The Periodic Table of Personality. (Don’t) Give Me Attitude.

No one has just one personality trait. But when it comes to describing the people around us – we usually rely on one predominant trait to sum up that person in just one word. We are all familiar with those solitary words that say it all: egoistic, pugnacious, spontaneous, assertive, narcissistic, amiable, dogmatist etc.

In order to do justice to these complex set of traits that are intertwined to create our personalities – it is first important to understand the fundamental definition of personality:

“…the sum total of the physical, mental, emotional, and social characteristics of an individual; organized pattern of behavioral characteristics of the individual.” [Source: Dictionary.com]

When it comes describing our personalities, we habitually presuppose that in order to do justice to our integrity we should depict ourselves as others want to perceive us. Interestingly, we try to lull ourselves into thinking that no number of words can possibly describe us entirely. You’d be remarkably surprised that it only takes 20 personality traits to fully describe every person in the world!

Mass-targeting has been one of the largest and most recognized penchants for marketing on the web. Online ad marketing agencies are exploiting and confounding the Internet today with mass-targeting strategies and appeal. On the other side of the marketing spectrum, there is micro-targeting with more effective strategies and payoffs that are principally overlooked. Which is exactly why brand advertisers have been conducting vast amounts of research to gain insight into their buyers mindset (personality traits), and understand what makes them tick, what speaks to them, and what they are interested in. This type of marketing efforts are translating research results into what is known as psychographic profiling – which have been powerful and proven predictive models for buyer behavior.

Just ask Mindset Media, former brand advertising agency, that has invented a proprietary psychographic planning & buying standard based on 20 most recognized personality traits. Each personality cell is divided into five levels of degrees, and everyone has some degree of all 20 traits, which is equivalent to their mindset. Accordingly, it is estimated that each mindset has approximately 2 million unique users in the U.S. alone. Individual mindset does matter – and plays a critical role in deciding what brands, products, and services we respond to. Based on large representative sampling, Mindset Media has conducted research that demonstrates a strong statistical correlation between personality traits and predicting buyer behaviour.

Here are some interesting facts based on Mindset Media research:

1. People with high self-esteem are 48% more likely to drink premium coffee at Starbucks.
2. Deliberate people pay off their credit cards more regularly.
3. Highly open people buy organic foods at nearly forty three the rate of the general population.
4. Assertive people are 58% more likely to read more than 3 magazines regularly.

This research can provide insight into how your personal brand does matter in your evolving understanding of who you really are. More Starbucks coffee, anyone?

The Quantitative Search Engine Question.

A recent Netcraft survey estimated that there are over 108 million unique websites on the World Wide Web (Netcraft Web Server Survey, 2008). Even this number seems a bit muddled bearing in mind that the Internet is not really under just one jurisdiction. The pervasive and omnipresent Blog phenomenon has prompted even more speculation to the number of blogs on the Internet. Andrew Keen predicts that by 2010 there will be a total of half a billion blogs. That leaves us with only about 2 more years to try to make our voices heard, alongside those millions of people who have already tried to stake their claim for public wakefulness. Web 2.0 has morphed in a gigantic hustling fête and has turned into more intrusive, bewildering, and perplexing than ever. Most of the alluring products on offer are free, and there are so many distractions to deal with: emails, web browsers, information, chatting, chat groups, forums, social networks, social memberships, video entertainment, maps, blogs, ping sites, professional networking, job sites and a myriad of others.

As the search engine ‘bots’ dig deeper the sheer quantity of information exponentially available is so overwhelming (with drastic and varying degrees of quality) that new initiatives are sorely needed to sort information more qualitatively, rather than offering a choice of 2 million superficially sorted search results in a matter of 0.04 seconds (When searching for someone’s name). Google as we have come to know it is the colossal multi-billion dollar information empire with its algorithmically-derived financial nirvana. Whatever Google’s ‘bots’ scour up from an infinite cyberspace is then presented in a bundle of information under a person’s name. You may want to start wondering how many other people have your name? As an experiment, try to feed in any familiar names and see how many of the resulting profiles are relevant to that specific person. Is there any reasonably balanced portrait? The biggest surprise may come after perhaps you see yourself profiled along with other ‘body parts’ from other people with the same name. It is our first and foremost responsibility to ensure that we are represented appropriately on the web, especially with so many observers such as employers, clients, and customers stealing canny glances at our informative ‘bundles’ or profiles that are spewed out from the search engine results. According to YouGov, a public policy and market research consulting company, 59% of employers have used information online to dictate their decision for recruiting potential employees. Similarly, over 20% of employers found information online that was not volunteered by an individual (often this may not be factual at all).

With everyone contending for a noticeable spot on the Internet, the time has come for individuals, professionals, businessmen, tradesman and entrepreneurs alike to employ search engines to their fullest capacity to promote their name and leave an inimitable digital footprint. Or, it raises the question if this is a battle even worth fighting for?