Personalities of Brands Using Social Media Efficiently

Brand value means combination of constituents consisting of its functional benefit, emotional benefit, personal benefit and commitment supports, and brand characteristics has an important place among these constituents. Success and role of social media in reflecting characteristics of brands is an inarguable truth. In this study, the brands in social media preferred the most by young consumers that frequently uses social media are analyzed and personality characteristics of these brands are addressed. Findings of the study contain an evaluation on personality characteristics of the top three most preferred brands as Turkcell, Turk Telekom and Mavi Jeans. In the evaluation on these 3 brands, Aaker's (1997) scale where he associates brands with human-specific personality characteristics and used as the most applied scale in assessing brand personality has been used as the assessment tool. Finding of the study present personality profiles of the most popular GSM and fashion brands of social media.


Introduction
In today's communication world where digital revolution and transformation is constantly discussed and the intensive competition each brand has to experience, one of the key aspects brands apply for differentiation is stories they attribute to their brands and characteristics embraced in structuring brand image. Brand experiences of consumers confront us directly related with personality characteristics of brands reflected on them and the brand perception.
It is now expected from each brand to become perceptively different and tell its personality characteristics for communicating its story to consumers through right expressions and right channels (Uztuğ, 2008, p.115). Brand has personality because people tend to associate human attributes with brands. Brands are often consumed in a social setting where a brand's personality creates brand differences that can satisfy people's self-expression and social needs (Xu et al. 2016, p. 436). People use brands to define how young or old they are, how masculine or feminine they are, how upscale or downscale they are, and how different or similar to members of their social groups. Social media is an effective marketing communications tool to express both personality and other important reflections of consumers lifestyle.
The brand personality characteristics assisting communicating stories of brands are the subject of this study. The ways for taking place in social media as one of the most important means of communication succeeded in taking place in our lives shapes the study method (Park et al. 1986). In the study, the first considered issue is the most used social media environments. It was also expected from the participants in AB SES group to indicate the brands they like and follow the most in social media environments such as Instagram, Facebook and Twitter. According to the results, these brands are Turk Telekom, Mavi Jeans and Turkcell.

Definition of Brand Personality and its Importance for Consumers
It has become almost impossible in current competitive conditions to create concrete, functional and physical differences between products and concordantly, these personality characteristics of brands and all kinds of concrete and abstract elements are added to the brand value (Aaker, 2014;Keller, 1993, p.5). Despite traditional ones, brands adopting new marketing trends as the main theme of this study are the brands sweeping in the path of Online Journal of Communication and Media Technologies Volume: 7 -Issue: 4 October -2017 success which correctly follow new trends, adopt digital transformation and succeed in establish the right connection with its consumers through a right channel and right story. At this point, brand personality is in the forefront among the concepts perceived for brand value constituents such as quality, brand awareness, brand loyalty, brand identity, brand positioning and brand association. As personality is important for individual existence, it is also equally important for existence of a brand (Tosun, 2014, p.94-95;Low and Lamb, 2010). Considering brand personality with regards to consumer behavior, it is observed in the brand image or brand identity studies in the literature that it is tried to establish a parallel structural relation between the personality characteristics of people and personality characteristics of brands for assessing personality of brands. Conducted studies prove this. (Aaker and Biel, 1993;Torlak and Kurt, 2005;Aaker, 1997, Dölarslan, 2012Barrick and Mount, 1991;).
Brand personality characteristics are attributed to brands in a similar way to the consumer experience fields and it is ensured that the experience is more delightful and catching by presenting a brand as a person. Actually, social media presents multi-directional, interactive and advantageous environments for brands to create a field of experience. We can say that consumers feel pleasure establishing connections with brands or identifying brands with their personalities and like establishing a connection between the personality of a celebrity or role model with their personalities. Brand personality can be perceived as in direct interaction with personality characteristics of a role model using that brand; it can also be perceived by indirectly associating it with physical characteristics of a product, brand name, logo, price, point of sale and advertising method (Toprak and Kjurt, 2005, p.16). Concordantly, we see that the studies conducting brand personality analysis and scales developed for assessing brand personality have also been established based on personality characteristics of people.

Social Media and Its Role and Importance for Brand Personality
Today, the channel which can establish the strongest and the easiest bond between a brand and its target group is social media. Social media is a place where people exist in accordance with their fields of interest and expectations and reflect their own tastes, requests, ideas and objections. As brand personality makes sense for a non-living thing, it is quite important among all things we say (Aaker, 1991 holistically, include interactive design and design innovatively in accordance with marketing trends. In this sense, the thing to be done by brands is to establish the right profile in social media, pay attention to cover photos, videos and language and give fast responses to comments by considering crisis management. In addition to this, following current developments and implementing a successful content management focusing on interactive designs are also important (Yener, 2013, p.90-91).
As advertising draw attention to significance of this issue and even its efficiency as much as traditional advertising channels (also some opinions on much higher efficiency) through digital data. In this study, brand personalities of some of the most used brands of digital environments qualified as successful in social media are evaluated and the human characteristics used by these brands with the most popular media contents to structure their identities are seen.

Purpose of the Study
The general purpose of this study is to describe the personality characteristics of the brands considered by the young population between 18-25 ages living in Istanbul as the most efficient brands in using social media through the Brand personality aspects scale developed by Aaker. Answers for the following questions were searched for fulfilling this purpose; -What are the SES group and demographic characteristics of participants of the study?
-What are the mostly preferred social media environments of the participants? According to survey findings and considering percentages of 3 brands; Turkcell was assessed by 18-25 age AB SES group participants respectively as hard working, smart and successful; Turk Telekom respectively as smart, successful and hard-working and Mavi Jeans respectively as successful, well apparent and smart.

Results and Conclusion
Brand value is determined in accordance with its personality and bond established with its consumers. Brand value is determined by characteristics such as identity and personality and this makes it the first remembered brand in retrieval process. Brand personality has been evaluated in several studies based on several cultural elements. In this study, the evaluation is conducted based on Turkish culture by considering the first most preferred 3 brands in Social Media.
The study results indicate that if the personality analyses of the brands active in social media and considered successful with regards to their contents is taken into consideration, they generally show a successful identity and efficient stand as "hardworking", "smart" and "good-looking". Sometimes, in this age of digital transformation where borders between the virtual and real world become vague, showing such a successful personality characteristic in social media is very important for brands and considering the competitive conditions, it becomes an extremely significant for creating difference by becoming distinguished among others. These results also show that a consistent and rich content, an attractive design and an efficient social media language are necessary for brands to continue their existence and success in social media environment. Furthermore, it should be noted that the brands considered successful in digital environment are recognized as long as they are "good looking", "smart" and "creative".