What is your Brand’s Personality?

As human beings, our personality is what sets us apart. The same is true for a brand. Applying human characteristics to your brand helps maintain a consistency throughout your marketing. Personality traits not only guide how a brand talks to consumers, but also create an emotional way for consumers to identify with a brand. Let’s take a look at a few different brand personalities:

Nike— Nike has always been affiliated with athletes. They align themselves with professional athletes and applaud passion and greatness in sports. Their tagline, Just Do It, is motivational. Nike talks to its consumers in a way meant to inspire action, discourage quitting, build confidence and aim for greatness.

Old Spice— This male-centric brand embraces silliness, making fun of stereotypical “manliness” qualities, and exaggerating the effects deodorant can have. The emotion they use over and over again is humor- their commercials and marketing campaigns are always funny!

Dove— Dove is primarily a female-focused brand, despite being a universal product. Their most famous branding came in the form of their “Real Beauty” campaigns. For 10 years now, these campaigns have challenged the socially accepted standards of beauty with campaigns filled with a diverse array of women, including varying degrees of skin color, body type, age, etc. They ask consumers to rethink the definition of a beautiful woman.

All three of these brands have achieved great success through their marketing, largely in part to such clear brand identities. Each offers a clear personality, targets a specific demographic, and maintains a consistent voice throughout different marketing campaigns.

How can you identify your brand’s personality? Start asking yourself the right questions.

• Who are you?
• Who are you talking to?
• What are you selling?
• What are the characteristics and tone of your brand?
• How will you communicate with your customer base?
• What do you want to say?
• How do you want them to feel?

One final tip: quite often, a brand’s personality mirrors the personality of its target demographic. Keep that in mind when defining the personality of your brand.