Anthropomorphize Partners & Servants

What personality types does your store serve? The answer to that question determines—or at least heavily influences—brands you carry. However, even within a single brand line, there are different personalities.
     Some years ago, Adidas aimed to grab market share from Nike by defining eight different personalities to sell to. Among the personalities named by Adidas were “Gearhead,” the adult dedicated to running who says, “I’ll pay for shoes that bring me the joy of moving fast,” and “Aficionado,” the teen or preteen who says, “I won’t look at an athletic shoe unless it’s named after a famous player and costs a lot of money.” Adidas made fine distinctions between “Core Letterman,” the high school athlete who loves to help the team win, and “Contemporary Letterman,” who’s in it for the individual glory.
     In a parallel endeavor, electronics retailer Best Buy developed a typology of customers. One of them, termed “Devil,” was the sort of customer who purchases large quantities of loss leader items at Best Buy, waits until the items go back to the regular price, and then sells the items on eBay. Best Buy trained salespeople to deal with the different personality types.
     A way to generate sketches like these, and one you might want to try, is to ask focus group participants to imagine your store name has come to life. To generate their personality sketches, Adidas asked focus group participants to imagine that the brand went to a party. What would Adidas be doing there? Teens answered that Adidas would be hanging around the beer keg with its pals, talking about girls. They said that Nike would, instead, be with the girls.
     Recently, researchers recommended that, when anthropomorphizing your store name this way, you distinguish between partners and servants.
     A partner brand guides the shopper’s behavior. If the store name has a reputation for indulgence—the Krispy Kreme name was used in the study—consumers who consider the anthropomorphized brand as a partner aim to take the elevator rather than the stairs. If the store name has a healthy reputation, you’re likely to identify a group of shoppers who take the stairs.
     But if the store name is seen as a servant when coming to life, it’s as if a store’s reputation for promoting health gives the consumers an excuse to be unhealthy. They depend on the store to do all the heavy lifting.

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Mythologize Your Store