Define Your Brand Personality

What’s your brand’s personality? If you don’t know, neither do your potential customers. Brand personality was best described by Jennifer Aaker in a 1997 paper, but it’s arguably more important than ever in today’s world of social media marketing.

Need some help developing your brand’s personality? Hopefully, this information will help you figure it out, but we’re also more than happy to assist you.

What Is Brand Personality?

Brand personality is a framework that helps an organization shape the way people feel about its service, product, or mission. This brand personality evokes an emotional response in a particular consumer segment, encouraging them to take actions that benefit the company as a result of this emotional response.

Why Is Brand Personality Important?

Appealing to the wrong customers doesn’t win you new business. Understanding, defining, and displaying your brand personality helps you reach the right audience, bringing greater success to your marketing efforts.

The 5 Dimensions of Brand Personality

In her paper, Aaker described 5 dimensions of brand personality: excitement, sincerity, sophistication, competence, and ruggedness. Let’s take a look at these dimensions, who they appeal to, and some examples of companies that represent each one.

Excitement

The excitement dimension includes brands perceived as being daring, up-to-date, playful, spirited, imaginative, and edgy. An excellent example of a brand that represents excitement is Red Bull.

Between their slogan of “Red Bull Gives You Wings,” their two Formula 1 teams, and their association with extreme sports such as cliff diving, sky diving, BMX riding, extreme sailing, surfing, and more, Red Bull is seen as an exciting brand that appeals to people who want more energy to do what excites them.

Sincerity

Wholesome, down-to-earth, honest, genuine, and cheerful are all words and phrases associated with sincerity. Sincere brands portray themselves as understanding that they’re part of society as a whole and focus on establishing excellent customer relationships.

In today’s world, distrust is everywhere, so it can be difficult for a brand to portray itself as being sincere. However, one brand that comes across as being sincere is the clothing brand Patagonia.

In a world of fast fashion that falls apart and leads to waste, Patagonia has dedicated itself to producing high-quality garments that can live many lives. In fact, they have sustainable programs like Worn Wear, where people who have Patagonia items that are no longer in use can send them back for credit toward their next purchase. Patagonia then makes any necessary repairs and sells the second-hand gear at a discounted rate compared to their new products – extending a garment’s life by about 2 years.

Sophistication

Most luxury brands thrive on being perceived as sophisticated, upper-class, glamorous, refined, elegant, charming, and romantic.

A unique example of a brand that has embraced sophistication is the beer brand Dos Equis, which launched its “Most Interesting Man in the World” campaign in 2006. Marketing itself as a sophisticated brand sets Dos Equis apart from most other beer brands, which has made it incredibly successful.

Competence

If your brand represents competence, you want to be associated with things like success, efficiency, expertise, reliability, and intelligence.

Apple is perhaps the brand most associated with competence. Long before the iPhone, Apple computers were touted for their superior performance and became go-to choices for professionals in a variety of industries. With their dedication to innovation leading to the invention of the iPod, iTunes, iPhone, and the iPad, Apple is seen as one of the most reliable, competent, and industry-leading companies in the world.

Ruggedness

Rugged brands are seen as tough, powerful, outdoorsy, forceful, western, potent, and masculine.

Want a surprising example of a brand that exudes ruggedness? Consider the Brawny Man. The world never knew it needed a rugged brand of paper towels, but Brawny decided to snag this brand personality and has carved itself a niche as being able to tackle the toughest stains for more than 40 years.

How to Incorporate Brand Personality

So, how can you incorporate your brand personality into your marketing strategy? Here are some tips:

• Let your core values lead the way. What is most important to you and your team? Which values do you have in common with your audience? Focus on those to attract the right customers.
• Find inspiration from successful companies. Whose brand messaging resonates with you? Figure out why and tweak the campaign strategies to fit your brand.
• Make sure your offerings match your audience. Marketing to the wrong audience will never bring in the type of growth you want.
• Don’t overthink it. Trying to appeal to everybody will confuse your audience. Keep your brand messaging simple and appeal to a specific audience.

Get Marketing Help from BXP Creative

Whether you need help finding your brand’s voice, bringing people to your website, attracting social media followers, creating content, or anything else related to marketing, let the expert team at BXP Creative help. Contact us today to find out how we can help you.