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Nowadays there are plenty of companies around selling the same product to you and all of them are competing to catch your dream client attention before you, and you can have the best product, but this is not sufficient to grab the attention from your possible customer, you need to give him a strong argument to buy your product.
“95% of the purchasing decisions are made through feelings”
According to Harvard Business School, 95% of the purchasing decisions are made through feelings instead of logic ideas, most of the people won’t spend time researching the best product and reading all the benefits of it in comparison with your competitors, instead of it, most of the clients will buy from a company that they feel connected with unconscious associations and the feelings the brand evoke them, that is why I will show you on this post what is brand personality and how to create a strong one.
By having a strong brand personality, you are giving your dream client a reason to buy your product. People tend to connect to other people with the same personality and create confidence with them, the same happens with brands, what brand character is about is to humanize your brand and create a personality that the customer feel connected and associate your brand with human feelings.
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Brand personality definition is a set of adjectives and human characteristics associated with a brand name. These brand characteristics are perceived by the possible client and he can feel related with them creating a connection with the brand generating more confidence with the company’s brand personality making him more suitable to buy from them.
“Create a connection with your customer through the brand character”
With brand personality, companies can be more human and instead of perceiving them as just brand, the customer can relate the brand with a person with the same personality than him, this is a powerful tool for companies to attract their target customer by associate the brand with characteristics the person can be related.
To create a connection with your target audience through brand personality it’s important to note, that this must be present in every element related to your company from your logo design to a social media advertisement design to reinforce the attributes you want to transmit with your brand, this fact makes very common to see that companies that want to change their brand personality also change all graphic design elements related to the brand starting a rebranding design project.
Think about your dream client, he might have a really busy schedule working, going to appointments and visiting the grocery store to buy some food, all these factors make him being overwhelmed and focused on his daily tasks so he is not paying attention to everything as it’s impossible and your brand will only have some seconds to grab your dream client attention and make him memorize you while he is focused on other tasks.
At this point everything is clear, you only have some seconds to grab your dream client attention and make him memorize your brand, not an easy task, but, the problem is not only that you need to make your brand memorable in some seconds, but the real struggle is also that you already have tones of competitors trying to make the same as you selling the same product.
“Give your dream client a reason to choose your brand”
That is why is important to have a strong brand personality that is reflected in your brand style and voice to simplify the process of your dream client to recognize your brand, remember it and pay attention to you.
You need to define your brand personality traits from the start and work your brand and identity design and brand voice according to these traits to create a cohesive branding that connects with the same values and personality of your dream client to create confidence and grab his attention to later convert him on a loyal customer.
As your brand has a lot of competitors working hard to sell the same product that you, it’s important to make a strong differentiation from them to make your brand unique, we can achieve that by humanizing your company creating a more special and valuable connection with the customer.
“Enhance your brand story and make clear what your brand stands for”
Enhance your brand story and make clear what your brand stands for. All these brand personality characteristics must be present in your larger brand strategy to enhance that beliefs and traits to show your dream client why he should care about your company.
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Now that we already know what is brand personality and how important it is to outstand from your competitors and grab your dream client attention let’s see some important characteristics to create a successful brand personality strategy. The approach can be different depending on your company values and personality these characteristics are consistent for every sector and brand.
It’s important to define correctly your brand personality and what are your brand values, there are different approaches to it and methods to create a consisted tone in your brand message and transmit it with your visual identity.
The first method it’s Aaker’s Brand personality Dimension made by Jennifer Aaker, a Stanford researcher in 1997 and this framework is still useful nowadays in marketing and it’s the perfect example on how consumers relate to brands.
Jennifer Aaker says that there are 5 dimensions inside a human’s personality where each one of them englobes different psychological facets that contain specific personality traits. The 5 dimensions of brand personality frameworks are used in marketing as a tool to establish emotional connections between brands and their dream client by humanizing companies.
“Establish an emotional connection with your dream client with Brand Personality”
This framework is the perfect tool to associate your brand with specific human characteristics that will connect with your target audience. And your brand might have various personality traits from the Aaker’s dimension framework, but you need to focus on specific qualities and work your branding strategy around them to build a powerful value proposition and create an outstanding brand personality.
The five dimension and their Brand Personality Traits
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Among brand personality dimensions, there is also another popular framework to build a strong brand character and this is the use of Archetypes, introduced by Carl Jung. The archetype theory says that human behaviour is defined by 12 archetypes with their own group of characteristics, aspirations, values and attitudes.
You might be familiar with the word archetype as this method is used to build characters in films and books. In branding and marketing, we use the archetypal framework to build a human-like brand and build a brand voice thinking on the archetype of your dream client.
The 12 archetypes are divided by 4 main groups that we will see now:
Now that we already know what is brand personality and the best frameworks to choose the correct brand character for your company let’s see the process of creating a unique brand personality that defines best your brand and makes it outstanding from your competitors.
The first step to create a strong brand personality it’s to understand who is your dream client and identify your target customers, it’s important to know who are you selling your products to build a brand character aligned with the personality and values from your customers to create that connection with them.
Let’s see it clearer with an example, imagine a brand like Gucci or Louis Vuitton, their target audience are people with a sense of high-fashion with and wealthy people who value the price of design and exclusivity of that brands, now imagine that Gucci or Louis Vuitton brand personality was a bargain or they follow the citizen archetype, it would be a disaster as their brand personality is not aligned with the goals of their customers.
The second step to build a strong brand character is to create a list of adjectives that describes your brand, and traits that make your brand special and unique to differentiate it from the rest of your competitors. Think that your brand is a person and select adjectives that you would associate with him, for example, youthful or energetic.
When making this list of adjectives is important to have in mind what we saw on the previous step, think about your target audience personality when making it, select adjectives and personality traits that you think your dream client can feel connected and associated with it, this will help to attract the attention from customers and create interest in your brand.
We already have started to think that your brand is a person on the previous step to choose the adjectives who better fit on him, but now, let’s go one step forward on that idea and think on you having the first meeting with that person, and as the first impression count and if we talk about branding they are crucial let’s answer that question regarding your branding persona.
Now that we already have all these elements done, we know who is our target audience, wich adjectives define better your brand and know-how our brand will act, dress and talk we already have the main elements of your brand personality, now you can choose one of the two frameworks listed before and finish to define your brand personality by using a brand character archetype or brand personality dimension focusing on the most important traits from your brand that makes it unique and interesting for your dream client.
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Once you have clear what will be your brand personality it’s important to stay tuned with the same brand character across all the elements related to your brand to create a cohesive personality which your customers can be related. You need a clear brand strategy to make clear what is your goal and communicate consistency.
Remember the question on what is your brand wearing?, then this question is directly related with your brand visual identity, once you have your brand anchors and a clear view of how your brand personality is it’s time to transmit it through all visual elements related to your brand, these elements are Logo Design, Font Choice, Color Palette, visual style rules, imagery, design guidelines and all corporate design.
The brand voice is directly related on how your brand talks to you and what are the main topics your brand will talk, to correctly transmit your brand personality you need to build a consistent tone of voice through your brand copy and marketing messages to enhance that values related to your brand, brand voice includes naming strategy, tagline, tone of voice, the word you will use, editorial guidelines and your copywriting strategy.
A key factor in building your brand personality is that it must be transparent and real, and you need to make real everything you promise through your brand strategy plan. Once you have a clear brand personality this should be represented in your customer service policies, products and services you are offering and the processes.
Now that we already know everything about brand personality and how to create a strong one, let’s see some branding inspiration and I will show you 5 examples of how big companies use brand personality in their favour to transmit their brand message and connect better with their customers.
Coca Cola it’s a perfect example on how to build a brand personality around happiness as you can see it reflected on different marketing campaigns, their logo design and their slogan “taste the feeling”. People usually choose a bottle of Coca Cola instead of other brands because they connect with their brand personality that transmits feelings of happiness and excitement.
Disney brand persona is one of the largest with more than 90 years and their brand personality is focused on happiness and creating unique experiences to their customers as we can see in their slogan “the most magical place on earth”. Disney brand character it’s the perfect example of a creative brand archetype that transmit positive feelings to their clients.
If you want to find a perfect example of the Hero Archetype then you will find it on Nike, this brand has been endorsing some of the most important athletes through many years and with their slogan “just do it” had made that people associate the brand with feelings of exciting, provocative, cool and innovative brand personality, all these elements together created a big and loyal customer fan base.
I’m sure that you have heard the slogan “Red Bull gives you wings” and this is a clear example of the magician brand archetype as the brand wants to make you exceed difficult challenges and connect with people that want excitement and energy. Remember what I said about that brand actions must be aligned with their brand personality? that is why you can see a lot of extreme sports and music concerts organised by Red Bull.
Apple is one of these brands that you love them or hate them, but what we can learn about apple brand personality is that the people who love it are loyal customers who would buy any product from the brand as they feel connected with the brand personality traits of being cool, innovative and creative.
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As we have seen through the post we understand how important is having a strong brand personality for any company that reflects their values and help connect with their dream clients by having ideas in common and feelings that your target audience can associate with. In this post, you have learnt how to build a strong brand character that will help connect with your target audience and enhance the values and ideas from your brand. And if you want to learn more abount brand design I recommend you these posts.
If you found this post useful you might like to read these post about Brand Design Inspiration.
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