Published by Simon Brooks on 21st March 2024 | Marketing Management, Marketing Strategy

What’s Your Brand Personality

Brand Personality

Key Takeaways

In this article we offer a comprehensive guide to defining your brand’s personality using six key questions which guide readers through identifying and embodying their brand’s unique persona.

If you are embarking on a branding or rebranding exercise, it will cover:

  • An essential guide to brand personality: how to define and project your brand’s unique traits and values
  • Differentiation and connection: the importance of a distinct personality in standing out and connecting with stakeholders
  • Six key questions: a structured approach to discovering your brand’s human-like qualities and core values
  • Stakeholder appeal: tailoring your brand personality to attract and retain customers, employees and partners
  • Unique identity: aligning your brand’s persona with its unique selling proposition to stand out from competitors.
  • Building emotional connections: creating a memorable brand that resonates on a deeper level with its audience.

If you’re intending to go through any kind of branding (or rebranding) exercise, for your business or organisation, one question you’re bound to be asked is about your brand personality.

A critical part of a cohesive brand strategy, your brand personality is, in effect, a human-like set of traits and characteristics including factors, such as corporate values, that define how your business or organisations appears to others.

Knowing and projecting your brand personality can help in differentiating your business from competitors but also in appealing to and connecting with potential and existing clients, employees, partners and suppliers, on a more personal level.

But how do you define the personality of your brand? How should you embody it?

To help you get started on your brand discovery journey, here are six questions you can ask of yourself and your stakeholders to guide you through uncovering the heart and soul of your brand’s persona.

1. If Your Brand Were a Person, How Would You Describe Its Personality to a Friend?

Imagine your brand as a person. Would you describe it as adventurous and daring, or reliable and comforting? Perhaps it’s witty and irreverent, or sincere and nurturing.

This question forces you to distill your brand into relatable, human-like qualities, providing a clear starting point for defining your brand personality.

2. What Values and Beliefs Sit at the Core of Your Brand?

The values and beliefs of your business and organisation sit at the heart of your brand, and are like a compass that guides everything from how you make decisions to how you communicate and interact with your audience.

By identifying what your brand stands for, you can align its personality with these core principles. Are you about innovation and pushing boundaries, or more about tradition and reliability? Understanding this can help solidify the traits your brand embodies.

3. How Do You Want Your Customers to Feel When They Interact With Your Brand?

Emotions play a significant role in consumer behaviour.

Identifying the emotions you want to evoke in your customers can help shape your brand personality. Do you want customers to feel inspired and energised, or comforted and reassured?

Each emotion can be associated with different personality traits, helping to refine your brand’s character further.

4. What Kind of Relationship Do You Want to Build With Your Audience?

Your audience is made up of your customers, but don’t forget that your brand must relate to your employees, partners, suppliers and shareholders as well.

Do you want your brand to be seen as a trusted advisor, a motivational coach, a dependable friend, or perhaps an innovative leader?

Will all your stakeholders buy into this? The type of relationship your brand seeks to establish with its audience can greatly influence its personality and will help you to define the tone of voice, manner and channels you use to communicate with them.

5. Who Is Your Ideal Customer, and What Personalities Do They Gravitate Towards?

Understanding what motivates your target customer base is key because not doing so will have the effect of turning them off your brand.

What kind of personalities and characteristics are your ideal customers going to be drawn to? Do they want to buy from or work with a brand that is professional and authoritative, or do they identify more with casual and relatable?

Tailoring your brand personality to appeal to the preferences of your target audience is vital, because it will foster connection and loyalty.

6. What Makes Your Brand Different From Competitors?

Lastly, think about how your unique selling proposition (USP) reflects on your brand personality.

What do you offer that no one else does? How can this uniqueness be expressed through personality traits?

Distinguishing your brand from competitors not only involves what describing what you offer but also how and in what tone of voice you describe it through your brand’s personality.

Last Word on Brand Personality

Defining your brand personality is an essential step in building a brand that is strong, relatable and memorable for all your stakeholders, be they customers and potential customers, employees and potential employees, partners, suppliers and shareholders.

The six questions outlined above can be a starting point for you in discovering what makes your brand unique and how to communicate its personality effectively.

If you’d like to a little help in building a brand persona with the potential to build a deeper, more emotional connection with your customers, speak to our brand experts at C4B Media.

We’ll help you understand and – if necessary – define your brand personality and brand identity, so you can unlock its full potential.

About the Author: Simon Brooks

Simon has over 30 years’ experience in all aspects of strategic and digital marketing. He is a director and joint founder of C4B Media and has led numerous successful marketing projects for clients across diverse industries.

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