Would You "Like" Your Company? Why Brand Personality Matters

Rumor has it you’ve got a new brand. What’s s/he like?

Approachable? Mysterious? Upbeat? Straightforward? Rebellious?

Helpful? Adventurous? Energetic? Laid-back? Warm? Cool? 

If your company were a person, how would you describe her or him to your best friend?

Go with me on this. Write down five adjectives. Not features or benefits. Personal descriptors.

Now, erase the two that are not essential to who your brand is, how it acts and what its reputation is (or will be) in the world.

Got your key three? Excellent. You’re racing ahead of entrepreneurs who neglect to define (and deploy) a powerful marketplace differentiator:  your brand’s personality.

Lest any skeptics dismiss this exercise as trivial to your future success, take a moment to think about the major companies you most admire.

Can you easily describe their attitude? Can you imagine what an email from each one might sound like? Can you pick out what they would wear to a party?

You can – because they’ve been consistent about their image, their brand personality.

So should you. Your potential customers are counting on it.

Consumer Snap Decision:  Is this for me?

Every one of us makes hundreds of snap judgments every single day. It’s a survival technique. We can only pay attention to a few things. So when we encounter something new, we seek immediate clues to answer:  Is this for me?

Having a clear brand personality helps your customer “get” what your company is all about. At a gut level, the customer instantly recognizes something about herself (including her aspirations) – or she doesn’t.

Either outcome is fine. Yes, either! You absolutely want to attract customers who are eager to learn more. But you also benefit from weeding out unlikely prospects that would waste your energies.

• A strong brand personality connects to and resonates with your target’s lifestyle, attitude and goals; be friend-able.

It’s all about raising your brand above the competitive noise, and then running with the customer pack most amenable to your offer.

Consistency Creates Trust

Once you’ve piqued your target’s interest, being consistent with your brand’s communications is key.

Consumers adore clarity and flee confusion. We’re all confronting too many choices in a given day. We crave reliable, go-to resources in an often-fickle market. Earn that trust by being consistent.

•  A powerful brand personality communicates with an unwavering “tone of voice”, viewpoint and style – including consistent design choices, colour schemes and imagery.

This means more than using the right Pantone shade and font.

Building a mighty brand requires alignment across the company. Your brand personality must complement your business’s value proposition, corporate strategy, marketing efforts and more.

Nobody likes people who talk out of both sides of their mouth. Evaluate and adjust your brand plan to speak with one, confident voice. Always.

Play Up Your Personality

Let’s have another look at your three key adjectives from earlier. Do they feel cohesive? Or are they suffering from multiple personality disorder?

Stanford professor Jennifer Aaker’s “Dimensions of Brand Personality” can help stabilize any wobbles and strengthen your stance.  

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Aaker’s studies find that most brands have one dominant trait among these five:  sincerity, excitement, competence, sophistication, ruggedness. Consider: 

• Which trait fits your brand best? 
• What conversational style flows from that pick? 
• What design choices boost that image?

Are you hearing voices in your head? Good.

You’re discovering how your brand personality speaks. Make note of what he says and how he says it. When you’re really onto something great, taglines, marketing ideas, employee recruitment messages and more will all start bubbling up.

Don’t be surprised if your brand personality takes on a life of its own. Some companies even name their persona and use him/her as a decision-making tool. Hmmm. This new gizmo is quite innovative, but would Nigel use it? Seems out of step with the portfolio.

Find what’s true about your brand – and stick by it.

Perception:  Drive It or Be Driven by It

Once you’ve gone to market, people will judge your brand. Their perception will become your sales reality. That’s a fact.

Your choice:  

• Do you want that perception left to chance – and to later react to their response?

• Or, do you want to drive that perception by presenting a strong, clear, consistent brand personality – attracting like-minded customers straightaway?

Exactly.

Go to it.

First published October 2016 by Veromo – an Australian start up that helps entrepreneurs start up.

Sexy Reality Show Rocks Quiet UWS Block; Is that a Catwalk in the Backyard?

51 West 83rd Street

First published 19 July 2016 in West Side Rag

Wannabe models are here and they’re waking the babies.

It all started last week when Deanna Lo looked south from her apartment and noticed stirrings inside 51 West 83^rd Street, a luxury townhouse that had long been on the market for $14.8 million. Someone finally moved in, she thought.

Saturday evening, a party filled the townhouse’s back garden. “It was like the East Village or Meatpacking District – millennials – not the Upper West Side. It was over by 10, so I let it go,” she says.

By Sunday night, bright lights had been strung and another whooping gathering took off, says Lo. “Constant cheering, screaming and clapping for hours.” She didn’t know what was going on, but she did know her 4-month old baby had been woken up twice by the mayhem. She called 311 to complain.

Other neighbors took a more direct approach as the noise continued past 11:30pm, according to Lo. “People starting yelling, ‘Shut up!’ ‘Go to sleep!’ ‘Cut it out or I’m calling the cops.’” That sent the revelers scrambling inside.

Monday morning, still furious about her infant’s sleep schedule being messed with, Lo marched over to the building demanding an explanation. She found a weary but apologetic production team explaining that they were making a “reality show” and that they’d try to keep the talent in check.

Lo asked West Side Rag to find out more.

There were no permits issued by the Mayor’s Office of Media and Entertainment for this past Sunday. But, as Stephanie Browne, Press Secretary for MOME, says, permits are not required to film on private property. Similarly, shoots with hand-held cameras that do not impede public movements on public property do not require City permits either.

According to the contact on pink permit signs currently up on that 83^rd Street block, there will be brief shoot for an independent feature this week, not a reality show.

So, who’s waking the baby?

“It’s America’s Next Top Model,” says Jonathan Stuart, a 40-year resident who owns the two townhouses sandwiching the set’s building. He knows because he rented office space to the production. The lease runs until August 30^th. “It’s a great deal for them and a great deal for me.”

What appears to be a grey catwalk in the backyard

The property was built in 1890 and underwent a massive renovation in recent years; it now boasts 6 bedrooms and 8 bathrooms. Stuart thinks it never sold because it was overpriced, and he questioned the wisdom of renting the luxury property to a reality show. A representative for the owner, which is listed as an LLC on city records, was not available for comment.

Stuart agrees with Lo’s assessment of ANTM’s first weekend on the Upper West Side. “It was really annoying,” he says. “I think [the contestants] got instructed to scream a lot. Like Jerry Springer.”

Production staffers on site Monday evening refused to answer WSR’s questions about the project. A message sent to the production manager garnered no response.

“They’re kids who are running the show – can’t be more than 21, 25,” says Stuart. “The last lecture I gave them was: their interns have to be respectful to the neighborhood. They have to understand this is a residential community and we don’t give a f*** about your television show.”

Locals hoping for a glimpse of long-time host, supermodel Tyra Banks, will be out of luck. Banks remains executive producer, but ended her on-camera role when ANTM finished its 22^nd season on The CW. VH1 has resurrected the model-search program and installed a new host, singer/actress Rita Ora.

Stuart hopes neighbors will give the crew a second chance, “They’re good guys, but they’re young. Experience is a great teacher.”

Standing on his back porch overlooking the set’s garden ­– complete with what appears to be a mini-catwalk – he vows to enforce good behavior. “I have no problem picking up that hose and using it.”

Fed Up with 'Intolerable' Conditions, Tenants Sue SRO Landlord

The bathroom shared by Winston Pitts, his wife and two other tenants

First published 6 October 2016 in West Side Rag

The toilet rocked off its hole as Winston Pitts, 73, showed me the bathroom he and his wife share with two other SRO tenants at 361 W. 116^th Street. “I’ve lived in New York for 42 years, but I’ve never lived like this.”

Pitts and six other residents have filed suit against the building’s owner, Morningside 116 Associates LLC, and John Lasala, head of the corporation, seeking immediate repairs to remedy the now 165 open violations issued by HPD (Housing Preservation and Development), including rat infestations, exposed wiring, broken windows, no hot water, leaks, broken entrance doors, peeling lead paint, defective floors and more.

During a visit Wednesday afternoon, conditions seemed more on par with a Jacob Riis photograph than a rapidly gentrifying brownstone block in Morningside Heights. Pitts keeps his room pin-neat – adorned with religious icons, family pictures and an MTA commendation plaque for heroism in breaking up a subway robbery. But there’s evidence of disrepair all around, from leaks into food preparation areas, to mold and dicey electrical outlets.

Garbage bags cover broken windows

Pitts says it wasn’t always this way. When the retired construction worker moved in 12 years ago, the owner was an “old man who was here 7 days a week.” When that owner died, someone else started showing up to collect the rent – in Pitts’ case, $450 a month for a single room and kitchenette.

In May 2016, the estate of Leonia Adams sold the building to its current owners for $1.2 million, according to city records.

The transition hasn’t been rosy.

A kitchenette in the building

According to the lawsuit, the new landlord, John Lasala, has made repeated buyout offers to tenants, even after they declined interest; has failed to correct conditions; provided no maintenance or services in the building; and filed frivolous legal actions against residents.

To combat those suits, Pitts says the tenants contacted Manhattan Legal Services (a program of Legal Services NYC) and Goddard Riverside Law Project for assistance. Beyond dealing with the suits against tenants, the lawyers also focused on the conditions under which they had been living.

The tenants prevailed with a default judgment when Lasala failed to appear in Housing Court, according to Jasmin E. Torres, one of the tenants’ attorneys. After that victory, tenants filed the current affirmative suit seeking to compel the owners to restore livability to the units and cease harassing tenants. The case is to be heard Thursday morning.

A bathroom floor

“We want the court to ensure completion of work so that our clients are in premises that are livable,” says Torres. “They seek to be afforded a decent quality of life like every other resident of this city.”

Adds Tayyaba Khokhar of Goddard Riverside Law Project, “They’ve been harassed by the landlord with repeated buyout demands even after they’ve made it clear that they intend to stay in the building.” Goddard Riverside calls the conditions “intolerable.”

Pitts says he’s heard rumors of other tenants being offered and accepting $10,000 to move out. It wouldn’t tempt him, he says, noting that sum would only cover the cost of acquiring a different apartment and moving. An apartment with a rent likely far above $450.

No mailboxes in the hallway

WSR made several attempts to contact Lasala. A publicly posted phone number is no longer in service. There’s no attorney contact listed on Morningside 116 Associates LLC filing with the Secretary of State’s office. There was no indication of Lasala’s or the LLC’s name when WSR visited 59 W 119^th Street, the address on the court papers. A text to an unconfirmed cell number has not yet garnered a reply.

Pitts says he’s met Lasala a few times and has heard mentions of upcoming repairs, but hasn’t seen much action yet. “John [Lasala] seems like a nice guy, but nice guys can screw you, too.”

Docked at the 79th Street Boat Basin in the Deep Freeze; 'Why the Hell Do We Live Here?'

Regina, Ed and Ollie aka "The Admiral"

First published 20 January 2016 in West Side Rag

Ask Ed Bacon why he’s been a year-round resident of the 79^th Street Boat Basin since 1970 and he’ll point toward 33 Riverside’s penthouse where George Gershwin (likely) wrote a tune summing up his favorite aspect of a Hudson River lifestyle: Summertime.

It was hard to be singing “and the living is ea-sy” last Monday evening as 30 mph winds whipped across the water, sending temperatures into the teens and necessitating an ice-dodging step into Prelude, his and wife Regina Jordan’s cutter-rigged ketch.

It’s a cozy 70 degrees, however, inside the living quarters he calls, “a very efficient studio with three bedrooms and two bathrooms in about 450 square feet…our womb with a view.” All of the couple’s worldly possessions are tucked away with the tidiness of a black-belt Marie Kondo-ite. Ollie, a 10-year-old Maltipoo otherwise known as The Admiral, supervises operations from a newly upholstered settee/dining-bench/guest bed.

The boat is their office as well as home, equipped with Time Warner Cable Internet, TV, VoIP phone and a ConEd electrical account. Through All NYC Yachts they broker local yachts of all sizes for all occasions, as well as charter Prelude for events and engagement cruises, catered by chef Regina who’s also a personal fitness trainer.

Additionally, Ed maintains a non-profit site, I Boat NY Harbor, providing information to transient boaters and other newcomers about everything from tides to safety procedures. The site is also home to Boat Basin BULLetin, a community newsletter that includes dispatches from a secret source known only as “Deep Boat.”

In a freewheeling conversation, Ed, 75, and Regina, “let’s say 58”, spelled out some of the benefits and drawbacks of life on the UWS waterfront. Following is an edited version of our chat.

WSR: NYC’s Parks Department is essentially your landlord. How does that work?

EB: Parks issues our permit once a year. We used to have contracts, but now we have as many rights as a Central Park hot dog vendor.

WSR: Parks could choose not to renew your permit at any time?

EB: Yes. They could nail us for violation of some regulation. Parks marinas have 20+ pages of regs.

WSR: How’s the rent?

RJ: It’s cheap, but you get what you pay for.

EB: For a full-year permit, it’s $225 per foot (of boat); plus another $3000 a year or so for a parking space in the rotunda lot behind Boat Basin Café.

WSR: So a 30-footer [the minimum size] would be $6750 a year, $563 a month. That’s a great “maintenance” fee compared to a co-op.

Prelude in more temperate waters

EB: We get billed for 51 feet, $956 a month. And there’s no comparison to a co-op. For all that think we’re getting such a sweet deal, consider that – beyond having no contract securing our address – we have bigger expenses in time, labor and certain purchases:

• Our “super” never enters our boat. You have to provide your own maintenance for the electric, the water pump, the heating system for the water and rooms. We have to sail over to Liberty Landing in Jersey City fill up the diesel tank that runs our engine and heating. There’s no A/C.

• Insurance requires coverage for the entire boat, not just its contents unlike a co-op shareholder’s policy.

• Any replacement furnishings are boutique purchases that cost more. You can’t get a stovetop that tilts with the tides at any appliance store. And your Coast Guard safety equipment must be in place and in good condition.

• Tremendous, constant elbow grease is required to keep the boat looking ship-shape: Scraping hulls, repainting, varnishing the gleaming Burmese teak and holly floors, polishing brass.

• Wakes from the Moira Smith ferry between Edgewater, New Jersey, and Pier 79 at 39^th Street are like a motorcycle running down your hallway 31 times a day. We get hammered.

• When you sell your co-op, you’re really selling your location. But when we sell a boat, we have to get it out of here. The permit doesn’t transfer with the boat; there’s a waiting list seven or eight years long to get one.

• Your co-op likely appreciates in value; boats depreciate.

RJ: Why the hell do we live here? (laughs) It’s hard work. I call myself a pioneer woman.

WSR: I did see you have Prelude up for sale. You’re not leaving?

EB: No. We’re looking to switch. Modern boats are like Clorox bottles: low maintenance.

WSR: Has the Boat Basin community changed much in your 45 years here?

EB: We used to have about 104 year-rounders; now it’s down to 33 boats. It’s always attracted an eclectic group of people and they are the best thing about the Boat Basin. However, as in most UWS neighborhoods, homogeneity is being force-fed by the City.

WSR: How could Parks serve Basin residents better?

EB: We’d like more communication from the top. Nobody knows where this marina is going. We asked to be involved in the process as various infrastructure projects have been planned. But [it didn’t happen].

RJ: Communication has been a real struggle for at least the past nine years.

WSR: What makes it worth all the hassles? What do you love about living here?

RJ: There’s a lot of freedom in the summertime. We sit outside and have cocktails with company or watch TV; it’s pleasant. And the sunsets in winter! They are the most beautiful I’ve ever seen and we’ve been to the Caribbean, all over.

EB: Again, it’s the people. I like to say, the farther west you go in Manhattan, the weirder it gets. And we’re as far west as you can go.

Gnawed, Exasperated Residents Battle Ravenous Mosquito Infestation, Say City Won't Help

They feed at night. Squeezing through any available crack or crevice. Sneaking up sewer pipes. Thwarting all mesh covers, caulk and other futile measures taken by the warm-blooded residents of West 84^th Street between West End Avenue and Riverside Drive (also known as Edgar Allan Poe Street).

They are the oversized, flesh-welting mosquitoes called Culex pipiens molestus and they have besieged this block since at least 2011, causing sleep deprivation, serious allergic reactions (especially in children and those with weakened immune systems), bites with week-long itching and – perhaps most distressing – endless runaround from city agencies about how to eradicate this extra-hardy pest and potential serious disease vector, residents say. 

WSR broke the story about this problem several years ago, as well as the city’s previous spotty efforts to remedy it.

“It’s the number three mosquito-control priority from the city’s point of view, behind Zika and West Nile, but it’s this block’s number one priority,” says Tom, a resident and member of the block’s volunteer Mosquito Squad. “If we could get one official to spend one night in any of our homes, the next morning it would become a city priority.”

Residents say they’ve spent years attempting to work with the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, Department of Environmental Protection and the Department of Transportation to investigate the underground habitat of these mosquitoes – to no avail. “In other infestations, the City flushes the sewers and treats them with larvacide, and that cures it,” says Pauline Galiana, another Mosquito Squad activist. “But on our block and the surrounding area, there are still mosquitoes.”

After consulting with scientists around the world and painstakingly tracking where mosquitoes were most prevalent – and when – the Mosquito Squad pinpointed the area around a mid-block fire hydrant as a prime suspect for the breeding colony’s location. Serendipitously, in December 2015, Con Ed began tearing up the street to refurbish its gas lines. The Mosquito Squad cheered this as an opportunity to look at what might lurk deep under the pavement. They contacted City agencies to take advantage of the cost-effective excavation moment.

No takers.

Coincidence?

Exasperated, the Mosquito Squad rallied the entire block – all 403 families – to sign a petition asking Mayor de Blasio’s office to order the Department of Environmental Protection to dig under the suspect hydrant, or provide a reason why that could not happen:

The proximity of this colony in the sewer line adjacent to the mid-block hydrant, coupled with incontrovertible evidence of water-induced soil erosion around that hydrant, points to failed hydrant infrastructure as the primary source for this standing water – yet DEP has refused to commit resources to investigate the condition and DOH has refused to exert its authority under Article 151 to compel it to do so.

Technically, residents say, the Department of Health should be citing the city for not adhering to Article 151 of the Health Code, because the mosquitoes’ breeding colony is likely within infrastructure controlled by the city:

• 151.02 Prevention and pest management measures. (a) Properties shall be free of pests. All premises capable of attracting or supporting rodents, insects and other pests shall be kept free from rodents, insects and other pests, and from any conditions conducive to pests. The person in control of such premises shall take such measures as may be necessary to prevent and control the harborage and free movement of rodents, insects or other pests.

In early February 2016, the Mosquito Squad presented the signed petition at an interagency meeting arranged by Assemblymember Linda Rosenthal with DOH, DOT, DEP and a Mayor’s Office representative. To date, the residents have not heard back from the Mayor. Their demand remains: dig the hydrant hole, or tell us why you can’t.

The suspect hydrant

An interagency representative, the DEP and the DOH did not respond to requests for comment.

“For five years now, the residents of West 84th Street have been forced to sleep under netting as a result of a mosquito infestation that has been allowed to persist unabated,” says Assemblymember Rosenthal, who has been advocating, with residents, for City action to eliminate the mosquito population on the block.  “The city has been ensnared in its own net of bureaucracy and missed a golden opportunity when Con Edison tore up the block to investigate under the street to find the source of the infestation.”

Mosquito Squad-er Tom refuses to be defeated, “I’m hopeful that what we discover here could be applied to future instances; looking at our hydrant could provide a prototype solution. Why can’t they see that?”

First published 8 April 2016 in West Side Rag