The Importance of Defining Your Brand Personality
Ever since the days of trying to reverse engineer my answers to magazine quizzes to ensure I got ‘Option B: Jennifer Anniston', I've always loved a quiz. What can I say, it's a science, and you can't argue with science 🤷♀️.
I think it comes down to my fascination with identity. What curious combo of quirks makes you, you? And when it comes to branding, there's no doubt that the best brands are like people, layered and three-dimensional, with opinions and values, likes and dislikes and everything in between.
Through defining these character traits you're able to carve out a unique tone of voice, lay the basis for your visual identity and show up consistently and effectively across all your touchpoints, creating stronger and deeper connections with your target audience.
We created this quiz to help you start thinking about your brand personality and defining some of the characteristics and values that make up your brand. I hope you find it helpful!
benefits of having a clearly defined brand personality
👉 People connect with people (not brands)
By and large, customers aren’t interested in brands for the sake of them. What they are interested in, is how a brand can help them. What a brand can provide for its customers is generally two-fold, meeting audience needs on both the functional and emotional levels. Functionally they are providing a product or service, the most successful of which are filling a gap that the customer has in their lives. Emotionally, they are providing a sense of belonging through a set of values and a way of seeing the world. Through a clearly defined personality a customer can identify with a brand and engage much more deeply in the brand world.
By making your brand as much like a person as possible (in a non-creepy, ‘the robots are taking over’ way), you’ll be able to connect with your audience on a much deeper level. What does your brand believe at its core? How does it view the world? Why does it even exist? By being able to answer these questions, you’ll have a clearer sense of who your audience is and how you can reach them most effectively.
👉 it cuts through the competition
We live in an age of choice. Endless, boundless, crippling choice. When you go to the supermarket, you have to make decisions in every aisle about what product is most suitable, from the functional questions around budget and convenience, to the more lifestyle questions around identity. What does this product say about me? Does it align with my values? Not every brand on a shelf will appeal to every customer, so your brand needs to make it very clear who you are for.
👉 it forms the bedrock of your brand
A brand is made up of the visible and the invisible. The things you see, like a logo or colour palette, and the things you don’t, like values and attributes. And while it’s easy to fixate on what we can see, it’s really more important to focus on the more intangible elements of a brand because these are what create that all-important emotional connection with a customer.
A clear and strong brand personality allows you to establish a clear tone of voice. Think about the way your brand shows up in your copywriting. Are you playful or sincere? Calm or punchy? Aspirational or everyday? And how does this all translate to your visual identity? When there’s a clear and cohesive synergy between your tone of voice and visual identity, it signals to your customers that they’re in the right place. That they are your tribe. That they belong.
👉 it creates brand consistency and recognition
A strong understanding of your brand personality creates alignment between your visual identity and your tone of voice. When these are aligned you can show up consistently as a brand, whether that’s on your packaging or across your digital platforms. This leads to greater brand awareness and recognition as customers start to understand what you’re all about. When you’re unclear on your personality, that shows in your content. Which can be disorientating for your customers. How confusing would it be, if Brewdog started talking like Natwest bank on the back of their cans. Or if Glossier started posting on Instagram like it was Patagonia?
By showing up consistently across your brand touchpoints with clearly defined aesthetic and tone of voice, people will start to understand what you're all about and recognise you instantly
👉 it attracts superfans
With a clear personality you are signalling to your audience who you're for (and who you're not for..), making your customers understand they're in the right place and allowing you to connect deeper with them
👉 it makes your marketing a doddle
By defining who your brand is and isn't, your marketing gets a whooole lot easier. Gone are the days of second-guessing visuals and copy, and you’ll enter a new era where the content creation process is streamlined and strengthened by your firm understanding of your brand personality.