The Six Personalities of Brands in a Disruptive Era

Who are you?

Simple question, right? But one that is very difficult to answer. As people, we should be asking it of ourselves on a daily basis. Who are we and better yet, who do we aspire to be?

Lately social thinkers are starting to ponder how brands are asking these same questions. Many are behaving more and more like humans even though they are trying to maintain health by not drowning in a digital world of information overload. We see a lot of articles and tweets from branding experts saying that brands should even act like people.

While this seems natural because humans are comfortable around other humans (we’re social animals after all) what such desired thinking ushers in that we may not realize is all the imperfections that come with humanity.

In our hyper speed world of disruptive change where the pace requires decision-making in an environment of frenetic pace, we are going to realize that brands acting like humans with human decision-making processes and personalities are going to act both rationally and irrationally. They are going to be imperfect. They are going to fail, learn, make mistakes and relearn.

As a result, we must be comfortable with the fact that brands fit into a variety of personality traits very much like humans if they go the route of adopting human personas. But brands usually simplify their meaning to customers and thus unfortunately fall into six personality types in the era of disruption. Four of these were recognized by social thinkers in the mid 1960s of the 20th Century and two of the emerging personalities are evolving now because of abundance and the attention economy.

So, what are these personalities and how do brands recognize where they fit into the spectrum? Note, most brands won’t be purely 100% of these personality traits but will mostly encompass a hybrid model of personality traits. But in order to understand how to evolve in the disruptive era we must identify who we are in order to decide what we ultimately want to become.

So what are the six personality brand traits? They are the following:

1.    The Denier. The Denier’s strategy is to “block out” an unwelcome reality. We know people like this and ultimately we know brands who are like this too. These are brands that fit a certain time and era but haven’t adapted. Maybe they’ve had too much infighting and politics. It’s possible they thought their brand life trajectory would continue to rise. They possibly believed they were too big to fail. Then somewhere along the way other brands disrupted them or technology changed and they didn’t change with it. Maybe they were hit with scandal. It’s possible they didn’t have very insightful leadership who understood the real threats by which their denial was a blockade to evolution.

2.    The Specialist. These are brands that are very utilitarian by nature. They do a great job when you need them to handle specific targeted tasks but they don’t have much emotional resonance and are cold and calculated. With specialists they may awake one day to realize what they offer isn’t needed anymore nor wanted by people who have transformed overnight. They couldn’t see beyond the field of vision to see how to adapt to remain relevant within a whole new specialty or become more emotionally connected.

3.    The Reversionist. This brand personality sticks to their previously programmed decisions and habits with dogmatic desperation. The more change threatens the brand, the more meticulously this brand repeats past modes of action. This brands outlook is regressive. Shocked by arrival of the future, this brand demands a return to the glories of yesteryear. There’s just one problem here. Supply and demand. What this brand supplies there may no longer be demand for, and they have tech debt which has caught them by surprise even though they won’t change not matter how much the world around them has.

4.    The Super-Simplifier. This is the brand that uses big words in their advertising and marketing for what is basically a product or service no one understands nor necessarily needs because it is too complex. However, once the consumer realizes they’ve been conned they tell people to never trust this brand again. This is a brand personality that gropes desperately, invests every idea they come across with universal relevance – usually to the embarrassment of the brand. People being snarky on social? We will act that way. Companies throwing around big words like AI, Big Data and Disruption? We can be all those and more. Our competitor re-branded, and their revenue grew? Well, we need to do that too. Every brand is moving marketing from social to TV again but can’t explain why? Well, we’ll follow and explain our actions later in a simplified manner.

Before I describe the fifth and sixth personalities let me note that the first four personalities are dangerous places to be for a brand. All of these behaviors evade the rich complexity of reality for brands in the 21st Century. These personalities generate a distorted image of reality. The more a brand denies, specializes at the expense of wider interests, reverts to past habits and behaviors, the more desperate it super-simplifies, the more inept it can act in a world where information overpowers us, networks power customers and instability moves in to conquer what at one time was a powerful company with unique products, interesting employees and an amazing culture.

So, will the fifth and sixth personality traits liberate a brand from the dangerous personality traits exhibited in the mood of the first four? Yes but in very different ways from each other.

5.    The Visionary. This is a rare place for most brands to be. Mainly because anyone who says they can see the future is a liar. No one can predict or manage outcomes. We’ve been lead to believe this through super-simplifiers telling us data alone would be our savior. But the more successful combination would most likely utilize a combination of creativity, empathy, intelligence and data to navigate the new normal of frenetic change. The visionary at least is looking at what is ahead and accounting for the fact that uncertainties exist. They are mapping the future rather than waiting for others to define it for them. They are planning for the possible and aiming for the impossible. They are making the world we are living in rather than living in the world others are making for them. Again, if brands are trying to align with human traits, they will never perfect these because humans cannot be perfect. But visionaries understand the moves they make, that failures are learnings in the uncertain world we inhabit. Brands like this aren’t building to grow fast and go away, they are building sustaining cultures with missions and wanting to remain around for a period of time.

6.    The Provocateur. This is the sixth trait. Many brands who wish to be visionaries unfortunately are brands who provoke, poke, dig, disrupt, culture jam and don’t operate in a transparent manner even though they tell everyone they do. Many act this way because they wanted to hijack the news-feed of our reactive behavior world. They realize they don’t need a billion customers. They only need to provoke a billion people to get the 2 million customers to support them who will love them because they like the attitude of the brand. But if a billion-outraged people help them drive attention, they’ve done their job to gain relevance with their target audience. Many brands who aspire to be visionaries are wolves in sheep’s clothing acting as provocateurs. We know them, we may have even supported them and then when we find out what they are really about, we post a "hashtag ban company name" on our Twitter feed because we are so upset we’ve once again have been lied to.

The visionary at least is looking at what is ahead and accounting for the fact that uncertainties exist. They are mapping the future rather than waiting for others to define it for them. They are planning for the possible and aiming for the impossible. They are making the world we are living in rather than living in the world others are making for them.

And yet this sixth trait could be used by brands who are a one through four but on their way to becoming a number five. What do I mean by this? Well, let’s say you are a brand in denial about who you are and what you have become. Do you become a visionary brand overnight? No. You probably provoke and poke to figure out who you are and what you want to be. You need to create debate so that you can formulate who you once were and who you are becoming. This is what we call in life “growing up” or “maturing.” It is now ultimately a similar process brands are emulating in order to find out who they are and who they want to ultimately be.

Now ask yourself that question again. Who are you? Do you really want to know?

Geoffrey Colon is a social thinker and author of the book Disruptive Marketing: What Growth Hackers, Data Punks, And Other Hybrid Thinkers Can Teach Us About Navigating the New Normal on AMACOM Books. Follow him here on LinkedIn or listen to one of his three podcasts Disruptive FM (with Cheryl Metzger), Search Hacks (with Christi Olson) or The Marketing Masterclass, a Q&A with the world's top marketing thought leaders.