I’m really excited about Rohit Bhargava’s new book, Personality Not Included: Why Companies Lose Their Authenticity And How Great Brands Get it Back, that will be soon published. I’ve been patiently waiting ever since I first read about it on his blog. The concept of brands having personality totally resonates with me. I’ll take it even one step further and suggest that the Community Manager position helps give a brand personality. For the book launch, Rohit is doing something very unique. He’s crowdsourcing information & asked his blog readers to interview him. So we could ask 5 questions. You can read all of the interviews on Rohit’s blog & find out more information about the book. My five questions are below and you may notice a focus from the Community Manager’s perspective. image 1. What do you view as the single most important thing that companies should do to increase their brand’s personality?

I feel like I’ve put this into a lot of the interviews today, I but I would have to say the single most powerful thing is removing their “employee silencing policy.” This is what it sounds like, the requirement within many companies that employees not talk publicly about anything. Unfortunately, this is a big factor in a company becoming faceless and the best way around it is to allow these employees to share their voices.

2. What is your favorite example of how a brand creatively increased it’s personality?

My favourite current example has got to be what Gary Vaynerchuck has managed to do with WineLibrary.TV by consistently doing innovative marketing (from flash parties organized by Twitter at SXSW to running an online secret santa contest in March to give away wine. Now, he started from a base of having a personality, so perhaps this is not what you were actually looking for in a response but he has certainly increased his. If you mean a brand that has gone from bad to good … .the classic example now has to be Dell for how they have managed to get real people to speak for their brand and turned their image around.

3. What suggestions do you have for measuring ROI on these efforts?

I think the greatest ROI on personality will always be customer loyalty. Secondary to that is the word of mouth effect (usually noted as the #1 most influential source of information) that results from this loyalty.

4. As companies add community managers, do you think the brand’s personality is based on the person that’s outwardly representing the company?

Yes, I think they will definitely be linked. Is Starwood’s reputation in the popular frequent flyer community FlyerTalk based on the repuation of William Sanders – also known as Starwood Lurker on the site? I would have to say yes. But you touch upon what is likely to become a big issue as these “accidental spokespeople” as I have called them (and I am one as well), start to build their own profiles and have them linked to the brands they work for. There are really only two models: The first is Scoble’s model, where he goes from Microsoft to PodTech to Fast Company and takes all his equity and personal brand with him. The other example is Randy’s Journal, Boeing’s corporate blog which was run by Randy Baseler, their CMO who recently retired, and was taken over by another fellow named Randy, who also happened to be CMO.

5. Should companies worry about their customers imprinting on the person representing the brand? (ie: social media mgr or community mgr)

I think this relates to the earlier question, but yes I think this will continue to be an issue … particularly as these individual profiles continue to rise in popularity and visibility.

I’ve been recommending this book for quite awhile already. I can’t wait to read it! image