The iPhone Personality

How does 'brand personality' affect your shopping habits?

DR. SAN DIEGO

Ever since the pantheon of Apple design, the iPhone, was released a couple of years ago, it seems all I’ve heard is, “What? You don’t have an iPhone?”

Well, I am finally joining the technology elite and will be sporting a new iPhone by the time you read this blog. Not that there’s anything wrong with my Blackberry. It’s just lost its personality.

Personality? It’s a cell phone. Since when do products have personalities? Stand in front of the Apple stores in Fashion Valley, UTC or Carlsbad — or in the flagship store in SoHo where I recently visited, and you’ll see all the personality you can imagine, tied up in product.

Of course products have personality. Apple is selling something that oozes fun, a sense of style and excitement — in many ways a reflection of Apple itself. That, in part, explains how Apple swooped into the cell phone market and captured millions of hearts, minds and credit cards.

Apple sells lifestyle, imagination, liberty, innovation, passion, hopes, dreams, aspirations and power to the people. Guess it’s not just a MacBook Pro I’m typing on right now. It’s pure “cool.”

Customers today embrace a brand because they can relate to its personality. It may be that the brand has similar personality traits to them or they want their own personality to be more like that of the brand.

Visiting the Fashion Valley Apple store this week, I saw the remarkable customer relationship experience on the faces of every shopper in the store — old, young and in-between. From January 24, 1984, when Apple’s Macintosh was first launched, until today, Apple has mastered the fine art of communicating a consistently “hip,” “youthful” personality.

In fact, I asked one shopper in the UTC Apple store what he thought about the “personality” of the new iPhone — someone who admitted to never using any Apple product. “Apple is definitely upscale and totally innovative. It's very stylish, easy to use and has excellent quality.” Remember, he said he never used ANY Apple product, but just “knows” this to be true. In the words of Borat, “Success.”

One psychologist who got it totally wrong said, “I’m sorry, but the iPhone will likely go down with the Lisa as one of Apple’s blunders in design and marketing. It is a poorly conceived device made exclusively for the digital elite,” according to John M. Grohol, Psy.D. in June 2007, who claimed the iPhone “threw away usability for the cool factor.”

Sounds like the same doctor who said, "There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home."
 But it isn’t the same person. That insightful prediction belongs to Ken Olson, president, chairman and founder of DEC.

Threw away usability? That lack of “usability” accounts in large measure for the 17 million iPhones that have been sold since June 2007, and for AT&T desperately trying to hold on to its cash cow. Apple sold 13.7 million iPhones in 2008 alone. This “poorly conceived device” with “no usability” and only a “cool factor” has more than 50,000 developers working on creating apps for the phone, more than 35,000 applications available and more than 800 million total downloads (including updates) on the App Store thus far. Apple sold more than 1 million units of its newest-generation iPhone 3G S in its first weekend of sales. Cha-ching!

Think about how important “brand personality” is to you in your shopping habits as you peruse the advertisements and pages of the newest issue of San Diego Magazine.

Buy a Hallmark greeting card? “Down-to-earth, family oriented, genuine, old-fashioned.”

Prefer Pepsi over Coke? “Spirited, young, up-to-date, outgoing.”

Read the Wall Street Journal, or use a Hewlett-Packard computer? “Accomplished, influential, competent.”

Drive a Mercedes or Lexus with the gold trim instead of a Miata or VW Golf? “Pretentious, wealthy, condescending.”

Wear Nike over LA Gear, smoke Marlboro instead of Virginia Slims or bank at Wells Fargo instead of B of A? “Athletic and outdoorsy.”

But come on folks. Aren’t we all smart enough these days to figure out how these branding schemes work, and how they are intended to work on us? We are better informed, much more critical, not nearly as loyal and much more diverse than ever before. But still, Apple is, well, Apple.

Now for some science: nearly every study in this area demonstrates that when we lose the emotion centers in our brains, we of course lose our ability to feel sadness, anxiety and hostility.

But get this: we also lose the ability to make decisions! One neurologist, Donald Calne, put it this way: “The essential difference between emotion and reason is that emotion leads to action while reason leads to conclusion.”

As we peruse the pages of San Diego Magazine’s latest issue, only a small minority of us will make purchasing decisions, or plans for what restaurant to go to, based purely on facts. Even for those people who do, there is always some product they will buy based on impulse or emotion.

Apple is uncannily skilled at crafting gizmos that, upon lifting them in your hand, you just want. It's a hard sensation to describe. It just speaks to us.

I’ve been purchasing my cell phones from San Diego Wireless in Encinitas since it opened in 1986. The owner and president, Kevin McAllister, knows I’m an “early adopter” and even HE has been surprised it has taken me so long to jump on the iPhone express.

So, based purely on “irrational consumer lust,” emotion, respect and love for this new “must-have” toy, I will get my new iPhone with all of it’s “wow factor,” fill it up with dozens of apps and befriend a very cool personality. And now, instead of hearing, “What? YOU don’t have an iPhone?” I’m sure I’ll hear instead, “Figures! You would have an iPhone!”

For more than 30 years, Dr. Mantell has successfully been bringing upbeat, friendly and helpful psychological insights to individuals, families and businesses in San Diego as a clinical and corporate psychologist in private practice. He's been a regular on Good Morning America, KFMB-TV News 8, has appeared on Oprah, Larry King Live, the Today show, authored two best-selling books and speaks regularly for audiences throughout the country.

Do you like what you read? Subscribe to San Diego Magazine »