking examples.
- National Bank’s brand purpose: We are going back to the heart of banking: helping people, families and communities reach their fullest potential.
- Digital Bank’s brand purpose: We want to change the nature of daily banking and embrace positive customer engagement.
Getting to the right character is an exercise in creative and strategic thinking. Practically, there are a limited number of adjectives that are used to describe people. It is, therefore, not unusual that here (as in belief systems) you get the reoccurrence of ‘the usual suspect’ traits that are often used by the business to describe the brand. It is important to reject these from the outset because they have (mostly) already become meaningless; or, if they really do work, find new ways to express them.
By this stage in the process, we have declared our core internal beliefs, which by their nature, tend to be more conservative. Having identified these, we find ourselves free to explore more exciting and creative character traits. We should have also crafted a brand purpose that makes us proud. This will lead us into a funnel or filter and helps identify the aspects of character that are most pertinent to the purpose.
The right language is important in expressing our beliefs (i.e. the Sistine Chapel example). Hence, unpacking the language is critical, and looking for expressive ways to communicate the character is vital. Consider the word ‘fresh’. Strategically it can mean promiscuous, clean, new, bright or young – an expressive word, but multi-dimensional. Big strategic terms require a very detailed explanation of precisely what is meant by them and are often better broken down.
The number of aspects required for a brand character should be few – not too few to be generic and too many to be confusing (or a compromise for opposing opinions). The best advice I can give is to keep digging into the brand’s character to ensure a clear insight and idea of who this brand is and why. Ultimately (and this is a good test) pick random human scenarios that test character, for example speeches, deaths, conflict, presentations, or other dilemmas, and determine how the brand would respond. If we can confidently predict and describe our brand’s response, we have defined the character well. If we are doubtful or mixed in our responses, we have more work to complete.
For example, our airlines’ purpose and character:
- National Carrier purpose: To continually improve and redefine the expected level of customer service in air travel.
- National Carrier character: We mirror the service you receive in the best hotels and restaurants: expert and professional, always open, courteous and thoughtful. We pride ourselves on anticipating and catering to all our customers’ needs throughout their journey with us.
- Budget Airline purpose: To fight hard for discounted air travel, so everyone has access to the freedom and adventure that travel brings.
- Budget Airline character: Youthful, informal, irrepressible, and inventive; we were born for adventure.
Thank you for reading.
