Know-How Exchange : Branding

Brand is in the eye of the beholder.
Brand is the overall impression of your company and goods and services held by the general market you''re trying to sell to.

You have to come up with what you''d like that image to be, and then figure out how to deliver. Brand values are the image you''d like to project and brand personality is what you actually do. Or, as Kristin Zhivago puts it (www.zhivago.com), your brand is the promises you keep.

I would interpret values to be the "ethical/moral/standards backbone" of a brand and the personality as the way the brand exudes or represents it''s values.

For example, a BMW has the "value" of being a reliable luxury car with optimum performance. It excudes these values in its "personality" by its appearance and actual performance.

Ideally, the value and personality compliment each other. But this isn''t always the case. Sometimes a brand may have a good value but a terrible personality and vice versa.

I hope that helps!

Good Luck!

And just to add my view to the pot!
BRAND VALUE (Brand Promise) is the internal brand values, these can be things like:

We put the customer first
We work as one team
Quality before quantity
etc ... etc ...

BRAND PERSONALITY (Customer Perception) is how part of how the brand is percieved by your customers and prospects, and is generally based on things like:

Quality of products
Support on all customer touchpoints
Feel good with purchase
Trust
etc ... etc ...


The idea is that the VALUES (promise) and PERSONALITY (perception) come together in all the customer interactions, and you either satisfy your brand values in the mind of your customer, and make them happy (and keep them), or you simply fail to deliver (and lose them).

I hope that this helps :-)

Glen

If I were given the task to articulate to the senior management team (that are non marketers) the difference between brand values (we are not talking about brand value) and brand personality - I would start by asking them a few thought provoking questions.

1. Brand Values

“Do they know anyone who has personal values that would simply make them ineligible to represent our company?” Out of some forty common values, people chose less than ten to run their life and everyone puts different emphasis on those they select as important. This question effectively points out that the leadership has an existing set of core values. They are just not clearly articulated.

Jim Collins, author of Built to Last addresses this topic when he says:

“A few points about identifying core values, for without this stake firmly in the ground, the organization is unable to articulate its purpose effectively:

First, you cannot "set" organizational values, you can only discover them. Nor can you "install" new core values into people. Core values are not something people "buy in" to. People must be predisposed to holding them. Executives often ask me, "How do we get people to share our core values?" You don't. Instead, the task is to find people who are already predisposed to sharing your core values. You must attract and then retain these people and let those who aren't predisposed to sharing your core values go elsewhere. "

Ideally, once you achieve agreement on company core values you can comb through the organization and identify where policies and actions are misaligned with the core values. Get rid of those. Next create visible actions that create alignment between what the company does and its core values. Think of it as the company fulfilling its “promise” to behave in a certain way.

2. Brand Personality

Here you might ask the senior management to think of a relative or acquaintance that has no personality. It should become abundantly clear that a company without a personality is in the same position. This should achieve your goal of getting buy-in to discover and shape your company’s desired personality. Chances are you already have one that you can take steps to enhance.

3. Brand Definition

Just in case you need a definition of brand to get these guys all on the same page try this one on for size:

A brand is the sum total of everything that is known, thought, felt or perceived about a company, product and/or service. It is a promise to achieve a certain result, deliver a certain experience and behave in a certain manner. (source unknown)

My colleagues have given you a lot to work with. Good luck with your brand development process.

Mark Wilkinson
Brand Architect
https://www.newmarque.com

PS. Let me know if you need a list of values