Branding [or Defining a Personality].
At the core, branding is about taking a company, and giving it a recognizable set of traits. Giving it a personality.
The important thing to note is, people with only three personality traits suck, regardless of what those personality traits are. Companies are endlessly complex things, and fighting hard to reduce them to something simpler than a single person is frustrating for everyone involved.
We could talk all day about Apple’s brand, but I’d argue the only important part is Steve Jobs. You don’t always love him, half the world knows he’s a dick some of the time, but he’s brilliant and he gets things done. You don’t idolize Jobs because he’s perfect, you do it because he’s awesome.
This is the thing no one seems to grasp - Steve Jobs isn’t essential to Apple because he’s the CEO, or the creative force, or because his reality-distortion field owns all. He’s essential because Apple is the largest consumer brand that is identified mostly through a person. We can discuss Apple’s brand all day, but there is no list of words, no concepts, no idea, that can express it as well as 30 seconds of Steve Jobs, being Steve Jobs, can.
If you’re going to try to turn a company or a product into a personality, it might be important to remember that real personalities are complex, contradictory, and infuriating, even when they are worthy of praise. If you aren’t complex, you can’t support a story. And people buy stories, more than they buy pristine white plastic objects.
