READY AMONGST WILLING (POST 4 OF 12)
By Bobby Riley | March 31st, 2010
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- Raw Page from Soldier CE Guidebook Vol. II
If you’ve been following along you may know we’re in the middle of a post series inspired from our Consumer Experience Guidebook, Vol. II called ‘Cult of Brand Personality’. I’ve been giving a host of rudimentary insights, studio experiences and work examples that illustrates how brand personality can drive brand in several ways. Under the notion that “Brands Live and Die by Personality”. In summary thus far, brand personality can serve as a vehicle for customers to express their own identity. A brand personality metaphor helps suggests the kind of relationship that customer has with brand. Brand personalities can also serve to represent and cue functional benefits and product attributes as well. Importantly, brand personality is often a sustainable point of differentiation. Sustainable because it is very difficult to copy a personality.
In the last several posts I have been drawing heavy from actual people and user imagery, which can be a powerful driver of personality (but not the only kind) because the user is already a person and so conceptualizing the personality is reduced. User imagery can be people who use the brand, would want to use the brand or those portrayed in brand communication.
- Photograph of user holding iPad
In this discussion, I’d like to shift from the user-imagery experience that I’ve been dramatizing to more of a self-expression based model for developing brand personality. The basic premise is that for some customers, some brands become vehicles to express a part of their self-identity. This self-identity can be their actual identity or an ideal self to which they might aspire. Apple for example is perceived as friendly, unpretentious, irreverent and willing to go against the grain. This is because Mac is easy-to-use and also due to its symbol, advertising and user groups. The use of Apple expresses a personal identity of being non-corporate and creative. And by the way I am foaming at the mouth to pick up my iPad this Saturday. Anyone with me?
- First RAW Tee: Soldier Archieve
RAW (Ready Amongst Willing) is a Boston-based skateboard & apparel manufacturer that hit the ground rolling with Tommy Wisdom at the helm in 2007. It is another example of a classic self-expression based brand model. That said, I’ll state ahead of time that I am partially baised towards RAW as co-founder alongside co-conspirator Steve Costello. It’s also worth mentioning RAW was incubated at Soldier, dealing with all facets of the launch i.e. naming, identity design, graphic precident, product collection and financing. It was a special moment, to say the least. Beyond that, the RAW team has thrived without myself or Soldier over the last three years and is poised to scale far and wide, for all the right reasons. RAW created an ethos “Ready Amongst Willing”. The name says it all. The as legit as they come skateboard company, has developed into an unprocessed brand personality (without any one face driving the image or identity like Apple, for example) dedicated to skateboarding, broadcasting brand statements like “For the Sake of Skateboarding” or “1% inspiration & 99% persperation”. RAW is definitly a brand the youth can buy into to express a part of their self identity as a skater. It can be a real or an ideal self that they might aspire to or perhaps some combination of the both. In either case, RAW is perceived as crude, honest, matter of fact, no frills skateboard company unwavering in it’s purist commitment to their sport and audience. RAW is retailing at skate shops willing and capable of appreciating such product, around the globe. The RAW personality started at the beginning with the naming process and carried through with a very consistent, bold and confident design language, but I beleive passion most of all. In that spirit I’ll end with one of my favorite brand quotes ever, which I think gets to the core of cultivating brand personality and how to pull it off– From a consumer electronics company to skateboard manufacturer.
““Sure brands require “programs” and “strategic initiatives”– But It comes from the Gut.
From the Heart.
In other words: You Gotta Believe! You Gotta Vibrate!
When you pull the ‘brand thing’ off, there is a level of engagement that is… Purely Visceral
(To Deny it is insanity.)
Pure, Raw Emotion.
Pure, Raw commitment.
(Because it’s why you are here)”
- Tom Peters, Essentials Design
