The results of the large-scale brand survey carried out by the Vlerick Brand Management Centre

174 brands were examined, including regional brands for the first time …

A brand with personality

The market is becoming more and more competitive, and marketing experts are therefore constantly on the look-out for ways of differentiating their brands from the competition. Consumers are looking around, too: the overwhelming range of products on offer is creating increasing choice-related stress, so consumers take a critical approach and also want to enter into a relationship with brands. Brand personality plays a crucial role in this choice process – far more than design or advertising. Consumers are after brands with a personality which matches their personal values, or conversely which compensates for a deficit in respect of certain values. This means that what marketing specialists need to do is not just emphasise the product benefits, but really give their brand a personality, a “soul”. As a result, brand personality is a hot topic!

Unique survey in Belgium

For the fourth time, the Vlerick Brand Management Centre (VBMC) has organised a brand personality survey together with its research partners. This survey is unique in Belgium and will probably be repeated next year.

The personality of brands plays an important role in acquiring and retaining a central place in the consumer’s life. This does not make the challenge facing marketing experts any easier. Gaining an understanding of brand personality is the key to success, and innovative, properly supported academic research may well be of use here. This is an important motivating factor behind this survey by VBMC.

The Vlerick Brand Management Centre is a research centre in the Marketing & Sales knowledge domain of Vlerick Leuven Gent Management School. The Centre conducts academic research into brands in conjunction with Dexia (the Prime Foundation Partner) and six Research Members

2008 survey objectives:

1. To gain an understanding of the personality of 174 brands active in 15 different product categories.
2. To detect developments in the personality of these brands.
3. To measure the impact of brand attitude and socio-demographic variables (age, sex, background, etc.) on brand personality.

A total of over 10,000 people took part in the survey, which was conducted via the Internet in both Flanders and Wallonia. The researched brands relate to 15 different product categories, from beers to banks, from cars to cosmetics and from retailers to media. One new element this year is that ‘regional brands’ – i.e. Belgium, Flanders, Wallonia and Brussels – were surveyed for the first time. This reflects the increasing interest in recent years in branding for countries and regions.

The results in brief

The survey shows that we can distinguish five personality dimensions:

• liveliness
• unchanging/established quality
• aggressiveness/boldness
• simplicity
• emotional quality

24 underlying personality characteristics define these dimensions.

1. How do members of the public perceive Belgium and its regions?

Nationalist sentiments play an important role in the way in which people perceive Belgium, Flanders, Wallonia and Brussels as brands. Comparing the perceptions of the Flemish with those of the Walloons, we can see that we are much more familiar with our home region and attribute a stronger personality to it. The Flemish take the view that Flanders scores significantly better on all personality factors than Wallonia; the Walloons regard Wallonia as significantly more lively, as an established value and as less aggressive.
Overall, Flanders is regarded as most lively and as an unchanging/established value; Wallonia scores significantly less well on these personality characteristics. However, Wallonia does very well in terms of having a simple and emotional personality. In terms of aggressiveness (impatient, aggressive, bold and pretentious) Brussels scores highest, followed by Flanders, Belgium and Wallonia.

The Flemish and the Walloons are in almost complete agreement about the Belgium brand. In general it seems that Belgium has a less developed personality than the regions. For both groups, Belgium is ‘greyer’ than their ‘own brand’ (i.e. their own region). Compared with Belgium, the Flemish see Flanders as being much more lively, much more of an unchanging value and also more emotional. For their part, the Walloons believe that their region is more of an unchanging value and less aggressive than the Belgium brand.

2. Media brands have a high profile

Generally speaking, we can see that media brands have a clear, strong profile. De Tijd (only number 8 last year) is the most established value this year, followed by Radio 1 and Canvas. Of all the researched brands, Q-Music is the liveliest, followed closely by Studio Brussel and BMW.
As far as the ‘established value’ factor is concerned, Volvo and Mercedes also appear in the top 10. Within the supermarket chain sector, Colruyt is still the most established value.

For the aggressiveness/boldness personality dimension, several car brands top the chart, as they did in previous years: Porsche, followed by Alfa Romeo and BMW. TF1, VT4, Brussels, La Dernière Heure, MTV, Humo and Tele 2 also appear in the top 10. Brussels is thus closely associated with aggressiveness and boldness.

3. Which is the most innovative or most reliable brand?

As well as the five personality dimensions, there are also 24 underlying characteristics which further define these dimensions. The results show that certain brand positioning efforts and campaigns have borne fruit.
Thus BMW is regarded as the most innovative, and Toyota as the most reliable. De Tijd is as steady as a rock (the most constant), while Metro is perceived as the simplest. Brands such as Lotus, Skoda and Het Laatste Nieuws are also regarded as simple.

Top 3	Constant	Innovative	Reliable	Simple
1.	De Tijd	BMW	Toyota	Metro
2.	Een	Q-Music	BMW	Femmes d'Aujourd'hui
3.	Radio 1	StuBru	Volvo	Subito