My top ten brand personification questions

If Sony came to life as a person, what sort of person do you imagine? What about Woolworths? Or Telstra? 

Qualitative researchers will sometimes ask this question when trying to uncover all of the many hidden, subtle perceptions that consumers carry around about brands that can be otherwise difficult to articulate.  

You may also be surprised to see just how many people are willing and able to effectively talk about brands in this way (in a group setting). 

Different respondents will obviously have different people that they imagine, but there will almost always be consistencies in what they describe – older or younger, outgoing, shy, quiet, tactile, brash, annoying, obnoxious, rebellious. 

This exercise works best for consumer brands – those that have a presence in the minds of the respondents, and typically those that are big advertisers. 

Here are my favorite personification questions: 

First uncover all of the top-of-mind associations about the brand by asking

‘What comes to mind when you think of BRAND? 

And only once this has been explored fully would I move on to the personification. 

• If BRAND came to life as a person, what sort of person do you imagine? 
• What do they look like? 
• What is their personality like? 
• What are their values?/What’s important to them? 

And then, my favourite questions: 

• How do you feel about them?
• And how do they feel about you? 

Sometimes I will ask

• If they were here, what would you like to ask them? Or tell them? 

Of course this exercise becomes more worthwhile when it’s done in the competitive setting, so once we’ve explored this for your client’s brand, you can do the same with the competitor brands. 

From there you can go nuts. 

• All of these brands are at a party – what are they doing?
• How do they interact with each other? Who is watching who, who is talking about what?
• And if you were at this party, who would you be spending time with?

You can spend the good part of an hour in a group doing this exercise and if you are wanting to focus on your brand strategy it is an excellent place to start.