What is a brand personality?

A brand personality is a set of characteristics or traits that is attributed to a specific brand. These traits and characteristics usually help the brand gain more equity in a specific market by having a consistent set of traits that their specific market enjoys. Oftentimes customers are more likely to buy from a brand whose personality is similar to their own. These traits could include customer service structures, unique business operations, or even color thematic of the brand. 

What is the brand personality framework

The brand personality framework is a methodology to help businesses identify their brand personality in order to help them make more qualified decisions regarding their brand and business activities. The framework consists of the classification of the different types of brand personalities and also breakdowns on how you can utilize your unique brand personality to help your brand stand out in your market.

The different types of Brand Personality

There are 5 main brand personality types. 

Excitement : The main characteristics of a brand whose personality is excitement focused include carefree, spirited, and youthful. You would oftentimes see this persona in progressive bands that are looking to create the next big thing or get people involved. 

Sincerity : The main characteristics of a brand whose personality is sincerity focused include kindness, thoughtfulness, and family oriented. You would see this persona in family oriented or community driven business such as children’s products or family services.

Ruggedness : The main characteristic of a brand whose personality is ruggedness focused include tough, outdoorsy, masculine, and western. This works best with brands that offer services or products that target the hobbies of the working class. 

Competence: The main characteristics of a brand whose personality is competence focused include reliability, success, and intelligence. This works best with software development companies or products that require reliability such as cars or household appliances. 

Elegance : The main characteristics of a brand whose personality is elegance focused include sophistication, upper class, and success. This works best with brands who focus less on the price tag, and more on the quality of the experience or product such as designer goods, concierge services, and luxury products. 

Why businesses need to identity their brand personality

Aligning your business to a specific brand personality is extremely important in ensuring that you attract the right type of customers and convert passerbys into loyal customers. Your brand’s personality is the emotional connection that your customers have towards your brand, and customers don’t buy based on usefulness or price, but rather emotions. 

Imagine if a big brand such as Rolex didn’t decide to fit into the elegance brand personality, and instead tried to fit into the competence brand personality. They would end up with a completely different market of consumers and products that they would end up offering, competing against other affordable watch brands and needing to redevelop their competitive edge. 

Additionally imagine if Rolex didn’t define their brand personality and doesn’t fit into any specific market. They would end up just marking watches for every type of customer. This might seem good on paper since you can sell to every market, but the problem is that you won’t be known in any specific market for the products you offer. Oftentimes we can see that companies with a specific brand personality lack a sense of consistency with their customers which oftentimes leads to a less than stellar sales report.