When researchers from the Michigan and Harvard did fMRI imaging tests on subjects to see how they would respond to branding suggestions that would apply positive personality traits to things like hamburgers and airlines, they didn’t. People only responded to personality traits assigned to people. “Advertisers should keep in mind that when they use personality terms for a product—reliable, trustworthy, cheerful—consumers are not associating those purely human qualities to the products in question.” So, what to do? “It could be that associating an actual person with a brand is the only way to get those human characteristics to stick.”  Via Seed Magazine, AdPulp, and Consumerist.