The importance of brand personality in B2B

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If only our company were more/less _________.
Our company is (an animal) _________.  Our competition is (another animal) _________.  
Responses typically indicate gaps, positive and negative, in service performance, product differences, and competitive differentiation, thus providing essential insights into a company’s direction and future vitality.
Consumer psychographic exercise
Another variation on the company-as-person exercise: Who is your company as a consumer psychographic type? Is your company an early adopter – explorer or reformer, or a middle adopter – an aspirer, succeeder, or mainstreamer? What goals, motivations and values drive your company?
This exercise is based on five (of seven) globally confirmed consumer psychographic types (cross-cultural consumer characterisation, or four Cs,  publicly available from VMLY&R ).
This exercise allows you to match the goals, motivations and values that define each consumer type with your company, and by extension, with your customer base. Are you aligned with your customers? Are you meeting their expectations?
Imagery exercise  
Complementary to the exercises above is the classic imagery collage. From a set of four or five magazines high in imagery (e.g. lifestyle, automotive, travel), ask colleagues to create a collage of the images that best represent your company today, and that will best represent the company tomorrow. 
If you repeat the exercise, or divide into groups, always use the same set of magazines and don’t be surprised if out of hundreds of different images, the same ones reappear across collages. This is a good sign, you’re on to something.
Case study: brand personality reveals surprising implications for business strategy and portfolio management
In one project for a Fortune 10 technology company, we faced a strategic business problem of portfolio management. Stock analysts asked: What was the value of four M&As that resulted in four different products effectively all performing the same ERP and CRM functions for SMEs?
To our great surprise, and in spite of impenetrable, indistinguishable tech specs which is all we had to go on, we solved the problem with a combination of metaphors, the four Cs and collages. Four products delivering exactly similar results were, in fact, entirely different in the kind of technology they offered and the process – a spectrum from easy and standardised to individualised and tailorable – that SMEs needed to apply in their use.
Vanilla ice cream, a golf game, an old BMW and a wild stallion were the startling and totally unrelated metaphors each product evoked.
Their four Cs psychographic matches – mainstreamer, succeeder, reformer and explorer – correlated to affinities each type has for simplicity, control, idiosyncrasy or complexity. (Each type predictably displays these affinities in their preferences in life, including for technology.)
Collages captured images for each ranging from cool blues and greens to fiery oranges and reds; from sleek sedans to off-road vehicles; from sailing and golf to paragliding and steep trekking; from hush puppies and wing-tips to sandals and mountain shoes.
These four products remain in the company’s portfolio today, just as we distinguished them some 16 years ago. They are still grounded in differences in how they are used, and are now positioned for certain specialty applications. The results they all deliver, however, remain more or less interchangeable. 
A bonus insight the project revealed the importance of creators’ own personalities (each was a different four Cs type) on the products and technology they created.