The Psychology of Brand Personality
Our personalities determine whether we are endearing or repulsive, stimulating or uninteresting, alluring or repellent. A brand is no different.
Additionally, A strong brand personality gives your company a human face, which helps it stand out in a crowded field of competitors.
Its personality conveys whether your brand is risk-taking or conservative, lighthearted or somber, reliable or dubious.
Furthermore, brand personality is just as crucial for B2B brands as it is for brands that cater to consumers.
Customers in both industries are seeking a brand that speaks to them in a relatable and human way, whether or not they are aware of it.
So, what exactly is a brand personality?
Why does it matter, too?
We delve further into personality in the paragraphs that follow to help you give your brand a face that won't be forgotten soon.
Why Does Brand Personality Matter?
A brand personality is made up of a variety of distinct, long-lasting emotional, cognitive, and behavioral traits. What you'd say about your brand if it were a person is its personality.
Like humans, brands have distinguishable characteristics that come from how they see and interpret the world. The authenticity and consistency with which these qualities are displayed distinguishes a strong brand from a weak one. Design and message choices are influenced by a brand's personality.
The finest brand personalities are instantly recognizable and intensely relatable, much like how Apple has established itself as a stylish, and adventurous explorer.
What is Brand Personality?
Brand personality is an important factor in brand positioning and differentiation. A strong brand personality humanizes a company, giving it depth and nuance and making it more relatable to its target audience. It is the aspect of your brand with which your customers identify and form relationships. As a result, it plays a significant role in driving customer acquisition, cultivating brand loyalty, and establishing brand equity.
Its personality is why Starbucks customers feel so at home in its cafes, and why BMW customers can’t picture themselves driving anything else.
01. Drives Competitive Differentiation
02. Boosts Brand Awareness
Brand personality is one of the most important factors in differentiating your brand from the competition. The same product or service can be marketed in distinctly different ways depending on personality.
The key is cultivating a personality that is authentic to your organization, consistent over time, and relatable to your ideal customer.
A distinct brand personality makes your brand experience both recognizable and memorable. These are the key components to brand awareness.
Brand awareness isn’t just about potential new customers becoming aware of your brand through marketing and promotion. It’s also about fostering awareness in existing customers, so it evolves from recognition to preference.
The Brand Personality Framework
The Brand Personality Framework organizes brand personality types into five distinct dimensions: sincerity; excitement; competence; sophistication; and ruggedness. These dimensions were first defined by branding and marketing expert Jennifer Aaker in a seminal article in The Journal of Marketing Research. Each dimension is further defined by brand personality traits, and it’s the combination of these traits that makes a brand distinct and recognizable. The various types of brand personality below can be seen in many of the world’s top brands. The idea is to find brand personality features that are consciously connected with your positioning, such as your brand compass, core values, and brand archetype, when considering where your own brand fits on the sorts of brand personality spectrum.
1. Sincerity
Sincerity is a goal of every brand of course, but as a dimension of brand personality, sincerity is reserved for brands that are wholesome, honest, cheerful, and down-to-earth.
Brands with these defining traits are often found in the hospitality, food service, and safety industries. Think Campbell’s Soup, Hallmark, Oprah, Pampers, and Allstate.
3. Competence
A competent brand is reliable, intelligent, and successful. Brands within this personality dimension are confident thought leaders and responsible stalwarts of trust.
Think brands in the financial, insurance, healthcare, and logistics industries, to name a few. Some examples include Chase, UPS, Volvo, Microsoft, and Blue Shield.
2. Excitement
Often targeted at youthful demographics, brands in the excitement dimension have traits like daring, energetic, imaginative, and cutting-edge.
Excitement brands traffic in unlocking wonder or thrills, and leverage high-octane advertising or cool celebrity endorsements. Examples include Nike, MTV, Disney, GoPro, and Red Bull.
4. Sophistication
Brands in the sophistication dimension are characterized by traits like refined, luxurious, and charming. These are premium brands aimed at a discerning, status-conscious audience.
Brands in the sophistication dimension cut across industries, but are readily found in fashion, luxury, and automotive. Think Hermes, American Express, Apple, Mercedes, and Nescafé.
How to Define Your Brand Personality Traits
The easiest method to describe the personality of your brand is to consider it to be a person, because personal attributes are fundamentally human traits. This is where branding psychology comes into play. A brand's personality can be divided into four different facets, much like a person's personality, including emotions, intelligence, characteristics, and behaviors.
01. Emotion vs. Intelligence
Just as with people, some brands are more emotionally driven: motivated by passion or zeal. And some are more intelligently driven: inspired by rational analysis and logical insight.
An emotion-driven brand looks and feels a lot different than its intelligence-driven counterpart.
Understanding where your brand falls on the EQ to IQ spectrum will help you define its more tangible attributes: its characteristics and behaviors.
02. Characteristics vs. Behaviors
Characteristics are how a brand is perceived by those it interacts with. They are its outward, most readily observable attributes. Harley Davidson, for example, could be said to be rugged and masculine.
Its behaviors, by comparison, are how a brand acts within the context of the world around it. Red Bull, for example, is adventuresome and bold, as we explore further below, sponsoring events around the world that push the limits of extreme performance.
Where Does Brand Personality Come to Life?
Like with people, a brand's personality greatly influences where it fits in the world. The way a brand looks, sounds, and acts are the three main areas we might examine for indicators of brand personality.
1. Look:
A brand’s look is its visual identity, which comprises logo, colors, typography, photography, etc. It is the overarching aesthetic that becomes instantly recognizable in a strong brand.
When we say Coca-Cola, what color comes to mind? Which typeface? More so than perhaps any other brand, Coca-Cola has a look that is recognizable from miles away.
2. Sound:
A brand’s sound is embodied in things like its voice, music, and other sonic branding. The style of the verbal language it employs in conveying its message and the tone in which that message is conveyed are the primary attributes that define brand voice. As the voice for Lincoln, Matthew McConaughey brought a cool, aloof, and at times inscrutable personality to a previously staid and stodgy brand. It was nothing if not differentiating.
Brand Personality Examples
Although we've discussed quite a number of them in this article, the best brands in the world are the best places to look for examples of well-developed brand personalities.
Here are a few examples of brand personalities from both the B2C and B2B worlds, representing opposite ends of the personality spectrum, to help you get an idea of how brand personalities affect customer engagement in real life.
01. Red Bull
02. Dove
Edgy and energetic, caffeinated and invigorating, Red Bull’s personality is conveyed by everything from its aspirational messaging to its charging bull logo to the sports and events it sponsors.You’ll find the brand boldly represented at the world’s most extreme sports, like auto racing, climbing, and skateboarding.
03. Slack
The Slack brand personality starts with a name that’s hard to believe made it out of committee. The brand has coopted a synonym for laziness to revolutionize workplace communication.
An effortless extension of its name, Slack’s personality is easy and personal, but above all, helpful. Its tone is fun and engaging, like a friendly HR rep introducing you to a new company.
Dove’s brand personality is elegant, innocent, and pure. Its encouraging brand voice speaks to customers about beauty and femininity in a way that’s more than just skin deep. An example of a personality born from purpose, as it evokes honesty and positivity in its campaigns, and beauty in all shapes and sizes.
04. IBM
If IBM were a person, they might be wearing glasses and a pocket protector, with a brand personality centered on technical expertise and education.
IBM leverages its decades of experience as an industry leader to offer practical solutions backed by useful, intelligent content that addresses the specific needs of its many audiences.
The Takeaway
Even if we can't embrace or shake their hands, we still have relationships with the brands in our lives just like we would have with real people. In many situations, the relationships we develop with our favorite businesses serve to define who we are. Its quirks and idiosyncrasies are what make your brand relatable, and differentiate from the competition—ideally on a deep and meaningful level. How it looks, sounds, and acts as an agent in the world should be purposefully aligned with your brand positioning. You can create a genuine, alluring, and, above all, consistent brand personality that will draw people in and keep them coming back if you have a solid understanding of the psychology of brand personality.
