An Excellent Personality

There was some interesting feedback on my recent piece on Functional Trust and its older brother Truth. But let’s face it, truth and trust are a lot less exciting than a sparkling brand personality.

That last article touched on the difference between what I’m calling good old reliable “functional trust” and the more feckless version that we’ll call “marketing trust.” The first is based on functional delivery of the product’s utility, the second is based on what the marketing department says about it.

Perhaps I was a little rough on “marketing trust.” So, let’s park the term for the moment and give thanks to the dear departed David Bowie. I just caught a clip of Ziggy Stardust talking about a concept he’d based a lot of his career on. “Product plus personality equals brand.”

Personality. A lot of the world ran on that kind of thinking for quite some time. Heady days when brands didn’t bother to say they were better. Instead, they did things that made them the life of the party, or the funniest brand, or the angriest brand or the stupidest brand. The functional trust of beer is pretty much the same across all beers and, let’s face it, so is a lot of the taste. Function = Buzz. Any beer product can deliver that. Personality filled the coolers.

Winning brand personalities work in the most basic way. They lend their character to the buyer. Levi’s, Lululemon, Jeep, Harley-Davidson, Red Bull, Stella Artois and on and on. The buyer borrows a pinch of a brand personality as a kind of a spicy seasoning to their own personality.

Here’s an exercise. If you’re in a room full of people first thing in the morning, look at the coffee cups that they’re carrying. Yes, they prefer the flavour of the coffee that they’re holding but the logo on the cup is as much a twist of lemon on the cocktail of their character as the shoes on their feet.

Brand personality in lieu of product performance did an interesting thing in marketing. It made marketing into entertainment.

So, let’s lay aside our AI search performance obsessions for the moment and crack a few jokes. It probably won’t land Agentic Endorsement or boost your AEO. But why let the nerds rule everything?

I’m not being completely irresponsible here. There is still a metric around most loved brands and yes, many get that status by delivering functional trust by the boatload. Then again, others get there by sticking their logos on things that go fast or do something outrageous. Some get there by saying things in the face of online haters; if you don’t risk anybody hating you, who’s going to love you?

Yes, we will now do our searching and deciding using robots at a frightening and ever-accelerating rate, but we will still do our buying based on emotions. And just like people, when I’m forced to choose between two look-alike products, I’m going with personality. I’m going with the brand I like.

And hello, all you captains of marketing and industry, before you dive into the new age of robot decision making, assert and protect your brand’s personality! If for no one else, for me. Because most marketing is boring as watching a fern wilt. And that makes me sad.

Let all of us love your brand. Not because it’s trying to please everyone but because it has a personality.

Thanks,

Rob