Interview With Rohit Bhargava, Author of ‘Personality Not Included’

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Quick Summary: Read my interview with Rohit Bhargava, author of the new marketing book ‘Personality Not Included’.

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I had earlier promised you that I’ll post an interview with Rohit Bhargava, author of the new marketing book ‘Personality Not Included’.

The interview is part of Rohit’s innovative blogger interview program to promote the book –

If you send me five questions that you want to know about the book or personality, I’ll write you a response on Friday that you can publish on your blog. I will link to all the posted interviews on Friday.

On Monday, I’ll be running a competition on my blog to let readers vote on the Best Interview. The winner will get a signed copy of my book and a gift certificate for $100 from Amazon.

Rohit has spent the last two days doing 57 virtual blogger interviews; that’s 285 questions!

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Update: April 1, 2008

I’m in Rohit’s shortlist of twelve best interviews; now I need your help in the voting.

Since I’m not allowed to buy books in my year of being off consumption, the $100 Amazon vouchers will be invaluable for me.

So, if you loved my interview, please vote for me both here and here. Both your votes count, so do vote at both places.

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Here are my five questions to Rohit and his insightful answers to them –

Gaurav: I agree that having a personality is a valuable asset for a brand. However, building and staying true to the personality is also a lot of hard work. The question is: given that personality creates its own unique demands on the brand, can brands handle having a personality?

Rohit: That’s a really interesting question… and to answer it, I’d like to suggest a small tweak. What if you replaced the word personality with the word brand in your question? I think the challenge you are describing is one that will be very familiar to companies who have struggled to build a brand as well. What it will likely come down to is the same type of focus it takes to build a strong brand. You do need to be consistent and get the right team members on board – so there is definitely work involved. The benefits, though, are equivalent to those of building a strong brand, so I think it is worth it.

Gaurav: I agree that having a personality can inspire your customers to love your brand, instead of only liking it. However, having a personality can also incite your customer to hate your brand instead of only being indifferent to it. The question is: given that personality polarizes people, should brands risk having a personality and losing paying customers?

Rohit: Another really good question (especially because I’ve now done more than 50 of these interviews and haven’t gotten this question yet!). To answer it, I think it would help to define what I mean by personality. The definition I use in the book is that personality is the unique, authentic and talkable soul of your brand that people can get passionate about. I’m not talking about having a personality that goes to extremes unless that fits the persona of your brand. And if it does (think Hummer), then you are probably already used to people that hate you and people that love you. The point is, personality is a reflection of what your brand should stand for. And in terms of your question, if your personality does alienate indifferent customers… I would argue that they were never really “paying customers” to begin with.

Gaurav: All brands are not equal. Many brands find themselves stuck in commodity hell, while a select few become interpretors of meaning (please see my post on the marketing chain of being). The question is: given that different brands are at different levels in the marketing chain of being, should all brands even attempt to create a personality?

Rohit: I think when you get to read the book, you will love the opening for Chapter 4 (all about storytelling) because I open with an example that talks exactly about this situation. The short story is, personality can make a difference even when you are stuck in “commodity hell” as you nicely put it. The example from the book is Dole and their Farm Code program and how they manage to put a personality on a commodity product like a banana. Essentially, personality can offer the key for a brand to move from one rung of the chain you describe to another. Great post by the way.

Gaurav: In the social media era, a brand’s personality is best realized through the personalities of the people (typically brand managers and community managers) who represent the brand. However, when the person who represents the brand (in a particular community) moves on, the brand risks losing its personality (in the context of that particular community). The question is: given that a brand’s personality is realized through people who will eventually move on, how does the brand stay bigger than the people who represent it?

Rohit: This is an important question that many brands will be struggling with as social media tools become more and more prominent. I shared a similar response for a previous interview, but essentially, there are two models for dealing with this situation and they are defined by two high profile examples.

1. Scoble – He was the star blogger at Microsoft, then PodTech, and now FastCompany. In each situation, he took his personal equity with him and the brands he worked for previously were left behind.

2. Randy – This is the opposite situation which Boeing faced when Randy Baseler, the popular CMO and blogger at Randy’s Journal decided to retire. Boeing quietly architected a handover of the blog to the new CMO (who also happened to be named Randy). Good fortune of them both having the same name aside, it was a brilliant example in how to keep the value of an asset like a blog even though the person behind it may move on. I wrote about it on my blog here.

Gaurav: Most of us accept that as people grow old and gather experiences, they will change and their personality will evolve. However, brand personalities tend to be more sticky. The question is: given that the context in which a brand operates changes over time, should a brand’s personality change too?

Rohit: Definitely, there is very little about business that can stay the same for years and years without evolving. This doesn’t mean that brands should be schizophrenic about what they stand for, but they do need to be flexible and ready to make changes to evolve.

Thank you, Rohit, for your insightful answers.

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By the way, here’s the list of all the fifty seven interviews with the shortlisted ones highlighted:-