Brand personality marketing: the importance of ‘the shareable idea’.

30 October, 2013

As discussed in a previous blog, I recently attended Leeds Business Week and was really impressed with the events, finding many of the presentations very useful, in particular those focusing on bespoke personality marketing.

One of the highlights for me was watching Chris Middleton from Eskimo Soup present. Chris’ presentation focused on marketing for personality in technology companies and he referred to a couple of example campaigns that really helped to bring the content of his presentation to life.

The examples he used of bespoke content marketing included South African no frills airline Kulula, who have been incredibly creative with their thinking and used clever advertising and innovative thinking to help them stand out from the crowd, which meant they were talked about a lot online.

Kulula: flying high on brand personality

Kulula invested in a new fleet of planes and worked closely with their in house graphic design team to brand the planes, but in a very unique way – not like something you’ve probably ever seen before! The Flying 101 in particular has flown around the world several times thanks to the power of email and internet.

This plane was part of Kulula’s bigger strategy to demystify air travel and explain some of the unknowns around air travel and flying. Quirky lines and facts like ‘The big cheese’ pointing to the Captain and ‘The black box – that’s actually orange’ are painted all over the plane not only educating passengers, but more importantly, injecting a sense of humour and personality.

And, even the staff got involved and ‘jazzed up’ what might normally be considered boring announcements such as “Please pay attention to the safety announcement, because you will be writing a test shortly” and “Ladies and gentlemen, we’ve reached cruising altitude and will be turning down the cabin lights. This is for your comfort and to enhance the appearance of your flight attendants.”

Pictures of the branded plane made their way onto the internet pretty quickly, and a quick Google image search will show you a sea of green images of The Flying 101 and all of the articles praising the bold move. This really helps to illustrate how innovative thinking, creative branding and integrated digital marketing campaigns can really make companies stand out from the crowd. A job well done I’d say.

Personality marketing: Are our blades any good? No. Are blades are f**king great.

Another example of marketing brand personality, which really stood out to me, was Dollarshaveclub.com. This company illustrates how you can have an incredibly successful yet cost effective marketing campaign.

Mike, the owner and founder of Dollar Shave Club, is the star of the video. This business allows you to select one of their razors, pay one low monthly fee, and they send them right to your door and promises “No more over-paying for fancy brand name shave tech and no more forgetting to buy your blades” in a video that cost £4.5k to make, is frankly hilarious. So no surprise that they are a few hits shy of 12 million on You Tube. A witty use of language and humour means you can’t help but want to be associated with the brand and use their razors.

This really illustrates bespoke personality marketing and the importance of a “sharable idea” which is at the heart of making a campaign go viral. You have to give people something to talk about, and this certainly does that. Just a few of the comments from You Tube highlight its popularity with many personal references to Mike “Mike you F**KING rock” and “I actually sought out this ad to watch, copy and send to friends. NOW THAT is a successful ad campaign!!”

Have you seen any bespoke content marketing campaigns that have really stood out? Do you know of any brands that have successfully grasped marketing for personality and want to share? Let us know!

For more information about how our services can help bring your brand personality to life online, sign up to my weekly blog or contact me directly on 011 33 20 21 21.