Brand Personality

A brand personality is a certain combination of personal traits and characteristics accredited to a brand to personify it. Brand personalities are specifically developed to mirror the personalities of the target audience to attract and retain customers. A well-designed brand personality is an inevitable part of brand equity, it contributes to the brand awareness and encourages its customers to remain loyal and devoted to the brand, thus affecting the sales and the revenue of the business. A working brand personality is an important part of effective marketing, it provides additional benefits in comparison to competitors with no brand personalities presented. So, main principles and features of a brand personality, as well as it types and methods of creating, are worth careful observing and studying.

A brand personality is not the same as brand imagery. Their fundamental difference lies in a fact that imagery conveys physical aspects, while brand personality is about intangible traits and emotions.

Brand Personality essentials

Brand personalities are developed as parts of brand equity, so they always reflect philosophies and main ideas behind the brands they represent. To develop a successful and effective brand personality, it’s important to have a clear understanding what the target audience is, what those people prefer, what they dislike, what lifestyle they have or want to have. 

A human mind is organized in such a way that people tend to go for things they can personally relate to, and brand personalities exploit it to their companies’ benefit. To put it simple, a brand personality is what a brand would be like if it were a person. When a brand personality matches its target audience, it evokes strong emotional response, allure more loyal repeat customers to the brand, and creates goodwill with those customers.

Brand Personality main types

As there is an infinite number of human traits and characteristics, there might be a huge variety of possible brand personalities, but since their goal is to suit as many prospect customers as possible, most of the brand personalities fall into several main categories. A system of most typical personalities was presented in 1997 by Jennifer Aaker, an American professor and a psychologist, in her research dedicated to brand personalities’ dimensions.

According to the research, there are five most common brand personality types, based on the following core features:

• Excitement, with its accompanying traits being daring, trendy, youthful, contemporary and unique;
• Sophistication, which is reflected in such characteristics as polished, high-class, elegant, a bit pretentious and prestigious;
• Sincerity, which is represented as family oriented, honest, wholesome and kind;
• Ruggedness, with its related characteristics being outdoorsy, active and athletic, masculine and tough;
• Competence, which also means intelligent, reliable, hard-working and successful.

A suitable type of brand personality might be defined by asking questions about the brand’s target audience, analyzing the received data, and attributing the results to one of five abovementioned dimensions with possible alterations to make it unique. It’s crucial to remember about the company’s goals in a broad sense and match the company’s philosophy.

Another significant issue is maintaining consistency. It’s highly important to make sure that the brand personality is the same in all sources, from a company’s website to its presence in the social media and promotional materials. At the same time, change and alteration over time are acceptable, because the audience might change, and keeping up with the audience is the basis of having a successful brand personality.