An authentic brand personality amplifies your brand in the marketplace and helps you build meaningful relationships with your target audience.
A brand is far more than a logo or typeface. It’s an entire language. But who’s speaking this language? Brand personality gives your brand language its distinctive character that helps you connect with your audience.
Brand archetypes can help brands find and exercise their personalities, but I think that you need to look beyond archetypes to find your truly unique brand voice.
To give your brand a personality that appears authentic, think about your own character and the aspects of yourself that have gone into the business you’ve built.
Brands send us messages. These messages will only resonate with us if we relate to them. What, then, makes a brand’s message relatable?
When a brand talks to us on a personal level, this makes a connection. Therefore, if a brand makes itself seem human, this allows it to engage more effectively with its target audience.
Brands have personalities. Brand personality increases brand equity – the commercial value that comes from how customers perceive it.
Where does this brand personality come from?
In an individual, their personality is what makes them who they are. It gives them their distinctive character.
Brands want to have this quality too. Not only can it help them to stand out in the marketplace, but also it helps them gain the trust of their customers.
You can see this personality in how a brand looks and behaves, in its design and messaging.
A good example is your local supermarket. Supermarket chains operate in an extremely competitive environment. A large part of this competitiveness comes down to pricing. But supermarkets also work hard to earn their customers’ trust.
This is especially true of those supermarket brands that aren’t at the cheapest end of the spectrum. They know that there is a kind of tribal loyalty at play. For many people, where they choose to shop helps define them.
The same is true of clothing retailers, even where there are different brands under the same company umbrella.
The H&M group includes COS, Monki and H&M among various separate brands. Each of these stores is distinctive in its messaging. They each have their individual brand personalities.
Brand personality isn’t simply about imagery. It’s the whole tone of communication and how a brand establishes a character that runs consistently throughout everything it does.
Brand loyalty is a highly prized quality for brands looking to build long-term relationships with their customers.
Not all brands focus on this loyal customer segment. But for those that do, they can create strong, lasting relationships that ensure returning customers and enable word-of-mouth marketing success.
Brand personality is a vital factor in achieving brand loyalty. It enables a brand to appear consistent in its communications and relatable to its audience. Even when launching new products or services.
Repeat business generates greater value than new business. The customers who keep coming back tend to spend more and are more likely to be willing to try new products or services.
To keep these customers coming back, a brand must gain and keep their trust.
The way to do this is with meaningful relationships. Brand personality is an excellent relationship builder.
This is the critical question. A branding agency could answer it by directing you towards brand archetypes.
Archetypes are personas based on human values and desires. But to get to grips with them, you must look beyond marketing.
Carl Jung believed that the collective unconscious created archetypes. These models of characteristics and behaviours are universal and they contribute to how we experience things in the world.
According to Jung, archetypes are mythical characters that reside in all of us, influencing our motivations, values and personalities. Multiple archetypes exist, but as individuals, we tend to come under the influence of one dominant type.
There are four main Jungian archetypes:
These four can combine and intermingle, creating a further 12 archetypal figures:
Brand archetypes are based on these 12 figures. They are designed to help give a brand clarity about its personality and to simplify the process by which a brand assumes and amplifies specific human character traits.
The archetypal figures each represent certain desires. For example, the caregiver wants to provide a service to others; the hero wants to meet and overcome challenges; the creator wants to innovate.
The idea is, that by adopting one of these figures as the basis for your brand personality, you can maintain consistency in your messaging and how you appear to your customers and prospects.
Having a brand archetype should help you develop an authentically human voice for your brand that builds trust with your customers.
But is this enough? Consider your industry and what your competitors are doing. What if the type of work you do strongly aligns with an archetype the same as your competitors? How much room for manoeuvre do you have?
I think this is where your personal brand can add something truly unique to your brand personality.
If you’re a founder or business owner, there’s going to be a lot of yourself in your business – your values, drive and emotion.
Think about where these overlap with the personality of your commercial brand and how they can amplify it.
I’m not suggesting your name and personality become your commercial brand. But you can use elements of your own character to add personal detail and a fresh perspective to your branding messages.
This them appear authentic.
You can create and develop an authentic, powerful brand personality for your business that speaks in a distinctive and consistent voice to your target audience.
You set the tone. Look to your own personality first. What aspects of it drive your business? How do they translate into brand values?
Even if the products or services you offer aren’t unique, the way you present them, and the relationships you build with your customers, can be.
Make your brand stand out and help it resonate more powerfully with your prospects and customers.
I can help you find your brand’s USP, shaping its personality and messages to establish your position in the marketplace.
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