Brand personality is a powerful part of your brand and something that needs careful thought. People connect with personalities, and different personality traits can be more or less appealing depending on the people you like and connect with. It’s the same with brands. People can’t help associate human personality traits with brands, whether they like a brand or have no connection at all. Like humans every brand has a different personality, and brand personality will be viewed differently by different people.
Take Dyson as an example. Brand personalities you might associate with it could be:
- Clever
- Forward thinking
- Creative
- Meticulous
- Innovative British inventor
Yo9ur competitors will have their own brand personality and you’ll need to ensure yours is different. It’s true too that sectors will have types of brand personality that many brands in the sector will gravitate towards. Some though will break the mould to stand-out – think Virgin Money and First Direct in the banking sector.
People buy products from brands they connect with, and the process of connection is done on a few levels:
- Does the product functionality fulfil the need?
- Is it the right price?
- Does it have the right image and personality?
People are still influenced even when they claim brand is not important to them, and don’t care if it’s not trendy or the one to have. Take Skoda cars, once joked about in the long distant past, but now making cars that win awards. Skoda are creating a brand personality that is thriving: solid, dependable machines that are just as good as their rivals but with smaller price tags. Personality is no less important in this case as people like the thrifty, dependable and mechanically savvy personality that Skoda promote. They’ve also made the cars (brand) a lot ‘cooler’. Bingo. More customers.
Setting a brand personality helps shape your brand: the behaviour of your people, the look and feel of your promotional work, product development and the whole brand experience. It’s easy to say, but thinking about what your personality is needs careful thought. It also needs to be truthful, so how you behave matches up to the brand experience. In having a personality though you’ll at least have something to judge decisions, your promotional work and even your people by.
