When it comes to competitive differentiation, Brand Positioning often gets the spotlight while Brand Personality is often overlooked and/or under-utilized. It can get tossed out with reaction such as, ‘It sounds soft, fluffy…’ ‘Do consumers really care?’ ‘At the end of the day, the product has to get the job done so why bother?’. When Brand Personality gets done at all, it is either at a superficial level and/or rarely pulled through in crafting brand experience overall. The reaction we often hear, especially from brands that are not in the CPG space, is that of indifference and resignation, ‘Oh yes, we have it somewhere in our brand book but it’s not very helpful’, etc.
When done well and executed consistently and brilliantly, Brand Personality can significantly enhance competitive differentiation for a brand, strengthens its emotional bond with the target audience, and helps guide coherent and compelling brand experience that builds sustainable competitive advantage over time. Brand Positioning is WHAT you say, while Brand Personality guides HOW you say it.
StreetEasy in recent years has evolved into a very distinctive brand with its own voice and strengthened its emotional bond with its target audience, WHILE continuing to build out its robust functional benefits of a real estate go-to site for the dwellers and dreamers in NYC. (‘While’ is a key word here, as the debate is not about functional vs emotional; it has to be both if you want to build brands rather than just sell products).
The most recent creative campaign by Preacher which was launched in February 2020 continues to exude the Explorer spirit, with its distinctive core desire for the freedom to explore and discover.
This time however, the brand voice was evolved to be more sensual, tantalizing NYC dreamers with fantasies - at times super-hot and steamy!
The art is beautiful, and the copywriting is sheer brilliant - ‘lay in bed at night thinking of other bedrooms’, ‘have dirty thoughts about a dryer on top of a washer’, ‘find a bedroom that opens to two nightstands’, etc. As a potential customer for StreetEasy business, I first and foremost find it irresistible as a brand that stands out from the rest with a distinctive voice and personality; that understands me and speaks to me; that seems to bond with me at a much deeper level. I don’t even bother to compare the functional benefits of StreetEasy with other real estate websites; I’m blindly falling in love with the brand!
The strategy of crafting a distinctive Brand Personality, and staying true to it over the years, has brought impressive results! Per the case study on i.d., “StreetEasy moved from the 8th most recognized real estate brand in NYC, to the second in the country, behind only their parent company, Zillow—even though we never ran a single ad outside of New York. The campaigns became part of the fabric of the city -deeply loved and shared endlessly on social media. They were pulled off the walls of the subway and sold as art on the street. Tourists would take them home or write and request posters of the ads. NYC centric publications like Gothamist, The Village Voice, The New York Times, and the NY Post wrote about them. They appeared in movies and tv shows about NY. The work was awarded for being the best of NYC advertising. StreetEasy’s audience grew, and their revenue rose 6x.” Can’t wait to see how the most recent campaign takes this to a new height!
In the recent NPR’s TED Hour with Esther Perel on ‘Building resilient relationships’, Esther has stated that “relationship has become the new bottom line”. The TED hour with her was in the context of human-to-human relationship, yet with results as impressive as StreetEasy’s, I have no doubt this will soon be the case in the business context as well, where long term sustainable business success and brand value are based on a deep and authentic relationship with the brand’s target audience. Zillow bought StreetEasy for $50M in cash in 2013, when StreetEasy was just a seven-year old brand, not only because of the many listings StreetEasy has amassed, nor the robust broker base already active on the platform; it was also because of this strong bond the brand has built with its audience overtime.
My only wishes for StreetEasy are for: a) Pulling through this distinctive Brand Personality through its website and other brand touchpoints as well; currently the website is still quite bland emotionally; b) Conveying a clear sense of Purpose and Values to provide more meaningful context for Brand Personality. (Note: Brand Purpose, Values and Personality form a trio we call ‘Brand DNA’. Unlike brand positioning which may evolve with time, these components should not change; they are at the core of who you are as a brand; they are your DNA).
As the market becomes even more commoditized, life gets more stressful and lonely for many (worsened by the pandemic), and people yearn for stronger relationships in life - at home, at work, in business - brands that understand the power of deep, genuine, lasting relationships will become the front runners. Like in a human-to-human relationship, it’s not just about what you say but also how you say it - informed and inspired by your Brand Personality, in the context of your brand’s overarching Purpose and Values. Does your brand have a distinctive and compelling Personality? How strong is the bond you’ve built with your audience?
Shapiro+Raj
S+R is a research and strategy firm that uses social and behavioral sciences to solve the toughest business and marketing challenges. Our next-gen methods dig deep to unlock market-ready insights. Then our brand planners turn these into strategic marketplace actions that create brand evolution and innovation; customer experiences and loyalty; and new platforms for growth.
