Like a wave on the ocean: the fluid personality of the movimento brand

This article examines an increasingly common practice of companies, the effort to establish strong ties between their brands and consumers. In this examination we apply the ideas of brand personality developed by Aaker (1997), according to which the attribution of human characteristics to brands is fundamental. From this perspective, we seek to understand the ontic condition of brands, through investigation of Movimento, a leading Brazilian beachwear brand, to discover “who” Movimento is based on the characteristics that constitute its personality in the vision consumers. The investigation is an exploratory qualitative study, based on in-depth interviews scrutinized through functional discourse analysis. The results indicate fourteen categories, with two component profiles of the ontic characteristics of the brand. These findings suggest the existence of theoretical implications about the relationship between brands and consumers, as well as providing insights into brand positioning strategy.