Establishing Your Brand Personality
Brand personality is a company’s human characteristics that help relate to consumers. Brand personality can provoke positive emotional response from specific audiences, resulting in an increased brand equity and defining the brand attitude in the marketplace. Keep in mind, brand personality is not the company’s imagery like the logo, but an emotional association within the consumer’s mind. People are more likely to identify a brand personality that is similar their own. According to Investopedia, there are five key types of brand personality: sincerity, excitement, ruggedness, competence and sophistication.
Importance of Brand Personality
Brand personality resonates with people’s interests and values.
It develops a sense of trust between the consumer and the brand. If consumers align with an organization’s brand identity, they’ll feel more loyal towards the company by buying into the culture of the brand. A brand that has a unique personality behind it will instill trust and be remembered better by audience members.
Examples
Dove’s brand personality is sincerity. The company gears its commercials and self-esteem projects toward promoting beauty as confidence in body image. Dove targets women’s maternal emotions through campaigns promoting baby products, developing a positive emotion to increase female customer loyalty.
On the other hand, Bass Pro Shop has a brand personality of ruggedness mixed with sophistication. The company’s brand is specialized in outdoor apparel, hunting, fishing, and more, but with high-end products that gears their personality to a more upper-class audience.
How to Define Your Brand Personality
When developing your brand personality, use human personality traits to describe your company. Ask yourself, if your brand was a person, how would you describe them? After creating a list of traits, group words associated with each other into one personality archetype such as rebel, joker, leader, mother, dreamer, etc. The three personality archetypes with the most keywords are the traits your brand should use to develop its personality through visual and verbal communications.
Finalizing Your Brand Personality
“TO FINISH OFF DEVELOPING YOUR BRAND PERSONALITY, IDENTIFY WHO YOUR AUDIENCE IS, THEN TRY TO MIRROR THAT AUDIENCE IN YOUR BRAND. “
It is important to resonate your brand with the correct consumer. After deciding with your team on a personality type for your brand, test the market. See how customers react to the brand’s personality. The market doesn’t always share the same perception and perspectives as your team. You want an emotional connection with your buyers and your brand personality is a tool to differentiate you from competition. Brand personality is all about connecting with your prospects and strengthening your brand to achieve growth for your business.