Brands are like people.

We like them when they’re attractive and approachable; we stay away from them when they are dodgy or don’t seem genuine.

To create a strong business brand, you need to know who you are (as a business) and, most importantly, how to communicate that effectively.

Identifying and defining your brand personality is one of the keys to building relationships with your audience. Cultivating and harnessing your brand personality can be a key factor in your success.

The goal of developing and expressing a brand personality is to make your brand more relatable, more likable and ultimately more human.

 

What is Brand Personality?

Brand personality is a set of emotional and associative characteristics or traits connected to your business – the essence of who you are. These things shape how people feel about and interact with you. Your brand’s personality needs to mirror or resonate with that of the target customer.

You can use these core traits to describe your brand. Are you sophisticated and elegant? Fun and playful? Kind and approachable? Defining and sticking with these traits is key to build a strong visual and verbal identity that communicates who you are across your website, social media etc.

Bringing your brand personality to life is one of the most important aspects of branding, because it allows your customers to remember who you are and form positive relationships with your brand.

Think about it: The most memorable people are usually those whose personalities stand out, and your business brand is no exception to this rule.

 

What do you need to find your Brand Personality?

Before you dive in, it is important to know that your Brand Personality is an extension of your Internal Brand:

• Your Purpose (The belief of your brand)
• Your Vision (The ambition of your brand)
• Your Mission (The commitments of your brand)
• Your Values (The behaviour of your brand).

Your Internal Brand should be the driver of your entire brand strategy and communication and should dictate how it behaves and where it’s going. Without an intimate understanding of the above core foundation principles, it will difficult to articulate your brand personality effectively.

 

What makes a brand personality successful

The goals of brand personality remain consistent for everyone. Looking at branding as a whole, you want your brand personality to satisfy these five areas:

• Authenticity — Your brand personality should always reflect your business goals and company culture.
• Memorability — Especially important for new brands, you need to stand out to be remembered.
• Value — The “substance” of your business: what value do you provide for customers that they can’t get elsewhere?
• Trustability— Just like a real person, if your brand lies about who it is people will stop listening.
• Authority — Customers expect the brands they do business with to be experts in their field.

 

Types of Brand Personalities

Most brand personalities can fit into five broad industry-standard categories – each has its own personality traits and strengths:

• Excitement
  Daring, intriguing, imaginative, up-to-date
• Sincerity
  Wholesome, genuine, honest, warm
• Competence
  Reliable, successful, intelligent.
• Ruggedness
  Thick-skinned, outdoorsy, tough.
• Sophistication
  Charming, refined, high-class.

The above framework gives you a solid foundation and will outline the gross human personality characteristics.

But it doesn’t become human until it develops attitudes, ideas, opinions, and behaviors of its own – so more detail is needed.

 

Creating your Brand Personality

You basically have to ask yourself: Who would my customers love to hang out with? Here are five steps that help refine the process.

Step 1: Cater to your target customers

The top priority in your brand personality is meeting your target customer’s preferences, it’s far more important than your own preferences. Lok at the business from a customer perspective.

Step 2: Make a list of adjectives to describe your ideal brand personality
Describe your brand in one word – then do it again. And again. And again. Fill up a page with adjectives that paint a picture of your brand, and pick the three descriptions that fit the best with who your brand is.

Just remember to keep your target customers in mind, specifically their preferences and expectations. Again. The words on this list should appeal to them more than you.

Step 3: Consider the competition.
As important as it is for your brand personality to reflect your brand message, you also want to stand out next to competitors. If all of your competition exudes sincerity, for example, maybe you’ll want to take a different path and focus on sophistication. This is a good way to uniquely position yourself in the market and differentiate your brand from others.

Step 4: If your brand were a person…
What kind of person embodies the above adjectives?

visualise your brand as a living, breathing human to create a brand persona. If you can’t decide what direction to take your brand personality, try to imagine that your ideal brand is a real person and you’re meeting them at a party for the first time. How does your brand greet you? What does your brand wear? How does your brand act? What does your brand talk about?

Step 5: Be consistent.
As soon as you’ve understood what your unique brand personality is, commit to it.

Remaining consistent, especially in times of change or crisis, is crucial to remaining trustworthy and increasing both brand awareness and brand equity.

The way your brand behaves from here on out should be in line with the traits that define it – if you’re honest and down-to-earth, spread humble sincerity across your campaigns; if you’re serious and daring, don’t make practical jokes your thing.

Markets change. if something isn’t resonating with your audience, don’t worry about tweaking your personality to align with what they want.