Perhaps the real challenge for organizations looking to find their unique personality is figuring out how to convince clients that newly discovered personality isn’t yet another marketing trick or sales tactic.

When I joined The LEGO Company in 2001, the makers of those ubiquitous plastic bricks had all but flat ignored the adult LEGO fans (AFOLs) for decades. These talented enthusiasts were artists, choosing an odd medium to be sure, but artists nonetheless. Because LEGO was a kid’s toy company, most colleagues didn’t see much reason to support this small market segment. But with the rise of internet and online community, they had begun to collect and connect and their minority voices were carrying new weight.

Almost immediately after I started, I began building a relationship with the adult LEGO fans (AFOLs). I sat in rooms around the world with small groups and large groups hearing complains and concerns about the way they’d been treated for so many years.

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I was sitting in the Chicago o’hare airport on a very delayed flight, finding myself watching the TV, something I never do. I was watching nightline and they were interviewing a design firm and they were having them redesign the American shopping cart in 72 hours. I was very impressed with the process that was taken to get the results that were found and implemented. The design firm was IDEO. When I got home I called them to try and schedule a meeting just to meet some people there. At this point I was just a soap company with two employees with annual sales of just about 150k.

A few months later I got a call back. I happened to be in SF visiting my girlfriend at the time and I went down there and got a tour and told the business development person, Dan Bomze the story of Pangea, he quickly went and got a writer and a designer and a few more people, I told the story to them as well. A few weeks later I got an email from Dan expressing IDEO’s interest in branding Pangea. After a few rounds of negotiations we struck a deal. Coming to the plate with many concepts and ideas myself, they partnered me with two designers a writer and a materials expert, together the Pangea Organics brand was found. Earlier that year I was sitting in Joshua Tree National Park for my annual visionary meeting with myself when I decided to introduce the concept of plantable packaging to the world. It took two years but finally we found success.

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“Good products and services are like brushing your teeth. You’re expected to do it every day. You don’t get extra credit.” — paraphrasing Geoffrey Moore

We don’t talk about companies that we like. We don’t talk about companies that deliver quality service, day in and day out, for a reasonable price. We expect that. You’ve never called a friend and said “Did you know that Ritz hotels are really nice?” You need to give people a reason to talk about you. Word of mouth starts with the topic of conversation. (It doesn’t start with a MySpace page or a viral video). Bland companies never give us a reason to talk, so we don’t talk about them.

There are seven emotions that cause someone to make a recommendation:

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I work at the house that David Ogilvy built. There was a man who understood the value of personality. His signature is our logo. To this day, his photos appear in various “shrines” throughout the company. Like the one in the NYC office mezzanine. His visage sits tucked up above the cool, concrete floor meeting space. You could easily overlook it, but if you did you would miss a great snapshot of the man sitting in the Lotus position with flowers around his neck. That’s personality. No, not one more picture of our beloved leader. The permission and the culture to allow someone with a little time on their hands to “make” a funky picture of Mr. Brand and sneak it into the meeting space.

We spend an awful lot of time meticulously defining and fashioning “brand.” What do we want people to think about us? What is the promise our companies and products make to their publics? We talk about storytelling. We agonize over the visual experience of a brand, and so forth. All of this is valuable stuff. It drives business. But it’s not the same as personality. I don’t believe that personality can be manufactured. Look at the staff, I mean “cast” at Disney Parks. By the time you actually arrive at your hotel via the airport bus, you have been told to “have a magical day!” by no less that three people. That’s not personality although it may be on-brand. Don’t get me wrong, I pefer people to wish me a magical day over those who are silent or even hostile. But I lean towards brands that express their personality, that are more open and inviting, brands that do not dilute or hide their personality in the pursuit of broad appeal.

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SMITH, the online magazine I started in January 2006, is powered by stories, so I’ll start with one here. One of our most successful ideas has been the six-word memoir project. The concept is simple: Tell us your life story in six words. However, it can be challenging to distill a life with such brevity. When we launched six-word memoirs, we published some examples on the site. I quickly wrote one for myself: “Big hair, big heart, big hurry.”

The hair is genetic (and often unruly), but the other four words accurately describe my personality, a worldview and way of being that burns itself into SMITH Magazine. I can even distill my personality further, all the way down to one word: infectious. I bring a passion to SMITH’s mission—our belief that everyone has a story and everyone should have a place to tell it—that is unwavering and infectious. I spread my love of what I do fast and furiously. I don’t know how to do it any other way. SMITH and so many other media outlets are fighting to capture the attention of an audience with many choices and much to do. When I infuse this audience with the infectious spirit that lifts me up and fuels SMITH Magazine, I know I have won over new readers—new “SMITHS” so to speak.

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Last mother’s day, we screwed up. Big time.

We had these brand new customizable photo bags we were gonna put up for sale. They looked beautiful, and you could upload any photo to have it baked into the fabric with heat. High quality finish, for $100+. It was perfect for moms, so we scrambled to get it up fast so our customers could order them for Mother’s day delivery (the bags take a couple weeks to create.)

We stayed up all night, but we got it done. And aside from a few early glitches, it worked! The orders came in, and people started writing in to tell us how excited they were to be getting a custom bag. It went on like this for a couple weeks before we found out. Almost a third of our orders had never gone into manufacturing. A technical glitch had prevented us from seeing them, and with a week left until M-Day, it was impossible to get to deliver on our customers’ promises. We were about to have a bunch of very angry customers (and moms!) on our hands. I didn’t know what to do.

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At DRY, our brand positioning and personality are everything — our personality is our brand and our brand is our offering. As such we talk A LOT about what we are and what we want to be. . . and, equally importantly, what we don’t want to be. We give our brand and our individual products personality profiles, and ask the questions: “If DRY was a person, who would we be?”, “What would we do?”, “What would motivate us?” We look at historical figures, celebrities and people on the street — “Is he DRY?” “What flavor is she?” And we talk about the personalities of other brand— “How are we different?”

So, what is the DRY personality? We’ve worked hard to create a brand that we believe meets the needs of today’s consumer, and as such, our brand personality is a direct reflection of our target’s desires for simplicity, individuality and versatility. The traits we associate with the DRY brand are: smart, sophisticated, simple, modern, unique, innovative and engaging. What DRY is not are: serious, elitist, playful, irreverent, folksy, aloof or average.

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There’s an age-old saying in the business world that “people buy from people”. The implication is that at the end of the day it’s the real human connection between two individuals that motivates a transaction.

As it turns out, the same is true in the world of microcredit. When Kiva.org first went live in March of 2005, it was an experiment to see if people in the developed world would be willing to loan money to low-income entrepreneurs clear across the globe – individuals they would never speak to or meet. We strove to build what human connection we could through profile pictures, background stories, and progress updates from the borrowers.

The experiment worked, and it worked in ways Matt and Jessica Flannery, Kiva’s founders, could never have imagined. Today Kiva has facilitated over $25M in loans in over 40 countries – and this success is in large part due to the relationships that are established between the lenders and borrowers. Microcredit is not charity; it’s empowerment and it’s a partnership, and there’s something incredibly tangible about living in Iowa and lending to a farmer in Afganistan through Kiva.org. As it turns out, “people loan to people”.

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