What is Brand Personality? How to Build a “Personality” to Represent Your Business

Brand personality is what makes your business come alive as a “human” in the eyes of potential customers. If your brand doesn’t have a clear personality, it will be difficult for people to know if you are the “person” they need. So what is brand personality and how do you want to describe your “person”?

1. What is brand personality?

According to Jennifer L. Aaker, author of the article “Dimensions of brand personality”, Brand Personality is defined as “The set of human characteristics associated with a brand.” (A set of human characteristics associated with the brand).

So it can be understood that brand personality will be expressed by adjectives describing the personality that the brand wants people to perceive about itself. For example, fun, youthful, trustworthy, friendly, responsible and sophisticated,…

Brand personality also refers to demographic characteristics such as gender, age and social class. For example:

• If Harley Davidson were a human, it would be a man. Victoria’s Secret would be the woman.
• Apple would be young, hip, creative. Microsoft would be a mature, thoughtful professional.
• Chanel would live in a mansion. TJ Maxx would live in a cheap rental apartment.

If you think of your brand as a person with a unique personality, you can express that personality to connect with the customers you want to attract on an emotional level. And it’s important that emotions drive decision-making, including purchasing decisions.

2. Why is brand personality important?

We all know that brand personality helps businesses build trust, brand equity, and consumer recognition. But if you dig deeper, you’ll see that the importance of brand personality goes beyond that. That is:

2.1 Attract customer attention and make a difference

One day, customers surf social networks, they will see thousands of brand messages. So how do you make your brand stand out? At this point, differentiation strategy is the key thing you need to stand out.

Brand personality helps businesses easily build a clear and consistent brand voice and style. This can shorten the time it takes for people to recognize, remember and pay attention to you.

Target customers always compare you with other brands. And if there is no difference, they will choose the lower priced brand.

“Humanizing” the brand is the best way for businesses to differentiate themselves from competitors as a more unique and valuable brand.

2.2 Increase the value of the brand story

The core of the brand story is the reason why customers should care about your brand.

• What does your brand stand for?
• What does your brand contribute to society?
• How does your brand differ from your competitors?
• What is the experience of the business?

The personality traits that a business chooses should be rooted in its overall brand strategy.

Every brand has its core beliefs, values, and guiding principles. The personality traits we see on the outside give people insight into the brand.

3. Jennifer Aaker’s 5 “Big Five” Brand Personality Groups

Jennifer Aaker has identified 5 aspects or Big Five – the 5 most common brand personality groups. Like people, brand personality is easy to develop and hone. It grows, matures, makes mistakes, is shaped and corrects itself.

The Big Five includes:

• Excitement

Cool brands are those that appeal to a younger demographic with dynamic advertising, unique, youthful designs, and celebrity endorsements. These brands are bold, bold, imaginative, fun, unique, modern, and go beyond the norm.

Many brands from exciting sectors include: Monster Energy, Nike, MTV, Vice, TikTok, Axe.

• Sincerity

Sincerity is a must for any brand. But brands whose core personality is sincerity will be honest, genuine, fun, wholesome, helpful, friendly, and polite. Think about the things that make a brand feel warm and fuzzy: Family, friendship, caring, gifts, service, honor, and generosity.

Sincerity is a personality trait associated with food, hospitality, and safety brands such as Campbell’s Soup, Hallmark, Oprah, Pampers, Allstate, Coca-Cola, TOMS.

• Sophistication

Sophistication is a brand personality that refers to luxury, glamour, and class, making customers fall in love. Like excitement, brands with sophistication come from all sectors, and these brands often have “luxury” prices in the industry such as Hermes, American Express, Apple, Mercedes, Nescafe, Grey Goose, Patek Philippe.

• Competence

Competence brand personalities are found in brands that are trustworthy, responsible, intelligent, successful, and confident. These are often businesses in the banking, insurance, import-export, and healthcare industries. Some notable names are Chase, Verizon, UPS, New York Presbyterian, New York Yankees, Volvo, Microsoft.

• Ruggedness

These are brands that are built to last. These brands are characterized by being hardworking, authentic, strong, healthy, and high-quality.

This personality is common in brands in the construction and hardware industries, many brands in the construction, hardware, outdoor fashion, sports, and automotive industries such as LL Bean, Otterbox, Milwaukee Tools, Land Rover, Levis, Jack Daniels, and REI.

4. Examples of top brands with the most prominent brand personalities

4.1 Apple

Apple’s personality is sophistication.

Apple is artistic, elaborate, and creative. The world’s leading technology brand is irreverent but also very sophisticated. When Steve Jobs returned in the late 1990s, the company focused on design for hardware, software, and retail stores around the world. Apple products, from packaging, software, to marketing programs, are all very elegant. As Steve Jobs said, “Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.”

4.2 Nike

Nike’s personality is excitement.

Nike has a dynamic, inspiring, individualistic, interesting, cool style. If it were a person, Nike would stand out as interesting, stimulating, spirited, awesome, creative, bold, physically and mentally oriented.

Since 1980, has collaborated with famous athletes in sports. In this way, Nike has become Nike is known for its fun, stimulating, creative and persistent personality.

Nike’s slogan is “Just do it” which creates momentum and encourages people to strive to achieve their goals.

Nike gives its wearers confidence. This personality has inspired loyalty, making many people choose them over their competitors.

4.3 Volvo

Volvo’s personality is competence.

Emotional positioning Volvo’s brand is closely linked to competence. It possesses the character of a responsible and reliable family man.

The Volvo car manufacturing brand puts performance, design, safety and environmental friendliness at the forefront. These are very important characteristics to Volvo consumers – who are aware that these are factors that need to be carefully considered in the design process.

4.4 Harley-Davidson

Harley-Davidson’s personality is ruggedness.

Harley-Davidson has a masculine, rebellious and freedom-oriented personality. A person who is willing to break free from the constraints of social norms regarding his dress and behavior.

This rugged personality has helped the company produce powerful and unique vehicles. The company’s advertising campaigns always give their motorcycles meaningful names that exude durability.

The logo uses dynamic and bright colors, helping Harley-Davidson build its brand personality.

5. How to Define Your Most Prominent Brand Personality

When defining your target market and audience, businesses must ask themselves “Who do my customers like to “hang out” with?”.

Then, you can visualize your brand as a person. What does he/she look like and how does he/she talk? These characteristics have the effect of driving emotions and making it easier for you to associate with the qualities that customers want to connect with.

Answering these questions will also provide information that will help customers easily choose the right type of brand.

There are certain characteristics that brands inherently possess. Try to make these characteristics blend in and contribute to promoting the emotional message. Brand personalities are only effective if they resonate with the target audience.

Who is the business’s target audience? What are their pain points and how do they communicate?

With all of this in mind, the brand has been able to create a personality that customers will love.

Step 1: Analyze the Competition

The brand personality should reflect the brand message and help the brand stand out from the competition. For example, if your competitors all exude sophistication, your brand should go the other way and focus on sincerity. This will help your business create a unique position in the market and differentiate itself from other brands.

Step 2: Describe your brand on paper

Describe your brand in one word and repeat this. Write down all the adjectives that will create a picture of your brand. And choose the 3 most suitable descriptions.

Step 3: Draw a character representing the brand

Which character will embody the adjectives above? Draw them. Even if it’s just a doodle on paper, it will still give you ideas of what your brand will look like. Then you will have an intuitive feel for the logo, color combinations, and typography choices.

Step 4: Talk to your brand

Now, explore the characteristics that define your brand. The best way to define your brand voice is to talk to it. Ask your brand questions, how would it respond?

Once you’ve figured out your brand voice, use your everyday language style in the same way you use it in the content you create and how you answer everyday questions from your customers. Your brand voice is one of the most important ways to convey your entire brand message to your customers. So take the time to get it right.

Step 5: Consistency

Once you understand your unique brand personality. Use it consistently. The way your brand acts should match your brand personality. If you are funny, show humor in your marketing campaigns. However, you still have to adjust your personality to suit your customers’ needs to make a deeper impression.

Once you have identified your brand personality, your business will connect more with your target customers. Personality not only builds the foundation for your brand style, but also helps shape your marketing strategies and messages. Just as human personality shapes the way people speak and act, brand personality will help businesses make the best decisions in every aspect.

If your business is having difficulty in finding brand personality. Contact Adsmo to receive the most useful advice.

See more:

• What is brand style??
• What is brand culture??