Does your brand have personality?

If you have ever created a brand or owned a business, you have probably reviewed several rounds of logo designs, carefully selected a colour palette and decided on a corporate typeface. However, there is another important element to consider: your brand’s personality.

A clear personality helps determine how your brand looks, sounds and communicates with its audience. It also provides a foundation for effective brand management in Doncaster, helping businesses remain recognisable and consistent across every customer touchpoint.

WHAT IS A BRAND PERSONALITY?

People often find it easier to relate to personalities than to abstract businesses. Try imagining your brand as a person: how would it speak, what would it wear and what kind of first impression would it make?

Your brand personality is expressed through your tone of voice, visual style, messaging and behaviour. When these characteristics reflect the expectations and values of your audience, your business has a stronger opportunity to create an emotional connection.

Not convinced? Well, marketing scholar Tobias Langner led a research trio from Bergische University Wuppertal in Germany, investigating whether or not we relate to brands in the same way we do people. Research into consumer relationships suggests that people can form strong emotional connections with brands. A distinctive personality can help encourage that connection by making a business feel more familiar, relatable and memorable

• Yorkshire Tea uses friendly, familiar language and a distinctly Yorkshire sense of humour. Phrases such as “proper brews” help create an approachable personality that reflects the brand’s regional identity.

• Rolex presents a refined and sophisticated personality. Its crown symbol, premium product photography and carefully controlled communications reinforce its position as a luxury brand.

• Vans appeals to creative and independently minded audiences through its “Off the Wall” positioning and longstanding connections with skateboarding, music and youth culture

HOW DO I CREATE THE RIGHT BRAND PERSONALITY?

Start by considering your audience, including their needs, values and the type of communication they are likely to respond to. Your objective is not simply to give your brand a personality, but to create one that feels relevant to the people you want to reach.

Once you have defined these characteristics, decisions about your tone of voice, colours, imagery and wider communications should become easier to make and justify. Questions such as these can help:

• If my brand was a person, what would be their favourite colour?

• If my brand was a person, how would they say hello?

• If my brand was a person, would they prefer a traditional or modern look?

• What three words should customers use to describe my brand?

• What would my brand never say or do?

• How should its personality change across different situations?

HOW DO YOU MANAGE A BRAND PERSONALITY

Defining your personality is only the beginning. It must then be applied consistently across your website, social media, advertising, printed materials and customer communications.

Brand guidelines can document the tone of voice, visual style, key messages and behaviours that teams and external suppliers should follow. This helps prevent the brand from sounding confident in one place but overly formal, casual or inconsistent somewhere else.

Effective brand management also involves reviewing how the brand is being used as the business develops. New services, campaigns and communication channels may require different applications, but they should still feel as though they come from the same organisation!

GIVE YOUR BRAND A PERSONALITY PEOPLE WILL RECOGNISE

A well-defined brand personality can make your business more relatable, memorable and distinctive. However, its strength depends on how consistently it is expressed across every interaction with your audience.

If you need support with brand management, Doncaster-based Moirae can help you define, document and apply a personality that reflects your organisation and connects with the people you want to reach