The impact of personality and gender of branding decisions

Personalityand gender have an impact on branding decisions and reactions by consumers. Therefore, it would serve businesses well if products and services are shaped around customer preferences, knowing their unique and particular needs, and their sense of aesthetics. An evidence to support this contention is a study called ‘ visual marketing’ in which participants were shown a slide containing stimuli for testing while an eye-tracking equipment monitored their eye movements. Afterwards, they were asked to indicate how much they liked/disliked the stimuli.

Results showed that there is a clear correlation between the number of fixations on an image and subsequent spontaneous and prompted recall of that stimulus. There is also a better recall of images the participants had liked. This means, therefore, that when advertising or branding a product, the emphasis should be the need to know and understand the target audience, and what they like to see. Factors like space, color, imagery or details were found to have an effect on the beholder.

For example, children would associate dark colors with negative emotions while happy emotions for bright ones. They would also prefer large figures to smaller ones. While the marketing rule stipulates that the costumer should always be the focus, however, the factor of the creator and the “ production aesthetic” may deter the accomplishment of this end. Creatives tend to impose their personalities in their creations. Each creative has his/her own sense of self which always, consciously or unconsciously, come out through the work.

Behind the brands out there in the market could be the reflection of personalities of the creatives who made them. An implication of this is that creatives will tend to produce work that reflects their owncareeraspirations, creative impulses, ethics and beliefs. They would produce advertising that appeal to themselves. They would produce work that they find appealing and interesting to them instead of to the consumers, contradictory to the marketing idea that the consumer preferences should take precedence over that of the creatives.

Aside from aesthetic preferences, the gender of the creative also affects the branding of products. Gender affects the graphic expression of the individual. One’s shape, color, detailing and perspective preferences are usually associated with the gender one belongs to. To ensure that the product or service appeals to the target consumer, the ‘ production aesthetic’ and the ‘ preference aesthetic’ should be the same.

The personality and gender of the creatives should be aligned with the consumers. Recruiters should hire marketing staff members whose personalities and genders are congruent to the external stakeholders. In an era of high competition, delivering products that appeal to specific customer segments is a high priority. Reference for the journal: Authors: Moss, Gloria Source: The Journal of Brand Management, Volume 14, Number 4, 1 April 2007 , pp. 279-300 Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan