Bland personality and Brand Character

By Robert Poynton


Whether by accident or design, many brands are like celebrities - they have public personalities which are superficial, glib and idealised. They are 'blands' more than 'brands'.

By contrast, characters that live in stories and films are complex, varied and engaging. What if brands were complex characters instead of plastic personalities? What effect would this have on customers, employees and the world at large? What would you do differently to achieve this?

For the past five years I have been working with people who routinely create engaging characters - improvisers. Moreover, they do so in real time, without a script, in front of their customer (the audience). Their craft suggests some of the things companies and brands could do differently when it comes to creating characters. I am going to look at three.

1. Use action to communicate
2. Allow a 'bit that doesn't fit'
3. Be different with different people


1. You are what you do
For an improviser actions are what communicate. You establish who you are through what you do, not what you say. If your character is 'someone who gives others a good time' you listen, respond promptly, ask for advice, give presents and so on.

Brands don't do this. Most of their time, money and attention is devoted to what their communication says, not what their actions say. Which trips them up. For example, I once bought Microsoft Encarta on a trip to the US, only to find I was denied technical support in the UK. "Where do you want to go today?" didn't include 'home'. It wasn't part of the character of Microsoft, guiding its actions to help satisfy a customer. It was an image disconnected from the reality of the brand experience.

Actions communicate far more than 'communication'. As Aristotle put it, 'you are what you do'. Thus the rate at which Nike changes its products (with only aesthetic differences) says it's a fashion brand, whether it wants to be or not.

Camper opens shops when they aren't finished. This piece of action does a lot to establish Camper's character. It tells me that Camper cares more about the shoes than the setting, that it is unpretentious and approachable, that it isn't anxious to impress me, that it is willing to take a risk.

Understanding the power of action to communicate helps internally. Dr. Martens AirWair (U.S.A.) found that only when it translated its values into actions did they really start to mean anything. All of a sudden people anywhere in the organisation, from the warehouse to the CEO, understood what they could do to build the character of the brand.

Look hard at the obvious things a brand does. What do those actions say? If a brand value is 'honesty' how does honesty show up in action? How do you know if someone is honest? What does the brand do that is honest? What else could it do and what should it stop doing?

2. A 'bit that doesn't fit'
Idealised people are boring, unbelievable and indistinguishable from each other. In short, they are characterless. Compelling characters often have a 'bit that doesn't fit'. In Shakespeare in Love, The Bard himself gets writer's block. Indiana Jones is a hero who's afraid of snakes. Were he a brand, that wouldn't be allowed - in case it dented his macho credentials.

A 'bit that doesn't fit' doesn't have to be a weakness. It could just be a detail we don't expect. For example, the character of a ruthless lawyer becomes more compelling if we discover he loves flower arranging. Improvisers know that the 'bit that doesn't fit' saves you from stereotype and makes a character three dimensional.

The long, slow, research-heavy processes by which brands are developed almost inevitably squeeze out any 'bit that doesn't fit'. For a brand to have character, you have to work in a way that allows a 'bit that doesn't fit' back in.

3. Be different with different people
You behave differently with your mother than with your boss. Brands don't. Especially when marketing brands across national boundaries, consistency is the goal and control is used to achieve it. Brands are designed to be the same everywhere, with everyone.

Yet what makes characters life-like is inflection and movement, for example shifts in the status they play in relation to other people. In real life you might play low-status to please your mother (the dutiful child) and high status (the effective executive) to impress your boss. And your status will shift as the situation demands. Improvisers deliberately use these shifts in status to create authentic scenes and characters.

By contrast, brands are monotone, they play the same status everywhere and it's nearly always high (the few that play low status are refreshingly obvious, e.g. VW calling its own car "Ugly" or Tesco's 'every little helps').

Status shifts give complexity to a character, without breaking it apart. Brands would be less wooden if they varied their status according to the relationship and the situation they face. There's more to character than consistency.


Conclusion - an illusion of precision
If you really want a brand to become a character the single most important thing you could do is give up the idea that you can define and control it with a short list of adjectives called brand values.

Words like 'honest, helpful, intelligent, innovative, trustworthy' give an illusion of precision, but in fact are very vague. Character is more elusive, subtle and complex than this. It is created through action, by tolerance for 'a bit that doesn't fit' and by dynamic shifts in status. Which ultimately makes it much harder to create but much more worth having.

Robert Poynton
Robert Poynton is a recovering account planner and a founder of On Your Feet - improvisation for business (www.oyf.com). On Your Feet creates interactive programmes on communication and relationships, creativity, leadership and yes, you guessed it, brand character.