Memorable Brands Have Personality

Listen "Memorable Brands Have Personality"

Episode Synopsis

Not all brands have a personality, but the ones you remember do.

Walking into a Mcdonald's is different from walking into a Chipotle. Sprouts feels different from Trader Joe’s. You get a different vibe from IKEA than you do from Bed, Bath, and Beyond. These large corporations have put attention into their brand personality—everything from their name, colors, and logo to their use of space in a retail store. Everything is designed, all the way that people communicate with one another (we’re looking at you, Chick-fil-a).

In most cases, the personality sticks in our minds because it’s consistent… and if it’s consistent for an entire population, a brand’s valuation can soar into the hundreds of millions.

Or much higher than that.

But when it comes to fine-tuning a brand that people can appreciate, trust, and resonate with, you don’t have to be some high-flying, list-climbing conglomerate.

With some sleeves rolled up, and the hard work of figuring out a core purpose that rises above everything else, companies large and small can take seven practical steps to build a brand expression worth remembering, and a brand personality that delivers on its promises.

https://youtu.be/YkvbEo2KxmE
Time for a Recap:
Our last series focused on some of the ‘don'ts’ of branding.

If you’ve been reading along, then you know all about the precarious terrain of easy-looking solutions—superficial branding, copycat branding, or inventing a brand from scratch.

Like those houses built right on the edge of a cliff, quick fixes start to crumble over time, or whenever the pressure’s on.

Let’s assume you’ve already identified your deep why and sense of purpose as a company, use that to determine your values and vision, which should then go on to shape your goals. With these in mind, how do you nail down the identity of your brand in a way that you can easily communicate to customers, employees, or even the marketing team?

How do people identify your company in a way that matches what you’re really about?

While every organization is unique, we find that seven tools tend to help with brand definition:

Personality
Metaphor
Archetype
Setting
History
Context
Brand Story

These may not cover every situation, but as far as building a winsome, thoughtful, consistent brand expression goes, they’re toolbox essentials.

Let’s start with our favorite, which is a brand’s personality.
Personality, not Persona
Brands have a personality, just like people do.

And by “personality,” we don’t necessarily mean a persona.

The word persona is a term for the mask worn by a character in a play, or for the character themselves. An actor can slip on a new persona and create a new character at will, if they’re talented enough. If you think about it, many people do just that every day.

That is, they act like a different character in each different aspect of their lives.

Some brands do that too—they have a public-facing persona, an investor-facing persona, an internal-facing persona, or like Lays Potato Chips, Olay, or even Axe deodorant spray, a different persona for specific markets or regions.

The term personality, on the other hand, has to do with those qualities that make something personal, as opposed to impersonal. Personality is what makes me feel like I am dealing with a real person. The concept of a “person” is derived from a persona, but instead of referring to the outward mask, it came to mean the face under it.

The person.

The individual’s fundamental self.

Personality denotes an individual’s nature; the distinct characteristics that make me, me, and you, you. Somebody’s personality is what allows you to recognize them as the distinct person they are, to feel familiar with them, and to have that sense that you really know them.

And if on that level, everyone’s unique and remarkable, the same goes for every organization, company or business.