It is important for companies to accurately define their brand personalities so they resonate with the appropriate consumers. In this article, we will understand what is Brand Personality, its importance, and many more. Read till the end!
What is Brand Personality?
Brand personality is a set of emotional, cognitive, and behavioral traits that are exclusive to a brand and remain consistent over time. In other words, if your brand were a person, you would characterize it as having a personality.
Brands, like individuals, have distinguishing characteristics that originate from how they think and feel about the world. Both the design and message of a brand are influenced by its personality. The consistency and authenticity of these characteristics are what distinguish a strong brand from a poor one.
Importance of Brand Personality
The personality of a brand is an important part of its positioning and uniqueness. A strong brand personality humanizes a company, providing it depth and complexity and making it more relevant to customers.
It is with the Brand Personality that the customers identify and form relationships with. As a result, it plays a critical role in attracting new customers, creating brand loyalty, and establishing brand equity.
But why do you exactly need a Brand Personality?
To create differentiation - One of the most significant things in distinguishing your brand from the competition is its personality. The differentiation in your Brand Personality helps you promote your products and services in unique ways. The aim is to develop a personality that is true to your brand, holds up through time, and is relevant to your target customer.
Enhancing Brand Loyalty - Brand personality has proved to be a stronger driver of Brand Loyalty. This can be accrued to the increased competition in the marketplace where products and service quality is highly identical and hence a differentiated Brand personality helps enhancing your customer loyalty.
Creating Brand Awareness - Your brand experience will be both identifiable and memorable if it has a distinct brand personality. Identifiability and brand recall are the most important aspects of brand recognition. Potential new clients being aware of your brand through marketing and promotion isn't the only way to increase brand awareness. It's also about increasing customer awareness, so it moves from recognition to preference.
How to define your Brand Personality?
One of the most frequently used frameworks for identifying Brand Personality traits is through Aaker’s Brand Personality Dimension Framework.
All you need to do is to think of 3-5 personality traits that come to your mind when you think of your brand. Now, choose some specific qualities which you want to focus on and make sure that they fall under one of the above 5 brand personalities.
Choosing a specific personality dimension differentiates your brand from others and enhances its awareness among your consumers.
What should you avoid while building Brand Personality?
The following are some of the common mistakes which brands do while defining personality dimensions:
Misalignment with Brand Image, Identity, and Positioning - Many-a-times, Brand Marketers try to create Brand Personalities which is completely different from their other branding elements. However, inconsistency among your branding elements will create confusion among the minds of your consumers and they will fail to develop an emotional relationship with your brand.
Not doing enough Consumer research - You need to consider what your consumers think of your brand. If you want your product/service to connect with your customers, understand how they feel about you, and get into deep thinking to understand your Brand Personality. Set up focus groups, distribute surveys, or just interact with customers at events. Only then can you identify correct personality dimensions.
Not choosing the right audience - Well, maybe you’re doing your consumer research but you would still be getting the wrong results because they’re not the right audience set for you. You need to choose a perfect target market of your product/service in order to carry out research and arrive at results.
Not choosing the right communication tone or language - In today’s world, chaos is one of the most important reasons why brands fail. Don’t create chaos in your communication tone. Your communication tone must align with your brand personality and if it doesn’t, consumers wouldn’t relate with you.
Inconsistent messaging patterns - Stressing again- Avoid chaos! Your messages and communication channels should be consistent and be in right fit with your brand personality.
Examples of Brand Personalities
Apple (Sophistication)
Apple has a non-corporate, artistic, sophisticated, creative personality.
Red Bull (Excitement)
Red bull has an exciting, courageous, outgoing, and hyper-energetic brand personality.
Amazon (Sincerity & Competence)
Amazon has a reliable, competent, sincere, and caring personality.
Tesla (Excitement & Sophistication)
Tesla has an exciting, visionary, charismatic, courageous, spiritual personality.
Conclusion
Miracle happens when your branding- your brand voice, visual identity, and even your activities- all have a consistent personality. People begin to "get to know you" when you are consistent, which leads to their trusting and choosing you over others. You're not simply a faceless, generic firm delivering the same goods as a lot of other companies if you have a distinct personality.