Why personality is becoming a competitive factor in the age of AI
Artificial intelligence is changing the rules of the game when it comes to competition. Companies can standardise processes, create content more quickly and boost their productivity. At the same time, AI reduces the time it takes for competitors to copy business models, services and positioning. Technological efficiency alone is therefore becoming less and less sufficient to set a company apart from the competition in the long term.
It is precisely this development that presents a major opportunity: The more AI standardises processes and services, the more important people become within a company. Personality fosters closeness, credibility and trust. These qualities can develop into decisive differentiating factors.
A prerequisite for this is a consistent chain of trust. It begins with an authentic self-image of the company, which provides guidance both internally and externally. This gives rise to a mission statement that enables employees to contribute their individual strengths and act independently. When they credibly embody the company’s values, the brand personality becomes tangible for customers. This strengthens brand loyalty and lays the foundation for commercial success.
Shaping the interplay between brand and employee personality is a strategic management task. The management must exemplify the company’s identity, foster trust and create scope for action. The following examples illustrate how these principles can be put into practice.
Brand personality: Definition
Brand personality describes the totality of human characteristics that customers associate with a brand – such as sincerity, competence or enthusiasm. The concept was developed by the US marketing researcher Jennifer Aaker (1997). A clearly defined brand personality makes a brand distinctive, creates emotional connection and fosters trust.
Four practical examples: How companies strengthen personality and trust
1. Practical example: Otto turns employees into credible brand ambassadors.
A strong brand personality does not arise solely through communication campaigns. It is crucial that employees genuinely embody the company’s values and identity and convey them to the outside world.
The Otto Group demonstrates how companies can adopt this approach. Since 2017, the Otto Group company has been training employees in an internal programme to become job ambassadors and corporate influencers. They share insights into their day-to-day work on social media, are involved in the recruitment process and convey the brand promise both internally and externally. These employees credibly represent the company’s personality and bring its values to life through their own behaviour. The key difference to traditional advertising lies in authenticity. Employees do not merely communicate pre-determined messages, but represent a corporate culture with which they identify.
What companies can learn from this
Brand ambassador programmes should be rooted in the company’s lived culture. Companies need to identify employees who can credibly represent the brand promise. If this promise is firmly embedded internally, it can also have a convincing effect externally.
2. Practical example: Patagonia makes its brand promise credible through consistent action.
Trust is built when companies live up to their own standards. This becomes particularly clear when the brand identity shapes not only communication but also fundamental business decisions.
Patagonia provides an example of this. In 2022, founder Yvon Chouinard and his family fundamentally changed the ownership structure: the voting shares (two per cent) have since been held by the Patagonia Purpose Trust, which safeguards the company’s values in the long term. The remaining 98 per cent is held by the non-profit organisation Holdfast Collective. It receives all profits that are not reinvested in the company and uses them for climate, nature and biodiversity conservation. In doing so, Patagonia underlines its brand promise through a far-reaching business decision. This positioning is not limited to advertising claims, but is reflected in the company’s actions.
This is a particular strength: a brand identity that is credibly put into practice can foster customer loyalty and satisfaction. It also gives companies the opportunity to convey their brand promise more effectively through their own culture and their employees, rather than relying solely on traditional marketing measures.
What companies can learn from this
Credibility cannot be established through communication alone. Companies must link their brand promise to concrete decisions and actions. The more consistently they live by their values, the more convincingly they can convey their brand personality.
3. Practical example: dm strengthens trust and personal responsibility through dialogical leadership.
A future-proof employee personality needs freedom. Employees should be able to make independent decisions and contribute their individual skills. At the same time, they need reliable guidance to ensure that their actions are consistent with the company’s self-image.
The principle of dialogical leadership at dm— shaped by founder Götz Werner — demonstrates how these requirements can be reconciled. At the heart of this is intensive communication: Managers review the existing scope for decision-making in regular dialogue with their staff and adjust it where necessary. This approach combines trust with leadership. Employees are given scope for action without management relinquishing its responsibility. Instead of monitoring every single step of the work process, managers provide guidance and further develop collaboration through continuous dialogue.
This principle is becoming increasingly important, particularly in the age of AI. Employees must increasingly assess for themselves whether AI-generated results are suitable, and decide when to adopt, correct or further develop them. To do this, they need professional judgement, the ability to learn and personal responsibility.
What companies can learn from this
Trust does not mean relinquishing leadership. Managers should consciously expand their employees’ scope for decision-making, review this regularly through dialogue and make adjustments where necessary. In this way, employees can act independently whilst at the same time embodying the shared corporate mission.
4. Practical example: Upstalsboom makes the impact of employee-centredness measurable.
Companies would be well advised not to regard brand and employee personality as non-binding ‘feel-good’ topics. They should be able to understand whether the measures implemented are actually having an effect and what contribution they make to commercial success.&
An example of this is provided by the hotel and holiday let group Upstalsboom, based in Emden. The catalyst for this cultural shift was a staff survey, the results of which proved sobering for managing director Bodo Janssen: many employees wanted a different boss. Janssen subsequently took a fundamental look at his management style, took some time out at a monastery and realigned the company. Since then, values and the personal development of staff have taken centre stage – including in-house coaches, personality development training and voluntary retreats at a monastery for managers.
According to the company, staff satisfaction subsequently rose by more than 80 per cent, the number of job applications increased fivefold, and turnover more than doubled. This example illustrates how important it is to consistently measure success. Companies should not only assess whether their internal culture is changing, but also monitor how these changes affect customer behaviour and key financial indicators. Internal metrics such as staff retention, staff turnover, staff surveys and employer ratings are suitable for this purpose. Externally, companies can look at, amongst other things, customer loyalty, repeat purchase rates, brand trust and the Net Promoter Score (NPS).
What companies can learn from this
Anyone strategically developing brand and employee personality should define suitable metrics right from the start. This is the only way to check whether the measures implemented are achieving the desired goals and what financial results can be achieved.
Checklist: Five steps to a 90-day plan
How can you translate these insights into concrete changes? A 90-day programme enables you to initiate this process in a structured manner. It combines an analysis of the current situation with a future-proof brand identity, a new approach to leadership and the measurement of initial results.
Brand identity: Definition
Brand identity encompasses the defining characteristics of a brand: What does it stand for? What values does it represent? And what does it promise? It forms the company’s self-image and is shaped from within. Brand image, on the other hand, describes the external perception – that is, how the brand is perceived by customers and the public. According to the identity-based brand management approach, a strong brand emerges when the self-image and external perception largely coincide.
Month 1: Analyse the current situation and refine the brand essence.
Step 1: Review the existing brand identity.
- Conduct staff and customer surveys and analyse your company’s market positioning.
- Compare the existing self-image with how the company is perceived by staff and customers.
- Identify discrepancies between brand promises, the corporate culture in practice and actual behaviour.
The aim is to create a solid foundation. You will recognise where your company stands and where changes are needed.
Month 2: Align brand and employee personality.
Step 2: Develop a future-proof brand identity and employee identity.
- Define a stable brand essence that provides guidance even in the face of technological change.
- Embed resilience and the ability to learn as key requirements of the AI era.
- Derive a clear mission statement for staff from the brand identity and involve the first internal champions or coaches.
The aim is to develop a shared sense of identity. This should provide employees with guidance whilst leaving room for independent action.
Step 3: Embed trust as a leadership principle.
- Review the current leadership style and existing scope for decision-making.
- Enable your staff to take on more personal responsibility and do away with unnecessary control mechanisms.
- Raise managers’ awareness of the value of trust-based collaboration and foster a constructive culture of learning from mistakes.
The aim is to establish a leadership culture in which employees can contribute their strengths, independently assess AI results and implement decisions in an agile manner.
Month 3: Promote the corporate culture externally and measure its impact.
Step 4: Bring the brand personality to life for your customers.
- Identify employees who can credibly represent the brand promise as brand ambassadors.
- Review your customer processes and customer communications to ensure they reflect the brand promise.
- Convey the company’s lived culture to the outside world through the behaviour of your employees.
The aim is to create a consistent brand experience in which your company’s actual actions align with its positioning.
Step 5: Measure the results and steer further development.
- Define suitable internal and external KPIs based on the initial analysis.
- Monitor how staff retention, staff turnover, customer satisfaction, customer loyalty and willingness to recommend evolve.
- Review your existing key performance indicators, avoid unnecessary reporting and continuously adapt your measures based on the results.
The aim is to make the impact of these measures transparent and to permanently embed the development of brand and employee identity within corporate management.
Employee identity: Definition
Employee personality (personal identity) refers to the individual attitude, competence and manner of expression with which employees represent their company’s values in their day-to-day work. It should not be uniform, but should point in the same direction as the brand identity: shared values, individual expression. It is only this alignment that allows customers to experience the brand personality as authentic.
Conclusion: In the age of AI, humanity is becoming a strategic success factor
Artificial intelligence opens up enormous opportunities for companies to increase their efficiency and productivity. At the same time, it makes it more difficult to differentiate oneself from the competition through standardised processes, technologies and services. This makes it all the more important for companies to develop a brand personality that sets them apart from the competition through credible actions and values put into practice.
The key lies in the interplay between corporate identity, leadership culture and employee personality. Companies should provide their employees with guidance, place their trust in them and enable them to act independently. Only then can a formulated brand promise give rise to a corporate culture that can be credibly experienced.
The importance of this chain of trust will continue to grow in the coming years. Companies that combine technological possibilities with human judgement, the ability to learn and authentic relationships create key prerequisites for customer loyalty, differentiation and economic success. The central management task is therefore not merely to exploit the technological possibilities of AI. It also lies in empowering the people within the organisation to use these possibilities responsibly and autonomously.
