Kevin Lane Keller and Keith Richey
Correspondence:
Kevin Lane Keller, Professor of Marketing, Tuck School of Business,
Dartmouth College, Hall Hanover, NH 03755, USA Tel: +1603 646 0393
E-mail: kevin.keller@dartmouth.edu
1is
the EB Osborn Professor of Marketing at Tuck School of Business,
Dartmouth College. Keller has served as brand confidant to marketers for
some of the world's most successful brands, including Disney, Ford,
Intel, Levi Strauss, Nike, Accenture and Starbucks. He wrote the
textbook Strategic Brand Management: Building, Measuring and Managing Brand Equity and co-authored with Philip Kotler the textbook Marketing Management.
2is
an independent consultant working in New York. He holds a joint
Master's degree in Global Media and Communication from the University of
Southern California and the London School of Economics.
Received 22 April 2006; Revised 22 April 2006.
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Abstract
Brand
personality has been defined as the human characteristics or traits
that can be attributed to a brand. Corporate brand personality is a form
of brand personality specific to a corporate brand. Unlike a product
brand personality that typically relates to consumers and user imagery
for a specific product brand, a corporate brand personality can be
defined in terms of the human characteristics or traits of the employees
of the corporation as a whole. A corporate brand personality will
reflect the values, words, and actions of all employees of the
corporation. A successful 21st century firm must carefully manage its
corporate brand personality. The three core dimensions of corporate
brand personality and two traits for each dimension that are crucial for
marketplace success are outlined as Passionate and Compassionate (Heart), Creative and Disciplined (Mind) and Agile and Collaborative (Body). These traits have an interactive effect such that the effects of one trait can be enhanced by the existence of another.
Keywords:
corporate branding, corporate image, corporate values, brand personality, brand personality traits, corporate brand personality
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INTRODUCTION
As
markets continue to mature and competition within industries grows
fiercer, companies will not succeed purely on the basis of what products
or services they offer. Although these core functions of the business
are unquestionably still crucial, other aspects such as company culture
and corporate citizenship have increased in relative importance in
determining a company's ability to compete.1, 2, 3 As a result, the success of a 21st century business will be defined as much by who it is as what it does.4, 5
Historically, the identity of a company resulted solely as the
consequence of what that company did. Increasingly, the reverse will be
true, and the former will impact the latter.
What a company is and how it presents itself to the consumer are defined by its corporate brand personality. Corporate brand personality
is a form of brand personality specific to a corporate brand. Brand
personality is understood as the human characteristics or traits that
can be attributed to a brand.6
The way brand personality is commonly explored in consumer research is
by asking questions such as: 'If the brand were to come alive as a
person, what would it be like? What would it do? Where would it live?
What would it wear? Who would it talk to if it went to a party (and what
would it talk about)?'
Although the concept of brand
personality is relevant to both product brands and corporate brands,
there is an important distinction that can be drawn between the two
types of brands that affects how the brand personality concept should be
applied. A corporate brand is distinct from a product brand in that a
corporate brand can encompass a much wider range of associations.6
For example, a corporate brand may be more likely to invoke
associations based on people and relationships; programs and values; and
corporate credibility; as well as on common products and their shared
attributes or benefits. Procter & Gamble is an example of a
corporate brand that has a more broadly defined and differently composed
set of associations than those associations of the product brands it
owns (eg Tide, Pringles, Mr Clean, Pantene, Iams, etc.).
Consequently,
corporate brands will typically have a set of personality traits that
is broader and differently composed than the set of personality traits
for each product brand owned. By its nature, a product brand is defined
by what it does and represents, whereas a corporate brand is defined as
much by who it is as what it does. Unlike a product brand personality
that typically relates to consumers and user imagery for a specific
product brand, a corporate brand personality can be defined in terms of
the human characteristics or traits of the employees of a corporation as
a whole. A corporate brand personality will therefore reflect the
values, words and actions of employees, individually and collectively.
Importantly,
a successful 21st century firm must carefully manage its corporate
brand personality. The corporate brand personality should reflect the
corporate values held by the organisation. For example, if environmental
stewardship is one of a company's core values, then attributes such as
'responsible' and 'caring (for the environment)' would be reflected in
its set of brand personality traits. In this way, the corporate brand
personality is shaped by the corporate values. A company's corporate
brand personality traits as seen by consumers and the general public
should be aligned with the company's internally espoused values.
Only
once a corporation solidifies an appropriate set of personality traits
that are consistent with its values and drive employee behaviours can it
attain sustainable success against its competitors. In this paper, a
perspective on corporate brand personality traits is offered.
Specifically, it is contended that there are three key sets of traits
that collectively define corporate brand personality. Maximising
performance of the organisation on these three sets of traits is
therefore crucial for business success in the 21st century.
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CORPORATE BRAND PERSONALITY TRAITS
Externally,
corporate brands can establish a number of valuable associations in the
minds of customers and other key constituents that can help to
differentiate the brand, such as common product attributes, benefits or
attitudes; people and relationships; programmes and values; and
corporate credibility. 7, 8, 9, 10
Regardless of how it is constituted, a corporate image will depend on a
number of factors, such as the products a company makes, the actions it
takes, and the manner in which it communicates to consumers.
A
key component of the corporate image is the corporate brand
personality. In the past, brand personality has been studied at the
product level. Aaker11
examined the brand personality attributed to 60 US product brands and
found they fall into five main clusters: (1) sincerity, (2) excitement,
(3) competence, (4) sophistication and (5) ruggedness (see also Aaker et al.,).12
Product brand personality is strongly defined in terms of user
imagery—characteristics of consumers who use or are intended to use a
brand. Brand personality is seen as a means for consumers to express
their actual or idealised self-image.
Corporate brand
personality, however, is much more about perceptions of employees—both
senior management and customer-facing—that make up the company as well
as the organisation as a whole. Corporate brand personality reflects the
values, actions, and words of all employees of the corporation. In a
business-to-business setting, corporate brand personality is often
determined by direct contact with a wide range of employees. As a result
of the different focus, corporate-level traits transcend individual
products that the firm sells and the five product brand personality
dimensions.
One useful means to characterise corporate brand personality dimensions is in terms of the tripartite view of attitudes,13
which consists of affective (feelings), cognitive (thoughts) and
conative (actions) dimensions. Specifically, we believe that the
corporate personality traits of a successful 21st century business can
be grouped into three dimensions related to the 'heart,' the 'mind' and
the 'body' (see Figure 1).
These dimensions reflect three distinct sets of personality traits that
can guide employees in the organisation and influence how the company
will be viewed by others.
- —The 'heart' of the company is comprised of two traits: passionate and compassionate. The company must be passionate about serving its customers and competing in the market and must have compassion for employees, stakeholders, and members of the communities in which it operates.
- —The 'mind' of the company contains two traits: creative and disciplined. A successful company must be creative in its approach to serving its customers and winning in the market, while also adopting a disciplined approach that ensures appropriate and consistent actions across the organisation.
- —The 'body' of the company is made up of two traits: agile and collaborative. The successful company must possess the agility to profitably react to changes in the market and also employ a collaborative approach that ensures it works well together inside and outside the company toward common goals.
Note
that the identification of these three core dimensions of corporate
brand personality is broadly consistent with earlier academic work that
empirically analyzed approaches to corporate identity research and
identified three core dimensions of the 'Corporate Identity Mix:' Soul,
Mind and Voice.14, 15
Next,
we discuss these three corporate brand personality dimensions in
detail. For each of the three dimensions, two additional sub-dimensions
are identified that capture the primary corporate personality traits
within these dimensions.
Heart: Passion and Compassion
The
'heart' of the organisation involves passion and compassion. Employees
of successful 21st century firms must be passionate about the company,
its brands, and their jobs.16, 17
If they do not feel strongly about what they do, then it will be
difficult to motivate them to adopt other vital corporate personality
traits. The passion felt by employees for their specific roles in the
company must extend to their business, the industry in which it
competes, and the products and services it offers customers. It is
especially imperative that employees be passionate about what they do
for their customers. As customers are the core asset of any company,
every employee must have a strong desire to assist the company in its
commitment to the customer. For example, GE ensured that the customer's
interests would remain a top priority internally by establishing the
'Voice of the Customer' process for identifying what matters most to
customers and allocating resources accordingly.
The
21st century firm must care deeply about all its stakeholders, from its
customers to its employees to the members of the communities in which it
does business. Customer care, for example, can be demonstrated with
customer rewards programs, enhanced customer service, or by responding
to customer needs with new products and services. Citibank's 'Thank You'
rewards program for its banking customers is a recent example of a
customer care initiative. Employee care can be manifested by enhanced
benefits, employee recognition programs, or profit participation and
shareholding schemes such as Starbucks 'Bean Stock' program, which gives
every Starbucks employee shares in the company. Community care can be
demonstrated by corporate social responsibility initiatives or
cause-related marketing efforts such as Avon's Walk for Breast Cancer.
Additionally, the firm must show care for the environment, which can be
shown through efforts to use clean energy sources in manufacturing or
programs to reduce the pollution produced by the finished products
themselves. Ben & Jerry's demonstrated its care for the environment
by splitting the traditional financial bottom line into a 'double'
bottom line, which included a measurement of the environmental impact of
their products and processes.
Passion provides the internal drive for employees, but it must be tempered by a concern for others via compassion.18
Nike is an outstanding example of a company whose passion for athletics
and athletes has fuelled great marketing success, but is compassionate
to others in many different ways. Nike exhibits compassion to society as
a whole through their various community initiatives such as the NikeGO
program to 'get kids moving and give them a means to do it' and
Zoneparcs in the UK to transform playtime at UK primary schools;
environmental initiatives such as Nike Considered, which uses different
footwear materials and construction to minimise waste and toxic
substances, and the Nike Reuse-A-Shoe recycling program; and corporate
responsibility initiatives through best practice methods in supply chain
management and involvement with the Global Alliance.
Mind: Creativity and Discipline
The
'mind' of a successful business must be creative but disciplined. In
particular, 21st century firms must possess creativity to overcome the
trade-offs inherent in virtually all aspects of business. In many ways,
the most fundamental challenge of management is how to reconcile or
address the many potential tradeoffs that can exist in making marketing
and other decisions. Figure 2
lists a number of the different possible trade-offs or conflicts that
can occur in making strategic, tactical, financial, or organisational
decisions for a company.
For
example, a strategic tradeoff occurs between building product
performance and crafting an appealing brand image, since these
strategies typically require different competencies and skills.
Financially, sales-generating and brand-building activities are often in
conflict. One of the surest ways to increase sales is to reduce the
price, but sustained price reductions may lead to consumer perceptions
of the brand as 'discount' or 'cheap,' which would detract from brand
strength. Additionally, the organisational tradeoff of customisation
versus standardisation reflects the fact that increasingly customers
desire products and services that are tailored to their specific needs,
but it is typically more cost-efficient for companies to produce a
standardised version than a customised one. Clearly, trade-offs are
pervasive and must be made in the context of constrained — and often
fairly limited — resources.
But marketers do not want
to necessarily sub-optimise and emphasise one dimension or the other. A
better approach would be to 'finesse the difference' and achieve
synergy between the two dimensions. Marketing balance in this way could
occur by shrewdly reconciling the decision trade-offs — that is by
finessing the conflicting dimensions There is virtually no way to do so,
however, without creative, imaginative solutions.
For example, creative advertising can be designed that both entertains and
sells products, as was the case with the California Milk Processor
Board's Got Milk? campaign. Brand equity-building promotions that also
move product can be devised, as was the case with Procter & Gamble's
promotion for Ivory soap that reinforced a key attribute of 'floating'
and a key benefit of 'purity' while also increasing sales. Robust brand
positions can be established that stake out unique competitive territory
by simultaneously creating points-of-party and points-of-difference,
such as was the case with Apple's 'The Power to Be Your Best' ad
campaign in the mid-1980s which reconciled the seemingly negatively
correlated benefits of 'easy to use' (a point of difference) and
'powerful' (a point of parity) in the minds of consumers.
In
each of those cases, creativity and innovative approaches overcame
tough marketing dilemmas. Innovations must go beyond solving trade-offs,
however, to also address other organisational issues. Firms must
demonstrate the ability to find new solutions to old problems. For
example, Procter & Gamble, consistently among the most innovative
packaged-goods companies, recently created a more efficient way to clean
persistent bathroom stains with the launch of the Mr Clean Magic
Eraser, which contains a specialty chemical foam made by BASF.
A
successful firm must also be disciplined in its approach to growing its
business, which in itself at times can present a trade-off with
creativity. While it is necessary to encourage and maintain creativity
in the organisation, this creativity must be focused to a certain
degree. A successful firm must concentrate on leveraging its core
competencies and maintaining focus on its core business, rather than
pursuing any new business opportunity that arises. This can be best
achieved by setting appropriate priorities that provide clear direction
to all members of the organisation as to what its business goals are and
how they can be met.
If firms are to compete
successfully in today's rapidly changing marketplace, they must
transcend the current status quo and find creative ways to
systematically deliver differentiated and unexpected value to consumers.
For example, 3M encourages a culture of innovation by requiring its
scientists to spend 15 per cent of their time pursuing research that
interests them outside their specific role in the company. As a result,
3M consistently delivers innovative, creative, and, importantly,
differentiated products that bring value to consumers.
With
the '15per cent rule,' the company manages the creativity of its
employees so that this creativity augments its core business, rather
than distracting from it.
To further maintain
discipline, the 21st century firm must resist following the latest
management fads, since frequently reorganising or restructuring a
business to follow untested management philosophies can be distracting
and even damaging. Similarly, the firm must avoid the 'grass is greener'
syndrome, in which the firm de-emphasises some existing businesses and
markets in favour of building new businesses and/or competing in new
markets that seem more attractive for reasons such as that they are
growing faster or have fewer competitors. Then, a few years later, the
firm repeats the move, shifting again into another new business or
market. The firm affected by the 'grass is greener' syndrome overlooks
the fact that success cannot be sustained by continually chasing
business trends.
Body: Agile and Collaborative
Finally,
the 'body' of the firm involves being agile and collaborative. A
successful 21st century firm must possess the agility to capture and
deliver value to consumers in the face of challenging market dynamics.
Many changes have occurred in the marketing environment in recent years.
Undoubtedly, the marketing environment will continue to evolve and
change, often in very significant ways, in the coming years. Shifts in
consumer behaviour, competitive strategies, government regulations or
other aspects of the marketing environment can profoundly affect the
fortunes of a firm. Besides these external forces, the firm itself may
engage in a variety of activities and changes in strategic focus or
direction that may necessitate minor or major adjustments in the way
that its brands are being marketed.
Consequently,
effective brand management requires proactive strategies designed to at
least maintain—if not actually enhance—brand equity in the face of all
of these different forces. The firm must be able to move forward quickly
to take advantage of new opportunities in the market. Google is
currently capitalising on its agility to move rapidly into new markets
such as IP telephony, wireless internet access, and video content
provision as well as challenging entrenched competitors in established
markets such as e-commerce, publishing, desktop software and classified
ads.
The 21st century firm must also adapt its
business model to changing conditions. As noted above, it is important
to apply the appropriate level of discipline to ensure that these
changes do not dilute the strength of its core business. To be truly
successful in the long term, the 21st century firm must be proactive,
rather than reactive. Being proactive requires that a firm anticipate
what changes will be necessary in the future and proactively address
them. Innovation and relevance in all that it does will require much
agility by the firm as it ensures that it continually moves forward, but
does so in the right direction.
Finally, the
successful 21st century firm must encourage collaboration among its
employees and seek a closely collaborative atmosphere with its business
partners. Increasingly, a key goal of marketing is to develop deep,
enduring relationships with all people or organisations that could
directly or indirectly affect the success of the firm's marketing
activities.
Internally, the firm must foster a
culture of inter-departmental teamwork. Only when employees willingly
seek opportunities to collaborate can a firm develop the agility to
overcome business challenges. Externally, the firm must develop a
network of partners that offer complementary assets and competencies,
have common corporate values and beliefs, and jointly create synergistic
effects. For example, Wal-Mart invites close collaboration from its
biggest suppliers by requiring them to permanently staff teams at the
retail giant's Bentonville, Arkansas headquarters.
Successful
collaborations result from relationship marketing that cultivates the
right kind of relationships with the right constituent groups. Four key
constituents for marketing are customers, employees, marketing partners
(channels, suppliers, distributors, dealers, university scientists,
agencies, etc.); and members of the financial community (shareholders,
investors, analysts). Relationship marketing builds strong economic,
logistical and social ties among all these relevant parties.
Successful
relationship marketing offers the potential of smoother operations and
superior customer solutions. The ultimate outcome of relationship
marketing is the building of a marketing network—the company and all its
supporting constituents and stakeholders with whom it has built
mutually beneficial relationships.19
Marketing networks are invaluable company assets. Increasingly,
competition is not between companies but between marketing networks.
Winning companies will be those that build better networks, in part
through a strong spirit of collaboration.
Developing
strong relationships requires understanding the capabilities and
resources of different groups, as well as their needs, goals and
desires. Each party must be treated differently. Rich, multi-faceted
relationships with key constituents create the foundation for a mutually
beneficial arrangement for both parties.
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CONCLUSIONS
A whole greater than the sum of the parts
A
corporate brand personality is defined in terms of three main
dimensions, each of which can be defined in terms of two key traits: the
'heart' (passionate and compassionate), the 'mind' (creative and
disciplined) and the 'body' (agile and collaborative). Importantly, the
effects of these three pairs of corporate personality traits are
enhanced by each other. In other words, corporate personality traits can
have a multiplicative or interactive effect, not an additive effect.
For
example, passion can be the engine for creativity. Employees who live
the brand and are close to their customers are more likely to
energetically pursue new solutions. Creativity, in turn, facilitates
agility, as firms are better able to respond and react appropriately. As
another example, being disciplined allows for more productive
collaborations as the rules of the game are clearly established between
partners. In short, a corporate personality that maximises these three
dimensions and six traits should be better able to create valuable
synergistic effects.
One profitable direction for
additional research study is to profile the conditions favouring these
synergistic effects. What circumstances must prevail to maximise these
interactions? It will also be useful to relate these corporate
personality dimensions to other corporate image dimensions, for example
corporate credibility and associated perceived expertise,
trustworthiness and likeability.
In closing, it is
important to emphasise that the corporate personality starts with the
company's employees, who bring this personality to life and actually
determine who a company is. A company can instill the right values and
personality attributes in its people by establishing corporate-wide
values for everyone to live by, investing in recruiting and training,
communicating objectives openly and listening to its employees. For many
firms, the employees are the face of the company to the consumer and it
is therefore imperative that they embody the corporate personality the
firm aspires to build. If everyone in a company acts with 'heart,'
'mind' and 'body,' then the company will be in a better position to
succeed in the 21st century.
Source: http://www.palgrave-journals.com
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