Personality Not Included by Rohit Bhargava |Book Brief

The book  Personality Not Included  contends that for brands and products to succeed they need a dynamic personality.  Author Rohit Bhargava defines what it means to have a brand  personality  and explains how successful businesses are authentically connecting to their customers.

The biggest challenge that many organizations face today is discovering how to go from a brand that people consume without thought to one that they are passionate about.  I believe that personality is the answer. Personality is the soul of your brand that goes beyond your products or services. Every part of your business, from your interactions with your customers to the packaging of your product is part of your personality, and what inspires your customers to love you, and more importantly, to tell others about you. I define  personality  as the unique, authentic, and talkable soul of your company   in short it s what brings your brand to life! Here are a few approaches

People don t tend to see accidents as a good thing.  Accidents conjure up images of car crashes and things gone wrong, but sometimes accidents can have a positive effect.  The Post-it was created by accident so were Cornflakes, Coca Cola, the microwave, and even Viagra! Accidental spokespeople can be just as effective and successful.  Jared Fogle is a great example, you may have heard of.  A decade ago, Jared was just a guy in Indiana who weighed over 400 pounds.  He got local attention when he lost over 100 pounds in what he called the  Subway diet    eating nothing but Subway sandwiches for three months.  Subway s ad agency recognized Jared as a great opportunity.  Their gamble worked because Jared was a guy real people could connect with. He was a real brand enthusiast who became the personality behind Subway.  Accidental spokespeople can come from anywhere. They might be loyal customers like Jared, or dedicated partners, or vocal employees. I call them accidental because they re not trained in marketing messages. When they speak, it s usually from an authentic belief. And in today s user-generated world of blogs and social networking, finding those accidental spokespeople is easier than ever and they can be your most powerful marketing allies.

If you re a fruit company and you sell bananas, how do you get customers to care which ones they buy? Well, in the case of Dole, you give your bananas a back story. Most people forget that there are human beings and real stories behind the growing, picking, packaging, and shipping of fruits.  At Dole, they remind you by printing a three digit  farm code  on each banana that you can type in online and see details about the farm and farmers that grew and picked that banana.  If you can see the farm where your banana came from, you feel much more of a connection to it. For some people that makes buying bananas an emotional choice as well as a logical one. This is the power of creating a convincing back-story. It can give your customers a reason to believe in your brand and in what you offer.

How do you spot the opportunities to let your brand personality shine through?  I call these chances  Personality Moments    a point in time when you have the chance to build a more authentic connection with your customer. Your personality moments might be while a customer is waiting in line at your restaurant, or when they unpack a product that you shipped to them. These moments can come at any time. A common way to think about them is by defining them at a particular stage of the buying cycle, maybe when the consumer is researching, or buying, or consuming or sharing. This can often lead to what I call the  Attention Paradox . This the situation where you focus the majority of your time capturing customers  attention and very little time taking advantage of the attention when you already have it. It takes a lot of effort to get someone to pay attention to a 30 second ad and remember to act on it. Imagine instead if you gave your customers extra business cards or stickers to give to others when they talked about their experience with your product or service. You can t replace personality to replace having something good to sell. But imagine how much more powerful a connection you could have with your customers by focusing on those personality moments you might be missing.

I hope that  Personality Not Included  offers you an entertaining and useful guide to defining and using your brand s personality to stand out.