Brand itself has a personality. I would think that's the purpose of a brand. However, every human being working for that brand has their own different personality. And to mould that personality to be the same as the brand's personality, I would say it is totally impossible! And if there are a few people handling the same account (e.g. Twitter) for the brand, we will never be able to feel the same tonality of the words to the world out there! Where does the problem actually lie? 
The problem Social media speaks about being personal. It's about a person who is alive in front of you. Brand can be a "person" too if they have structured out a proper Brand Personality Guideline for the social media! But again, a brand in the social media will need to communicate consistently, whereas in the traditional media, the brand will only need to appear within an event, within a radio's airtime, within a newspaper coverage, within a television coverage and many other types of traditional media where the communication is only done in one way! It will be very hard for a brand to create that same personality throughout the years to come... That's because if this particular employee has worked for a long time with the company, the personality comes from that employee and not from the company as a whole! Any communication that comes from the company as a whole will be too slow to react with the social media because there will be too many real time commenting in blogs, forums, facebook, twitter, youtube and so on... In social media, common spelling errors are ok because we appreciate real-time more than your missing "a" alphabet in your marketing communication. One of the many solutions I can think of The best solution is to come out and represent yourself as the employee of the company! Stop hiding behind that brand of yours! It is not going to be beneficial to the company, nor to you as well. Why is it beneficial to the company? Many employees have made it clear that any opinions that come from them are of theirs and not a representation for their companies. This is obviously true because they are stepping out to be "one of us" in the community! We will understand clearly that if there is any misrepresentation from that employee, we will want to pinpoint to the employee only (in most cases I think). Why is it beneficial to the employee? This is what I called "brand leverage". Because this brand has spent a lot of money on the traditional media in the past, they have built an awareness of their brand already. Many people will know this brand once they hear it. And when they know that this particular employee is associated with the brand, they will want to get to know this employee even more! It makes the employee more "marketable" in one way or another... But again, it is really up to the employee to make sense out of his opinions in the social media world because he will be exposed to the world out there in various sites such as LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Friendfeed and so on... I will want to follow him wherever he goes! One good example is Matt Cutts from Google. But is this really possible? Can you really come out from the brand and expose your identity? While it is not a good idea to hide behind the brand in the social media, there are many other factors that the company has to consider beforehand. - Some company cultures are really conservative. They have a very strong "security" team behind the company which don't allow access to social media as far as they are concerned. It is kind of a give-and-take thing.. Well in fact, this company may not even be able to participate in the social media!
- It is die or never kind of decision. Because big companies may have never done such a thing to expose their employees as part of their "marketing tools" in the social media, they will definitely consider twice before they decide to expose their blogger's identity.
- Nobody has really got that kind of experience to blog/twitter/socialise for the company in the social media. Well if they do, they are most likely have certain background (like myself?) which they enjoy socialising in the social media as part of their hobby after work. If they don't have such an employee, they can only rely on agencies to help them with such campaigns which can be a huge expense and may never last in the long term.
Conclusion Given the kind of working environment that we have, it is really a management decision if they wish to employ such a method of exposing their employees with their brands in the social media world. Anyway, a lot of them (myself included) have exposed their employers' brand through their various social media profiles. When a brand is setting out an online campaign, it seems to me that not many are very willing to expose their employees' identities when they blog. And if they do, it is usually from the management themselves. Sometimes, a blog by an engineer can be really interesting! For those of you who are here by chance or you have subscribed to my feed, do you think it is a good idea for people to expose their identities if they are the authors of the brand campaign? Photo credit: phantom kitty | 
