A friend who is a public relations guru recently recommended that I read, “Personality Not Included: Why Companies Lose Their Authenticity and How Great Brands Get it Back” by Rohit Bhargava (a friend of hers from her days at Ogilvy & Mather). I’ve read a ton of marketing and business books, so I expected to hear a lot of the same old strategies and hard-to-generalize examples, but I gotta say, I was really impressed here. In the beginning, every marketing book seeks to show why it is different from everything else you’ve read. This one did that too, but then followed through.

This is just a sampling of some of the ideas from the book, but the way I approach marketing and communications now is definitely different having read it.

The underlying premise of the book, as the title suggests, is that marketing your brand today requires more of a personal touch than it may have in the past. Conversations about your brand are happening online, whether you want them to or not, and if you don’t join the conversation, you are setting yourself up for trouble. If someone has a bad experience with your product or company, it is very possible that hundreds or thousands of people will hear about it. Blogs, social media, consumer reviews sites, etc. have become game-changers.

Ok, so people are talking about you online. This isn’t news to most companies. So, where does personality fit in? First, a personality is defined in the book as being unique, authentic, and talkable. These are required. Memorize them.

So, if your company participates in a conversation in an online forum, and presents itself with the typical faceless corporate lawyer-talk (“Our warranty states that blah, blah, blah”), how do you think customers will respond? Yeah, poorly. But, if your customer service person is authentic, such as if he has been a long-time contributor on that site, he can say something like:

“Hi, this is Bill from Acme Co. I’m so sorry that the product is having trouble with its flux capacitor. We know it is supposed to activate at 88mph, so our engineers are going to figure out why yours won’t enable time travel until you reach 92mph. We’re really sorry, and we’ll keep you in the loop as soon as we have more information.” (sorry for this example, but I love ‘Back to the Future’)

Bill is respecting the audience by giving them some real information, not hiding behind the corporate mumbo-gumbo. People still may be unhappy about the problem, but at least they know Bill is a specific person at Acme that is looking out for their interests. It’s easier to be mad at a faceless company than a real, living breathing person who is trying to help you. Hopefully Bill has always been a nice guy in the forum and has shared helpful product tips before, so they’ll give him the benefit of the doubt.

The book also talks a lot about “accidental spokespeople”, both internal and external, that become brand advocates and evangelists without compensation. If a customer loves your product, whether they’re an influential blogger or not, be sure to embrace that opportunity. Find ways to enable him/her to better spread the word. Send product samples. Give “sneak previews” of upcoming product information. For internal spokespeople (employees), be sure to establish guidelines of what is appropriate or not, but seek to find ways to encourage these people’s excitement.

Finally, take careful note of your actions during “personality moments”, which can be opportunities for you to excel in building relationships with your customers. These may be positive moments to leverage, such as getting some huge story written about you, or negative moments to show how you respond under pressure, such as if you have to do a product recall. Either way, when people’s eyes are on you, be sure to show your true colors and don’t be fake… people will see through it.

I hope this was a helpful summary for you. It’s a book that I really enjoyed and would definitely recommend. The examples were interesting and many were easily relatable to my line of work.