Defining a personality for your brand
When you are trying to make your brand stand out in sea of millions of other brands, there is one thing that will help you form a deep connection with your audience. Your brand personality! Who doesn't love girl with an amazing personality, the cool guy at the bar that everyone just wants to hang around. Whether you're looking to give you're business the edge in it's communications or you're struggling to identify your personal brand, this article is for you.
In this article, we're going to cover what a brand personality is, the importance of authenticity, and finally, how to define your brand personality.
What is brand personality?
Your brand personality is a set of human traits you infuse into your brand to make your brand more relatable and to connect with people!
For a moment, think of your brand as a person. Ask yourself these questions:
- If it were a person, how would it look?
- How does it interact with others? Is it confident, funny, or maybe it's rebellious?
- What does it say, how does it say it?
- How does it make people feel?
- What kind of person would my target audience relate to?
Do you have the answers? If not, read on and participate in a simple exercise that will provide you with a structure to begin solving these questions.
Standing out from the crowd
Being unique and original is essential when establishing a brand, as it differentiates yourself from the competitors in your niche. So how exactly can you make your brand original? Well, for an entrepreneur, being yourself is a great start. Engaging with your customers on a personal level, and letting them get to know you is a great way to start earning trust, and build loyalty. Sounds pretty good, right?
As for a team, a personality becomes harder to define. But it's not impossible. In fact, with the right approach, it's simple. It requires decision-makers and stakeholders to be in alignment with how the business needs to look, sound, and feel. The teams must be trained and aware of the company's personality to engage with customers accurately and consistently.
Don't copy
It should go without saying, do not copy other brands. By copying, you are not giving your customers any differentiation between you and the other company. Oh sure, you're checking out your competition and you see some copy they are using, it looks great. You ask yourself if it works for them, it can work for me, right? Wrong. By doing so you are jeopardising both your brand's authenticity and the competitors. Discover an image and voice that is your own. It's easier said than done, I know but after this exercise you should have a pretty clear idea of what your brand's personality is. Let's get stuck in.
Defining your personality
The following tested and proven exercise is an easy and fun way to discover your brand personality. I'd like to thank Finien and The Futur for this brilliant technique as it's a combination of a great short blog post and my time spent learning at The Futur. So, without further ado, grab a pen and paper. Do this exercise with a group of friends, family, or your team. Include anybody that plays an essential role in the decision-making process.
Make a list of as many qualities that describe your company. To help you, I have included a cheat sheet with various adjectives you can use to brainstorm ideas.
The next step is to discover what set of brand archetypes best suits your personality. To do this, you need to do the following:
- Compile all of your characteristics from everyone who participated in the exercise.
- Begin to associate them with the archetypes shown in the diagram below. I have included some example keywords, which should give you an idea of where to place your characteristics.
- Shortlist the archetypes with the most keywords.
By the end of this exercise, you should see that your characteristics have been associated with three personality archetypes or less. Moving forward, these are the three personality traits that you should use to structure all of your verbal and visual communications.
Following this essential exercise can:
- Assist in defining your company name.
- Direct the design approach of your brand identity
- Help with producing a consistent message for your brand.
Need help defining your brand personality? I can help with that.
