Personality Not Included… but it helps if it is.

Last year I read my Ogilvy colleague Rohit’s book ‘Personality Not Included’. It’s a reet page turner (you’d be disappointed if a book didn’t have pages that turned wouldn’t you?)

He wrote about the importance of personality and not being faceless. Not just in marketing but in business too in order to stand out, which has become increasingly hard to do in a really quite crowded world.

We are working on a project with IBM at the mo. It’s a series of events we are helping amplify online. One of the ways we’re doing that is creating content on the day of the event to share with a wider SME audience who are unable to attend. Below is one of the videos featuring one of the keynote speakers, entrepreneur  Richard Farleigh of Dragon’s Den fame. I got to indirectly ask him a question (my question gets asked after about 2mins 45secs) on the importance of personality, inspired by Rohit’s book and Richard’s reference to Levi Roots’ success in his speech today (Richard invested in Levi after seeing his pitch on the Dragon’s Den show). He had some really interesting views on the roles of personality and how smaller companies can leverage the personality within their organisation depending on what they do to boost the bottom line (it’s something I’m trying to get my mum to apply these principles to for her shop).

And here is Levi’s original pitch on the show. Catchy choon, catchy personality. But in the words of another famous tele judge, “personality has the power to open doors, character is what keeps it open”. Can social media be the door-stop for SMEs to keep the door ajar?