What If The Brand Spoke to You?

When considering brand personality, the natural tendency is to consider the brand to be a passive element in the relationship. The focus is upon consumer perceptions, attitudes, and behavior toward the brand; attitudes and perceptions of the brand itself are hidden behind the closed doors of the organization. Yet your relationship with another person is deeply affected by not only who that person is but also what that person thinks of you. Similarly, a brand-customer relationship will have an active partner at each end, the brand as well as the customer.

One approach to obtaining this information is to ask what the brand would say to you if it were a person. The result can be illuminating.

Blackstone illustrates this approach with a doctor-patient example. Consider a doctor who is perceived by all to be professional, caring, capable, and funny—characteristics that most would like in a doctor. But what if the doctor also felt you were a boring hypochondriac? The resulting negative relationship would be impossible to predict based only upon perceptions of the doctor’s personality or external appearance.

Blackstone’s approach was used in a research study of a credit card brand. Customers were divided into two groups based on how they thought the personified brand would relate to them. For one customer segment (labeled the “respect” segment), the personified brand was seen as a dignified, sophisticated, educated world traveler who would have a definite presence in a restaurant. These customers believed that the card would make supportive comments to them like the following –

• “My job is to help you get accepted.”
• “You have good taste.”

A second “intimidated” segment, however, described a very different relationship with the brand. This group’s view of the brand personality was similar to that observed in the respect segment, but had a very different spin. The credit card was perceived as being sophisticated and classy but also snobbish and condescending. This segment believed that the personified card would make negative comments such as the following –

• “Are you ready for me, or will you spend more than you can afford?”
• “If you don’t like the conditions, get another card.”
• “I’m so well known and established that I can do what I want.”
• “If I were going to dinner, I would not include you in the party.”

These two user segments had remarkably similar perceptions of the brand personality especially with respect to its demographic and socioeconomic characteristics. The two different perceived attitudes of the credit card toward the customer, however, reflected two very different relationships with the brand which in turn resulted in very different levels of brand ownership and usage. Contexts in which it is often worthwhile to consider what a brand might say to a customer include those listed below.

• Upscale brands with a snobbish spin – Nearly any prestige or badge brand risks appearing snobbish to some in the target market This risk is often much greater for those on the fringe of or just beyond the target market. In part, this perceived attitude restricted the market for Grey Poupon, advertised as the mustard of limousine riders. The brand has since tried to soften this message in order to expand its market and the usage rate.
• Performance brands talking down to customers Talking down to customers is a common danger for performance brands. Consider the VW Fahrvergnugen campaign. The use of the German word provided some nice associations (especially if one knew German) but risked implying that the brand looked down on those who did not “get” the clever symbol and campaign. A discarded campaign for Martel—”I assume you drink Martel”—ran the risk of talking down to all customers who were drinking a competitor’s brand.
• Power brands flexing their muscles A brand that has power over the marketplace, like Microsoft and Intel in the 1990s or IBM in the past, has a real advantage as a result of being the industry standard. The risk is that by promoting this advantage, the brand may be perceived as being arrogant and willing to smother small, defenseless competitors. One respondent in a focus group reportedly said that if IBM was a vehicle, it would be a steamroller and would park in a handicapped space.
• Intimidated brands showing their inferiority – A brand might risk appearing inferior if it tries too hard to be accepted into a more prestigious competitive grouping. Thus Sears could attempt to associate itself with trendier retailers and simply come off as being pathetic. The humorous thrust of the Sears campaign from Young & Rubicam, in which a woman goes there for a Die Hard battery but ends up buying great clothes, helps avoid this pitfall.

Any active brand relationship, though, needs to be managed. Sometimes adding a sense of humor or a symbol can help. In one study for a cigarette brand, the brand personality profile was a sophisticated individualist, stylish and corporate but also aging. Further, there was a segment, most of whom did not use the brand, which saw it as snobbish. This segment rejected the brand in part because it felt rejected by the brand. To combat this problem, the brand kept its upscale imagery but added, with gentle humor, a sense of irony about its status and prestige to soften the hard edge of the image.