Brands with personality

Jul 25

After registering to Google+ I started to compare it to Facebook and it got me thinking on why I never really liked Facebook. Seems part of it is that some brands have a personality for me. And here decided to share personality I feel behind some of the brands.

Apple

Obviously one of brands with biggest personality I did not got involved with them until iPhone 3G, but after few months understood that its not my kind of product and firm. Finally switched recently.

Anyways my perception of them as a personality is “religious messiah“. Why? Well here is a list:

Their keynotes remind me of those religious events, lot of emotion, tasty words and such.
Same with their shops openings and design.
And another obvious reason is Steve Jobs, I guess no comments are needed. Well just check that.

But that’s all things I don’t care much about, I mean I bought a phone and forgot about it right? Well no, sadly Apple reminds of religious organization in some other ways that do touch me.

They handle problems and issues in similar to church way, denial and hiding(though I guess it is about anyone oversensitive of his reputation and public image).
They want to make world simple for people by deciding what’s good and what’s bad for them, same as morals in religious books to some extent.

In the end I disrespect such things and even though I do find their hardware and to some extent software to be of good quality.

Facebook

I would call Facebook a troubled teenager. One who lacks tact, is stalkerish and jealous. And here is why:

Almost any change and new feature and policy change they roll out, they miscalculate with default privacy settings which feels as if they overreach. As if they invade your privacy and being young did not learn a tact of how to behave yet.
Of course Mark Zuckerberg himself adds to this giving his past of young rebellious hacker.
They also are jealous of their friends not allowing people to leave to other party and take their friend with them.

All this adds to uncertainty in that brand… Who knows what weird thing they will pull off next.

Google

As for this brand, I must say that until now I did not think or feel of it much in that sense. Google products always were just products that worked well, I never felt personality behind any Google product. They were just products and tools that were giving all choice and information to me. Not filtering, censoring, deciding etc. Also they always were a many headed hydra. Most of their products were weakly tied so you could use them separately or together. Not something I could say about Apple or Microsoft who try to tie their products together…

The only thing I ever felt behind Google in press that they felt like geeky idealists. But for now they were able to allow them selves this. I wonder if it will continue as Google tries to reinvent themselves, become less experimenting and tying their products together around same account system and Google+. So may be they will show some personality soon. Hope they will not.