By As we evolve further into the digital age, I am even more convinced than ever that people (in their human form) need to come out from hiding behind brand names/logos.
Before I transitioned into mainly working with subject matter experts, I worked with company brands and this was one of my biggest challenges to get over:
How do you speak to other humans…as an inanimate logo/identity?
The answer is that you don’t – unless you can wear a personality and behave like a person. Now, for personal brands that’s fairly easy to do (she says), however, company/business brands find it trickier.
Why is having a Brand Personality beneficial?
There are quite a few benefits actually. Here are just some:
- You will stand out in a noisy world so your dream clients find you faster
- The more human your brand is, the more you will be emotively connecting with your dream customers/clients (with very little extra effort)
- People buy people, so human-focussed communication and marketing is the only way forward to future-proof your brand
By identifying your personality – we are moving you away from features and benefits focussed marketing / communications and into more subliminal messaging that really ignites interest on a different level altogether.
Humans (and brands) all have underlying beliefs, values and core principles that guide them and pull them in the direction of their purpose (or “why”). However, for outsiders, what they “see” and “experience” of you and your brand is your personality.
How do you work out what your personality is?
This is really interesting and exciting work to do. And you can have a little fun with it. I like to use the framework of brand archetypes (first put together by Carol Pearson and Margaret Marks).
While I use the brand archetypes to lead the way in terms of your brand’s character, I flexibly use them to help you work out where the personality traits are presenting themselves in your business. It’s great fun, I love this work.
All strategists will work differently. Below I’ll share what I normally do in my personality work here for you in case its helpful for you.
(If you’re interested, my top three active archetypes are the Magician, Creator and Ruler. Those three play out in different parts of who I am, how I do things and also how I express myself in my personal brand. I bulked at it at first, but the psychology behind it actually made sense.)
In my brand personality work, I do the following:
#1 Identify your brand archetypes
We use a tool that will profile your active archetypes, and which other ones have some influence over who you are, and what you do. While we do this exercise on you, as the entrepreneur behind the brand, we can easily reflect the archetypes back into your brand, your products and even your dream customers/clients.
The archetype framework then gives you a lens through which to focus your thinking, actions and behaviour.
#2 Define your brand’s tone of voice
This will give you a guide to your use of words, visuals and tone of communications.
#3 Design your brand experience
By understanding your brand personality – what makes you tick and how you bring joy to your customers/clients – we then build this into your brand experience. Your personality helps to inform the way you achieve this, and sometimes, it even gives you loads of ideas of what kinds of activities you can create for your dream customers/clients.
I believe that there is a Loyalty v Meaning v Activity correlation in your customer journey.
If you have the time to, it’s a really handy exercise to plot your customer journey on a graph with time on your X axis and the stages of your journey on the Y axis. Then, look at mapping these points on the graph:
- where (currently) do your levels of loyalty sit with your customers/clients (at each stage of the journey);
- what activities mean the most to your customers/clients (and at which point of the journey); and
- what activities you do…and when.
Once you can see that visually in front of you – it gives you the focus to get down to the nitty gritty of designing the brand experience matrix which will give your dream customers/clients the experience you want them to have. (Then you DO IT).
It is incredibly freeing to get to know your brand’s personality and get comfortable with it. I would say: it even infuses energy into everything you do. You finally feel like you have the ‘outfit on’ to suit the party you are going to.
Want to work on your Brand Strategy and identify your Brand Personality? Have a look at our Brand Strategy session page, and book a Discovery call with me when you’re ready.
