Activities and conversation-starters that help you to create a brand personality that fits.
A brand is what makes your business human and just likes us humans, a brand has a personality. Why? People connect with other people, and if your brand has a personality that they like, then they connect with your brand, as they would a friend. Pretty cool, huh?
This brand personality is essentially a series of adjectives that help to describe what your brand is like – is it funny? It is conscientious? Is it the type of brand that – if it was a person – would be first up to the karaoke machine to sing ‘Living on a Prayer’ at the top of their lungs? Either way, these personality traits influence pretty much everything that your brand does, says and looks like (which helps creative folk like us) – so it has to be unique.
“It’s better to have 500 people who love your brand, than 1000 who like it – and a personality that’s true to your brand has a huge part to play in finding those 500 people.” – Andrew Dobbie, our Founding Director
As a brand personality has such a mahoosive impact on a business, we always like to make sure that our clients are really involved in the process (they know the brand more than anyone, afterall). This means we get to do one of our most favourite things in the world – hosting a brand personality workshop. In each brand personality workshop, we have lots of different activities, discussion-starters and about a gazillion post-its – so here are just some of our go-to ideas to help you host your very own.
The Personality Scale
This is where those post-its come in. Write as many words that you could potentially use to describe the brand. There are no wrong answers here at all.
When you have all of those words up on the wall, you’ll start to see patterns appear (eg: ‘energetic’ and ‘lively’ would go into the same group). With each word, rate them on a scale of 1 – 10: 1 = ‘not quite us’ and 10 = ‘YES! We’re so like that’.
This, but not that…
Personalities aren’t black and white and and there’s a fine line when it comes to certain traits.
With the personality scale in mind, think of anything from 3-5 ways to describe your brand personality using the ‘this, but not that’ structure and follow with the reason for your choice. For example:
Fun, but not silly
We’re all about being happy, having a laugh and enjoying time with our friends, but we’re not slapstick or gimmicky. People know that they can come to us to feel positive and happy, but can also take us seriously when it’s called for.
The Big Night Out
This is a great task to really think about your brand as a person (and to have some fun doing it too). If your brand was to go on a night out, what would that be like? Think about which bars they’d go to, what they’d drink (if at all) and who they’d socialise with. All of these factors help you to paint a really vivid picture of your brand and who it is, as a person.
Winning At Life
One of our favourites – if your brand was a person, what would their version of ‘winning at life’ be? Would it be living on a superyacht off to coast of Cannes, or having a nice, quiet life on a farm somewhere with some pet llamas, lots of time outdoors in the fresh air and the odd holiday throughout the year? Again, this really helps you to think about your brand personality in a really tangible way that you can easily picture.
Favourite brands
The brands we like have a lot to say about us as people, and the same goes for your brand. So, what brands would your brand like? This could count for the brands they would use every single day, to the aspirational brands that they would hope to use one day. Psst – have we said brands enough yet?
Online profile
One of the most interesting things about how we use digital, is the way that we carve out our own little corner of the internet that’s personal to us. Now, what if you crafted that corner for your brand, as if it was person with its own choices to make? For example:
- Frequently visited websites
- What they read (magazines/blogs)
- Social channels – (what they use and how they use them)
- Which accounts they follow (eg: On Instagram – influencers/creatives etc)
- Podcasts/radio stations (what would they listen to?)
- Mailers (what have they purposefully signed up to?)
These are just some ideas to get you started – but just like a brand personality, every brand personality workshop is unique to the client. From there, the brand personality is included in the brand guidelines, which then help to navigate every single decision made for that brand. You often find yourself asking ‘is that something we would do?’ and the great thing about a brand personality, is that it helps to answer that question time and time again.
Need someone to help you on that front? Check out our latest work and get in touch!
