Make brand exposure and interactions count. A brand's personality is built from the sum of moments shared with its prospects and customers.
Personality Not Included, by Rohit Bhargava, explores the reasons that brands systematically lose their personality and how it's possible to regain a brand's identity and likeability by effectively leveraging social media and other brand-to-one communications. Bhargava, SVP of digital strategy at Ogilvy Public Relations Worldwide, helps marketers navigate the roadblocks that drain personality from a company - namely lawyers, investors, peers, and bosses.
A key to retaining your company's personality, according to Bhargava, is loosening your brands reigns at moments you engage with prospects and customers to accomodate some level of personalization. Bhargava refers to these as 'personality moments' when interactions can make or break a lifelong brand relationship.
"Personality moments are all around us and they represent pivital moments in which you can build customer loyalty and stand apart from competitors," Bhargava said. "a personality moment is a trigger."
A welcome aspect of Personality Not Included, is the toolset Bhargava provides to support the personality-inection efforts prescribed in the book. Half of the book describes what companies can do to build and express their personality. In Part 1, readers are introduced to the key components to building a personality and learn how to:
- Recognize and bypass the myths that most marketers blindly follow,
- Use a Unique/Authentic/Talkable (UAT) Filter to understand the personality of a company
- Create a company's "marketing backstory" and communication strategy
- Harness the"accidental spokespeople" within the company
- Utilize personality moments to a company's advantage
Part 2, the remaining half of the book, is comprised of hands-on tools, checklists, and guides that a reader can use to put Bhargava's ideas into action.
Personality Not Included isn't a Social Media book, per se. It's focuses on the prerequisite 'personality' companies need to embrace in order to be effective in social channels. I firmly believe that there's no such thing as a boring brand - or a brand without personality, for that matter.
The key is finding the spark of personality that exists within every brand; fanning it into a visible flame; and warming the hearts of our customers. In order to combat the 'So what?', we need to remember and celebrate the passionate 'why?' behind our brand.
Credits: Image by Doug Savage of Savage Chickens.
Cult of Personality
A cult of personality arises when an individual uses mass media, propaganda, or other methods, to create an idealized and heroic public image, often through unquestioning flattery and praise. It is also asserted in everyday situations where popularity is used to advocate conformity to philosophies and lifestyles, even products and attitudes by way of peer pressure and herd mentality.