How To Build Your Brand’s Personality

Every brand has a brand personality, good or bad, find out how to build a brand personality that your customers will love in this post.

Photo by Jarritos Mexican Soda on Unsplash

Whether you’re an established business or just starting, creating a brand your customers will love is pivotal to success. 

When making a purchase, customers often rely on emotions such as comfort or trust just as much as logic. A powerful brand personality will help you stand out amongst competitors and build long-lasting, emotional connections with your customers to keep them coming back.

This post will teach you everything about brand personality, why it’s so important, and how to create your own. 

Understanding brand personality

Brand personality is all about how you present yourself to the world. For example, your brand can be perceived as friendly, nurturing, serious, or professional depending on how you communicate this to your customers. Humans are naturally driven by emotion, especially when making a purchase.

Selling your product or service isn’t challenging, but a compelling brand personality will help you stand out amongst the competition. As humans, we are naturally drawn to people with likeable traits – the same applies to brand personality. 

Apple’s success story is an excellent example of this. Year after year, returning customers queue for hours outside stores to get their hands on the latest iPhone. Why? Because the brand’s iconic branding strategy has always relied on emotion by providing customers with a forward-thinking creative vision. Apple’s brand personality is about liberation, hopes, dreams, innovation, and imagination; it gives its customers power through aesthetic technology that creates long-lasting brand affinity.

People who share the same values as a brand tend to repeat purchases and recommend them to others. As a result, the buying journey becomes highly influenced by an emotional bond rather than a simple ‘want’. That’s why many people will buy a new, updated iPhone from Apple every year a new handset is released. It’s not because they need a new phone; they feel emotionally connected to the brand and want to continue to evolve with them.

Brand personality and brand identity

Now that we’ve explained a little more about brand personality let’s discuss how this differentiates from brand identity.

Brand identity is the face of your company or product – it conveys your company’s vision, mission, and values. It’s something that your customers know you represent. Your logo, brand colours, and imagery are crucial when discussing brand identity.

On the other hand, brand personality communicates the human characteristics associated with your brand. It’s everything that your brand lives to be through the feelings, qualities, and emotions you attribute to it.

Have a clear view on who you are

Knowing who you are as a company is essential. One way brands narrow down their brand personality is by pinpointing their personality dimensions, a framework devised by social psychologist Jennifer Aaker. This framework falls under five categories:

• Ruggedness: Rugged brands are deemed “outdoorsy” and “resilient”, for example, brands like Harley-Davidson and Jeep.
• Sincerity: These brands tend to be highly ethical and are positive in their messaging. TALA and Organic Basics are great examples of this.
• Excitement: Brands that sit within this category tend to be bold, creative, and innovative – think Red Bull and Tesla. 
• Competence: These brands are considered competent and intelligent. Excellent examples are Microsoft and Volvo.
• Sophistication: These brands are perceived as premium and depict an element of luxury – both Apple and Bulgari are known for this.

Identify your core values

The next stage is identifying your core values. Values shape who we are both as people and as businesses – it’s how we communicate. The first step is to outline the core values of the business. Find out what is important and what acts as the driving force behind your business, products, or services. Once you have identified these, you will need a mission statement. The mission statement should state the purpose of the business and how it will serve your customers. It will be the bedrock of your brand’s personality. 

Below are some examples of mission statements from some well-recognised brands:

• Tesla: “To accelerate the world’s transition to sustainable energy.”

• Amazon: “To be Earth’s most customer-centric company, where customers can find and discover anything they might want to buy online, and endeavours to offer its customers the lowest possible prices.”

• TED: “Spread ideas.”

• LinkedIn: “To connect the world’s professionals to make them more productive and successful.”

Choose your audience

Your target audience should reflect who your brand represents. The more you understand your audience, the easier it will be to connect with them and resolve their pain points. You can undertake market research to pinpoint your ideal customers in the first instance. Then use this research to create buyer personas, the people you want to reach and connect with.

These buyer personas can include demographics (age, income level, gender, and marital status), values, interests, and hobbies. Consider points such as what does your customer want or need? What solutions can you offer? Many brands across various industries will undertake this research from retailers, healthcare, and even manufacturing. Take an Irish online casino, for example – the casino in question will need to define its target audience before deciding what slots to put on offer. They may consider factors such as their target audience’s budget, how they choose to play (desktop or mobile), and their location. All of these factors will influence who your ideal customer is.

Decide how you will communicate

It’s also important to factor in which channels of communication you will use to communicate your brand’s personality and the tone you will use. Studies have shown that over 57% of consumers will purchase from brands with strong personalities. Meanwhile, 55% unfollow a brand because of how they speak online.

For example, your brand personality will be seen as more friendly and approachable depending on how you respond to customers who comment on your post; in this case in a casual and playful manner. ALDI is a great example of this, particularly on Twitter. The retailer regularly connects with its customers by utilising trending events to make a splash or gaining more engagement by creating funny content that regularly involves other brands. 

Gymshark’s brand personality on social media is also equally as strong. The brand regularly uses ‘memes’ on Twitter and Instagram to help them stay fresh and relevant, whilst encouraging their community to engage with them. This immediately demonstrates their positive, fun, and outgoing personality as a brand that thrives on inclusiveness.

Conclusion

As you can see, having a strong brand personality is important from the very moment you launch your brand. A strong brand personality can increase your brand affinity and build customer trust. It also helps you stand out above the rest and humanises your brand.

Remember to incorporate your brand personality into every aspect of your business – from your visual identity to your brand message.