Sometime marketers do not know who to target and how. When in question they can employ a process that is called “Brand Personification”. Brand personification is designed to help the marketer decide on who to target with their advertising campaign, and how to target that specific segment.
It particularly helps the Account Planner, who is the person that is in charge with the creation of the advertising campaign. Once the research has been performed and he or she has a better idea of what kind of camping they need to create, then they can better relay this image to the creative team who are the ones who are actually going to create the marketing campaign. If the Account Planner does a good enough job, then the creative team will say “Yes, that person is just like my brother Tommy,” and continue to say “If I would like to get through to him, I would talk to him in this way.” Then the creative team knows what kind of ad they need to create and what elements it should contain. If this is done correctly, then the campaign will resonate with the targeted segment and the camping will result in more sales, greater awareness of the brand and be considered a successful campaign.
The way that the account planer does a brand personification is by asking the question: “If this brand would be a person, what kind of person would that brand then be” Or if they would like to change that brand’s image, then they would ask this question: “If this brand could be any type of person, what type of person would it then be?“
The Account Planner would then describe the brand in terms of an imaginary individual that has a certain age, income, sex, hobbies, and interest and personality traits. However, to do this task, the Account Planer must possess experience in dealing with the brand as a consumer, and he or she should also have intimate knowledge about the brand like; what is its current market share, who are its competitors, and what is the single most compelling fact about the product or service that would make consumers want to buy it?
So how does one go about when doing a Brand Personification? That is what I am going to do now on one of my favorite brands: W Hotels. W Hotels or just W, is a chain of upper level to luxury hotels that are sprinkled all over the world. The chain is becoming a household name and is widely successful because of their customers’ extreme brand loyalty, because they want to stay at a W Hotel no matter where in the world they are.
If I was to describe W in terms of Brand Personification, what kind of person would then he or she be? The answer to that question would be a man by the name of Jordan. Jordan is originally from the UK and has a thick posh English accent, he is in his late twenties, he is single, successful and he has a yearly income of around 100 000 dollars or more. He travels all over the world and he always does so in style, he is always at the hottest parties and he always attended them with his sophisticated group of friends, or a new girl or guy.
You probably wonder how come I can describe him in such a detail. Despite what you think, this is pretty easy to do if you have insight into that particular brand. As stated above you should have information regarding the brand in the form of your own personal experience as a customer, but you should also additional information in the form research in order for you to do a brand personification. Because combined all of this knowledge helps the person doing the brand personification to see the bigger picture and ultimately the brand’s personality.
Some things that set the personality of the W Hotel brand apart from other hotels are their innovative marketing ideas that they implement throughout all of its Hotels. These solutions are different from the next W Hotel which gives them all a different personality. However, the brand has common themes that reverberate throughout all of W’s hotels and those themes are: exclusivity, luxury and sensuality.
One way that the personality is set for a particular hotel, is by having that hotel’s maids leaving post-it notes in the minibar or in other places of the room with cheeky phrases that says “Don’t let $200 go up in a puff.”
Another strategy that W Hotels use to create a personality for its hotels is by hosting cocktail parties in the lobbies of its Hotels on the weekends with DJs playing music, where people that do not even stay at the hotel, come and dance the night away.
An additional way that the W in Westwood, LA, is successful in creating a personality for itself is by having a camera in the elevator that takes pictures of the passenger while they are using the elevator and during the ascent or descent it displays cheeky phrases like: strike a pose, surprise me, smile or something similar; to encourage interaction between the passenger and the elevator. What can be more appropriate for LA than to have a paparazzi elevator?
These are all tactics of how W makes its hotels have more of a cheeky young British personality that people easily can relate to and that leads them to subsequently having them stay there.
Every hotel has a different way of communicating its personality. So you will not be bored if you stay at the W Hotel in Westwood, LA, one week, and then the next week you stay at the W in downtown San Francisco.
When one better understands a brand’s personality and its customers, then you can better target them with advertising that catches their eyes. Because if you know their personalities and interest, then you can target those who have a similar personality or interest in what the brand represent and subsequently make them want to buy that product or service. The way that W’s personality would translate into a marketing campaign would be to have the commercials and ads express exclusivity; cheeky fun and a sexy atmosphere. These messages would appear in TV, print media and others sources of communication but it would also be displayed in events and other campaigns. This kind of advertising would attract people similar to Jordan and make him and others like him want to stay at a W Hotel.
By looking at the brand as a customer and as someone who has research it extensively, I can see that the personality that I came up with in the brand personification is also apparent in their promotional tools. What I could extrapolate in terms of the brand’s personality from the commercials and ads is that the brand is a group of exclusive hotels that come without the usual stuck up and stuffy personality that most luxury hotel brands have. W hotel’s advertising also feature stunning photographs of their Hotels in various parts of the world like; lobbies, bar areas and other areas of their hotels which shows that the hotels are popular, modern and youthful. This can also be seen in their print ads which look like promotional flyers for clubs that you might see on notice boards or on lampposts. They have bright colors against darker backgrounds and they feel very current.
Another crucial part of their advertising is their distinctive font and the letter W which until the invention of this hotel chain had been a fairly unused letter for either a company logo, or a brand name for that matter. The font is prevalent in this video which is from their “Warmth from Cool Campaign,” which features cool music while displaying pretty images and important information about the Brand. Another video that shows W innovativeness is this video which is very innovative with its use of different images and colors to form the letter W while displaying important facts again about the brand. What is common for all the ads and the videos are that they very lounge, relaxed, hip and cool which is what a person like Jordan would appreciate and be drawn to.
The W brand also use other forms of promotional tools or IBP (Integrated Brand Promotion) which is defined as: “The process of using a wide range of promotional tools working together to create brand exposure.” The ways that they do this is by employing different forms of publicity tools which are unlike their regular advertising devices. An example of that are the parties or events that they host at the location of their hotels where they showcase up-and-coming artists or support other causes or events. Those performances or activities will then be featured on the internet on sites like youtube, facebook, twitter or other sites connected to the W brand and on the global hotel channel.
They will also be written about in the W magazine which is The W Hotel brand’s own magazine which is distributed all over the world where one copy is placed in each hotel room. The W magazine is a lifestyle magazine that is very trendy, it follows fashion and celebrities but it also talks about what goes on at various hotels like what kind of events and parties have been held there recently. By being in touch with ongoing trends, up and coming artists and by hosting these various events in their hotels, I feel that the total brand package that they put out in to world is very similar to what the W Hotel brand in my view stands for, which is fun exclusivity, and fabulousness.
I consider that the W Hotel brand is very successful in its branding because it displays the great product that it has to offer to the right target segment. W also does this in an integrated approach not only with traditional media, but in other forms of public relations. Since they put out the personality of the hotel as being luxurious, elegant and spicy then people like Jordan who emulate that type of personality can relate to that brand because of their similarities in personality and interests. This why the job of the Account Planer is so important and this is why the account planner for W has done such a good job because he or she has relayed exactly what the creative team needed to know about the customers in order for it to come up with the advertisements and the various promotional tools that all have a common theme that attract young professional like Jordan to its brand.
