Defining Your Brand Personality Describing your brand personality using the perfect adjectives is essential. Therefore, it’s worthwhile to take some time to choose a handful of adjectives that describe your brand. I’m sharing some tips on doing a brand adjective exercise. Similarly, your brand’s personality shapes people’s opinion of your brand. Your brand’s personality is how your brand connects with your target audience and how they will perceive you. Developing a brand personality is essential to make sure you are attracting the right people.
- Determining your brand’s personality is also suuuuuper easy when you’ve got the right prompts. I’ve put together seven easy exercises you can complete in under 10 minutes to define the characteristics that make you recognizable to your ideal audience.
- In short, brand personality is the human, emotional characteristics of your business. Personality is a platform for relatable emotion. It’s the elusive force that forms an emotional bond with others and inspires you to drop your guard and trust them. With a brand, the process is largely the same as it is in one-on-one relationships.
- Your brand’s personality will eventually dictate visual designs, auditory cues like music, and online user experiences around a brand. For instance, a young-at-heart brand would use bright colors and snappy design with fun interactions at user touch points, Entrepreneur explained.
What is a brand personality? Each human is said to have a certain type of personality, the same applies to a brand when the brand is given such characteristics which can be defined as the personality of that brand. A brand personality is something that consumers can relate to and connect with the brand. The brand through its communication and tone tends to show its personality thus trying to appeal its audience.
Defining the Vision:
The Vision of a Brand lies at the intersection of ‘What Brands want to be’ and ‘What Audiences Seek’. It is first necessary to define the ‘Viable Business Idea’ that straddles both these areas.
From this ‘Viable Business Idea’ will emanate the ‘Tenable Brand Claim’, which becomes the foundation of the Brand Vision.
Once we have the Brand Vision defined, we need to validate the same into a Brand Proposition.
To correctly answer this question, we need to answer related questions like:
- Where is the brand in terms of the marketing landscape?
- Why is the brand in that position in the landscape (e.g. Legacy or incumbent issues)
- The most essential question that begs answering at this stage is ‘Who is the brand?’
- Where does the brand want to go given the challenges it has?
- How will I get there? – The road map of how the marketing strategy will deliver the set objectives
- Am I getting there? – The metrics of evaluation that will be applied as per the strategy to ensure that the outcomes can be calibrated and improved in the areas it falls short in.
Examples of Brand Personalities
In order to reach and target the right audience and convert them into being customers it extremely important to relate to the audience. It is quite common for a customer to purchase from a brand that is similar to a personality of their own.
- Excitement: carefree, spirited and youthful
- Sincerity: kindness, caring and an outlook towards family and society
- Ruggedness: adventurous, tough, outdoorsy, and athletic
- Competence: success, elegance, shown leadership
- Sophistication: elegant, prestigious and subtle
A company’s brand personality helps in creating an emotional connection with its desired segment with a view to get the audience to act upon that and in return benefit the firm. Hence, it is extremely important to hone the brand personality and stick to it in order to reach and relate to the audience in the best way possible.
Brand personality refers to the personification of any brand. It is basically a set of human characteristics or traits that are assigned or embedded within a brand. Brand personality is created when there are human-like traits such as caring, creative, trustworthy, unique, straightforward, rebel, dishonest, etc. are a part of the brand characteristics.
Brand personality is the way in which a brand behaves or communicates with its users. Human-like characteristics signify the brand behavior through the individuals who are representing the brand (e.g. employees) along with packaging, advertising, etc. When brand identity or brand image is expressed in the form of human-like characteristics, it is referred to as brand personality.
Brand Personality Traits by Jennifer Aaker
Branding has become a very popular concept nowadays and has led marketers to analyze and draft their marketing strategies on how they can build better brands. Traits list of brand personality as presented by Jennifer Aaker are as follows:
Brand Sincerity: This refers to how sincere the brand is? Honest, genuine, wholesome and cheerful are some traits that come to mind when associating characteristics with this dimension. There are several marketing outlets available for a brand ranging from traditional methods to social media platform, people are still more skeptical when the question is of the sincerity level of the brand.
Brand Excitement.The first word that comes to your mind when you are going to Universal Studios or Disney Worlds is ‘excitement’. Brands which are spirited, imaginative and daring tend to develop a level of excitement in customers and hence are categorized as brand excitement traits.
How To Define Your Brand Personality
Brand Competence.The attributes of this brand personality include expertise, success, reliability and intelligence. The concept of Six Sigma and Kaizen where developed in the manufacturing concerns because the units were willing to become competent. There are several factors which create race amongst products and competence and production are one of them.
Brand Sophisticated. Common attributes associated with this brand personality trait includes elegant, poised, charming and refined. Armani, Versace and Tiffany are some brands which are categorized as ultra-premium and sophisticated. This is perhaps the toughest personality traits that can be included in any brand. The basic is that the brand ideology needs to be reinforced on a regular basis so as to make it sophisticated.
Brand Ruggedness: Brand ruggedness is known because of the toughness, strong personality and outdoor nature that comes along with it. A good example of brand ruggedness is Woodland shoes which are based upon toughness.
Brand Personality Examples
Here are some examples of brand personality
Brand Personality of Starbucks
How To Define Your Brand Personality
Starbucks has a sophisticated personality trait. You might have come across several people who advertise on social media that they are going to Starbucks as a symbol of maturity and sophistication. There are several kids who visit Starbucks and they all buy Starbucks juice. Does this mean that Starbucks sells the best juice? Or it is simply because they develop a more mature feeling when engaging with the popular coffee brand?
Nike Brand Personality
The brand personality of Nike is ruggedness. Branding strategies of Nike are that it is a leader in athletic apparel and shoes and they pride themselves in being the best athletic gear. The nature of their product is tough and outdoorsy and endorses successful products in nearly every sport. When you visit any sporting event, you can see many athletes sporting with Nike gear. This brand creates a personality which is tough and successful.
Brand Personality of Apple
The Apple shows sincerity as it is all about simplicity and removing complexities from the lives of people, people-driven product design and being a humanistic company, which has a deep connection with its customers.
Harley Davidson Brand Personality
Harley Davidson personality is ruggedness and rebel. Promotional campaigns initiated by the company which named motorcycles as mean and tough machines. Its logo and the use of dynamic and bright colors helped Harley Davidson build its brand personality.
Brand Personality of Volvo
The personality of Volvo is sincerity. The emotional positioning of the auto manufacturer is firmly connected with competence. Volvo is all about performance, design, safety and the overall environment. These characteristics are very important for a Volvo consumer who is well aware that all these elements are considered thoroughly in the designing process.
Caterpillar Brand Personality
The brand personality of Caterpillar is ruggedness. The nature of the brand is that it is used for tough and outdoor works which automatically builds its personality.