| Business psychologist Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic looks at how brands can turn their internal identity into public reputation. | Much like people need to re-consider who they are as they grow up, so do corporations |
The concept of brand personality refers to the human-like attributes associated with brands. For example, Apple is cool, Hermes is elegant, and the Volkswagen Golf is understated. Much like in humans, brands develop their personality with time, as they mature. In some cases, this results from deliberate attempts to translate the vision of designers and marketers into a product that can help consumers express key aspects of their identity. In others, the process is more organic and unpredictable, when unexpected brand ambassadors emerge, such as in the case of hip-hop artists’ devotion for Cristal champagne or footballers’ love for Hublot watches, which forced these brands to re-evaluate their image.
But how can brands deliberately change their personality, and should they? The second part of the question is easy to answer: there is no shortage of circumstances where brands would benefit from a personality change. For example, since the last financial crisis all banks have invested a considerable amount of time and resources to re-brand themselves as trustworthy and altruistic, albeit rather unsuccessfully.
The big technology firms that have amassed so much wealth and market share in the past decade, while avoiding taxes, snooping on consumers and productizing their data, will face similar challenges in the near future. One would imagine their marketing and PR departments are already spending a great deal of time pondering about how they can recover their original reputation as laidback, friendly and pro-social innovators who, as the TV show Silicon Valley puts it, are “trying to make a better world”.
Brand changes don’t just concern big corporations. Indeed, every small and medium-sized enterprise will at some point need to influence how clients perceive it. These attempts to change its reputation concern changing its brand personality. It is not enough for organizations to change what they do; it is also necessary for them to convey those changes to consumers. And as William Blake noted, external changes can often drive internal changes more than vice-versa.
As for the first part of the question, the answer is less straightforward. Despite the wide range of commercial design interventions to re-brand companies and products, and the size and age of the PR industry, there is not much robust scientific research outlining how brands can best achieve changes in their personality. For each case study that worked, there are hundreds that didn’t, which means that typical interventions are far from effective.
In the absence of clear evidence, let us extrapolate from the science of personality, a well-established branch of psychology devoted to understanding how individuals perceive each other, and how these perceptions can change. Over the past 100 years, a great deal of evidence has accumulated on the stability and change of people’s identity (how they view themselves) and reputation (how they are viewed by others), and this evidence ought to be of interest to marketers. Furthermore, there is a practical side to this science, namely executive coaching and reputation management interventions, which have been shown to be effective in improving the success of individuals and organizations. If we extrapolate from these findings with humans to the realm of brands, our ability to shape the personality of brands will improve. In particular, there are four critical steps to consider:
1. Understand your brand identity
Most businesses fail at this first step because they have an inaccurate view of themselves. That is, their brand identity, which encapsulates their core values, mission, and cultural DNA, is mostly a formality. In some cases, it comprises the outdated vision of the founders. In others, meaningless marketing copy. Much like people need to reconsider who they are as they grow up, so do corporations. This may involve a more existential quest for figuring out what the organisation is, what it stands for, and what psychological benefit its services and products are trying to have on consumers.
2. Profile your brand reputation
This is a fairly simple process. Through surveys and consumer segmentations, which are now cheaper and quicker than ever thanks to the digital revolution, companies can truly understand what their brand reputation is. In particular, they can crowd source the key attributes that consumers associate with their brands. A rather important point here is to understand what its most loyal consumers are achieving by liking and buying its products. This does not refer to the functional value the products have, but the psychological value. Is it enabling consumers to display status, and in what specific way? Some brands enable people to feel intelligent, others altruistic, others powerful, others cool, etc. A brand’s reputation aligns highly with the reputation of its best customers.
3. Find actions that close the gap between 1 and 2
If there is a big gap between how companies see their own brand and how consumers see it, then they will need to find a way to translate their identity into reputation. In other words, get consumers to see them how they would like to see themselves. This happens best via actions. Actions need to be promoted and communicated, however, so that the desirable attributes or traits become a central part of the brand’s reputation. As with coaching, this will require brands to stop doing certain things, and keep doing others.
4. Re-evaluate the gap between 1 and 2
It is only when organizations can internalize the reputational changes they have attained that their brand identity will be consolidated. When they succeed, they will have persuaded consumers to see them as they wanted to be seen. But when they fail, they must re-evaluate their identity and accept that they are not the brand they wanted to be. And there is nothing wrong with that. Coming to terms with it will enable brands to appeal to the right customers and have a realistic self-view. Much like in humans, self-awareness is a precious but rare psychological commodity these days.
Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic is a professor of business psychology at University College London and vice-president of research and innovation at Hogan Assessment Systems. He is co-founder of metaprofiling.com and author of Confidence: Overcoming low self-esteem, insecurity and self-doubt.
But how can brands deliberately change their personality, and should they? The second part of the question is easy to answer: there is no shortage of circumstances where brands would benefit from a personality change. For example, since the last financial crisis all banks have invested a considerable amount of time and resources to re-brand themselves as trustworthy and altruistic, albeit rather unsuccessfully.
The big technology firms that have amassed so much wealth and market share in the past decade, while avoiding taxes, snooping on consumers and productizing their data, will face similar challenges in the near future. One would imagine their marketing and PR departments are already spending a great deal of time pondering about how they can recover their original reputation as laidback, friendly and pro-social innovators who, as the TV show Silicon Valley puts it, are “trying to make a better world”.
Brand changes don’t just concern big corporations. Indeed, every small and medium-sized enterprise will at some point need to influence how clients perceive it. These attempts to change its reputation concern changing its brand personality. It is not enough for organizations to change what they do; it is also necessary for them to convey those changes to consumers. And as William Blake noted, external changes can often drive internal changes more than vice-versa.
As for the first part of the question, the answer is less straightforward. Despite the wide range of commercial design interventions to re-brand companies and products, and the size and age of the PR industry, there is not much robust scientific research outlining how brands can best achieve changes in their personality. For each case study that worked, there are hundreds that didn’t, which means that typical interventions are far from effective.
In the absence of clear evidence, let us extrapolate from the science of personality, a well-established branch of psychology devoted to understanding how individuals perceive each other, and how these perceptions can change. Over the past 100 years, a great deal of evidence has accumulated on the stability and change of people’s identity (how they view themselves) and reputation (how they are viewed by others), and this evidence ought to be of interest to marketers. Furthermore, there is a practical side to this science, namely executive coaching and reputation management interventions, which have been shown to be effective in improving the success of individuals and organizations. If we extrapolate from these findings with humans to the realm of brands, our ability to shape the personality of brands will improve. In particular, there are four critical steps to consider:
1. Understand your brand identity
Most businesses fail at this first step because they have an inaccurate view of themselves. That is, their brand identity, which encapsulates their core values, mission, and cultural DNA, is mostly a formality. In some cases, it comprises the outdated vision of the founders. In others, meaningless marketing copy. Much like people need to reconsider who they are as they grow up, so do corporations. This may involve a more existential quest for figuring out what the organisation is, what it stands for, and what psychological benefit its services and products are trying to have on consumers.
2. Profile your brand reputation
This is a fairly simple process. Through surveys and consumer segmentations, which are now cheaper and quicker than ever thanks to the digital revolution, companies can truly understand what their brand reputation is. In particular, they can crowd source the key attributes that consumers associate with their brands. A rather important point here is to understand what its most loyal consumers are achieving by liking and buying its products. This does not refer to the functional value the products have, but the psychological value. Is it enabling consumers to display status, and in what specific way? Some brands enable people to feel intelligent, others altruistic, others powerful, others cool, etc. A brand’s reputation aligns highly with the reputation of its best customers.
3. Find actions that close the gap between 1 and 2
If there is a big gap between how companies see their own brand and how consumers see it, then they will need to find a way to translate their identity into reputation. In other words, get consumers to see them how they would like to see themselves. This happens best via actions. Actions need to be promoted and communicated, however, so that the desirable attributes or traits become a central part of the brand’s reputation. As with coaching, this will require brands to stop doing certain things, and keep doing others.
4. Re-evaluate the gap between 1 and 2
It is only when organizations can internalize the reputational changes they have attained that their brand identity will be consolidated. When they succeed, they will have persuaded consumers to see them as they wanted to be seen. But when they fail, they must re-evaluate their identity and accept that they are not the brand they wanted to be. And there is nothing wrong with that. Coming to terms with it will enable brands to appeal to the right customers and have a realistic self-view. Much like in humans, self-awareness is a precious but rare psychological commodity these days.
Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic is a professor of business psychology at University College London and vice-president of research and innovation at Hogan Assessment Systems. He is co-founder of metaprofiling.com and author of Confidence: Overcoming low self-esteem, insecurity and self-doubt.
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