E X P R E S S I N G T H E P RO M I S E 163 Sharp claims the brand is really about the Golden Rule. "We demon- strate our beliefs most meaningfully in the way we treat each other and by the example we set for one another. In all our interactions with our guests, customers, business associates, and colleagues, we seek to deal with others as we would have them deal with us." The Big Five Personality Traits If you're on a mission to create a more distinctive voice for your brand, don't spend time listing traits that will make it more popular. If you're thinking about launching a new brand, don't waste your time studying the types of personalities you'd like to emulate. Instead, look to your actions: What do you intend to do? Why does it matter? How will you deliver against your promise in real-world situations where a customer or someone on the out- side interacts with your brand? That's where the voice will emerge. The more you focus on the point of interaction, the more authentic and engaging the voice will be. For more than one hundred years, psychologists have attempted to de- construct human personalities. They've been on a hunt to identify universal traits--traits that are stable over time and distinctive enough to account for all the variations between us. In 1989, researchers Robert McCrae and Paul T. Costa, Jr., published a framework in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology that became the benchmark for all personality research that has followed. 9 McCrae and Costa found that every human personality could be reduced to five traits: · · · · · Neuroticism Extroversion Openness Agreeableness Conscientiousness American Management Association · www.amanet.org