Image by Irina Gromovataya from Pixabay
How to gauge your brand’s personality appeal – is it flawless to yield you great sales? To use a runway model as a metaphor, here’s a checklist of 16 flawless factors to measure your brand’s personality.
First, here are two key questions about your marketing: How much have you invested in your brand and personality? How’s it working?
These are important questions. However, many companies – large, medium and small – can’t accurately answer the questions. That’s especially true regarding their return on investment. Yet, ROI is critical to measure.
Timeless research shows how to gauge your brand’s personality appeal – whether it’s suitable to yield sales.
“We developed this means of measuring brand personality appeal (BPA) so companies can figure out how favorably their brand personality is viewed by consumers – and what they can do to enhance that personality’s appeal to their market,” says Dr. David Henard, an associate professor of business management at North Carolina State, in a press release.
The paper, “Brand personality appeal: conceptualization and empirical validation,” was co-authored by Henard; Dr. Traci Freling, of the University of Texas-Arlington; and Dr. Jody Crosno, of West Virginia University. The paper was published in the Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science.
“Until now, researchers have only been able to determine whether a company has a brand personality,” Henard says. “The only existing scale was Aaker’s Brand Personality Scale, which could determine whether a brand personality is rugged, sophisticated, competent, exciting or sincere.
“What we’ve done here is develop a system that digs deeper to help companies link brand personality to concrete outcomes. For example, does the brand personality actually make people want to buy their product?”
Brand variables
The 2011 study lists 16 questions to ask about your brand in three variables: Favorability, originality and clarity.
The press release explains: “Favorability is how positively a brand personality is viewed by consumers. Originality is how distinct the brand personality is from other brands. Clarity is how clearly the brand personality is perceived by consumers.”
The press release offers more explanation about the three variables. For example, a company may find that its brand personality has a moderate rating on favorability, but is viewed as highly original and clearly defined.
High marks for originality and clarity make the brand personality more appealing than the moderate favorability rating might indicate.
It also tells a company that it needs to focus its efforts on improving its favorability rating, rather than distinguishing itself from competitors, in order to boost the brand personality’s overall appeal.
The 16 questions:
- This brand’s personality is unapparent…apparent
- This brand’s personality is distinct…indistinct
- This brand’s personality is satisfactory…unsatisfactory
- This brand’s personality is obvious…not obvious
- This brand’s personality is unpleasant…pleasant
- This brand’s personality is common…distinctive
- This brand’s personality is attractive…unattractive
- This brand’s personality is ordinary…novel
- This brand’s personality is positive…negative
- This brand’s personality is bad…good
- This brand’s personality is vague…well-defined
- This brand’s personality is poor…excellent
- This brand’s personality is undesirable…desirable
- This brand’s personality is predictable…surprising
- This brand’s personality is routine…fresh
- This brand’s personality is unclear…clear
The study provides interesting food for thought, right? Munch away.
From the Coach’s Corner, here are more resource links to increase profits:
Winning in Branding, Sales – The 6 Key Characteristics of a Logo — One key element for a company’s branding and sales that often gets short shrift is a great logo. Whether you’re an entrepreneur entering a brave new world or an established company needing profits, a great logo helps ensure top-of-mind awareness. A great logo can make the difference between winning and losing in a competitive marketplace.
The Link between a Simple Logo and Branding Success — Some of the world’s most-successful companies have simple logos. That’s the conclusion from a study by a UK logo-design company, Small Business Logos. It conducted the 2012 study that lists the top-10 logos in different sectors from technology to shoes. “Creating a strong, memorable logo can really enhance the success of your business,” said Lucy Smith, marketing and eCommerce director for Small Business Logos.
Checklist to Build Your Brand on a Budget — Branding is very important. It really helps to build your brand on a budget. Nebulous branding is a leading cause of business failure. Besides ill-defined branding, when a business fails there are several likely reasons. They include poor planning, insufficient passion, ineffective management, weak finances, undesirable location, and ineffective use of technology. A solid brand will help you land customers and insure customer loyalty.
Choosing Best Web Sites to Advertise — ‘Medium is the Message’ — When considering where to communicate your message, selection of the right medium is important. In the 1960s, it was all the rage after Canadian philosopher Marshall McLuhan theorized that “the medium is the message.” His adage is still apropos. In other words, the medium becomes the message, and it’s an influence on how your message is received.
Checklist: 21 Top Marketing Tips for New Entrepreneurs — If you’re unemployed or under-employed, do you have an entrepreneurial spirit? Would you like to be your own boss? Are you gainfully employed but have a great entrepreneurial idea? If answer yes to any of these questions, you might want to launch a new business. An economic downturn is often an excellent time to launch a new idea.
“What’s a brand? A singular idea or concept that you own inside the mind of the prospect.”
– Al Ries
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