How to highlight brand personality and gain more fans?

To some extent, we can understand "brand personality" as the manifestation of the personality of the brand after personification. So, why do brands need to shape their brand personality? How can we build a brand personality that suits the brand? The author of this article expressed his views, let's take a look.

1. What is brand personality?

Suppose there is a male colleague who has just joined your team. He always has long hair and dresses like a weirdo. As you get to know him better, you find that he is a humorous and easy-going person. After that, he becomes friends with everyone in the team. In the summer, he often treats everyone to beer and barbecue.

In fact, brands also need to become this kind of "friend" of the target group: have memorable and distinctive characteristics that can make people associate positive emotions...

What is Brand Personality?

1. Marketing guru Philip Kotler said: Personality refers to a person's unique psychological characteristics, which leads to a person's relatively consistent and continuous response to his or her environment.
2. Brand expert David Aaker said: Brand personality is a set of personality traits associated with the brand.
3. Brand personality scholar Jennifer Aaker said: Brand personality refers to a set of personalized characteristics associated with the brand.

We can actually conclude that brand personality is the manifestation of the personality of the brand after it is personified. So what is a person's personality?

In psychology, personality refers to the internal stable factors of a person, the consistency of an individual's behavior in different situations, and the difference in behavior from others in the same situation.

There is a key word: unique. Therefore, brand personality is the highest level in brand management.

Brand personality refers to the communication of product or brand characteristics and consumers' perception of these characteristics based on this. It is the result of communication between brand managers and consumers.

What is important is that brand personality can reflect the image of the brand user, embody the consumer's values, life goals, lifestyle, social status, etc. Brand personality is formed based on contact with consumers and is a collection and refinement of the brand user's personality.

2. What is the value of brand personality? .

Shaping brand personality is the top priority of brand building and brand management, because brand personality is the core of the brand. The so-called brand has value and is the most valuable intangible asset of an enterprise. This is because although the products are produced by the enterprise, the brand is created by consumers and exists in the minds of consumers.

In the eyes of consumers, a brand not only represents a certain product, but is actually a psychological phenomenon of consumers. People will not accept everyone in life because their psychological space is limited. Therefore, the more distinctive a brand is, the easier it is to stand out. Similarly, consumers will not accept all brands. They have preferences and only accept brands with the personality they recognize.

Only brands with a personality that consumers like can be accepted, liked and willingly purchased by consumers, thus reflecting their brand value - therefore, brand personality is the core of brand value, and to enhance brand value it is necessary to create a distinct brand personality.

Generally speaking, brands have:

1. Personalized value: "Brand is person, person is brand", for example, the personality displayed by Pepsi is youthful, unique and self-promotion. At the same time, it should be noted that anthropomorphic logos can be used to represent brand personality, such as Haier Brothers, Mickey Mouse, Colonel Sanders, and Ronald McDonald.
2. Differentiated value: Products are easily imitated and technologies are easily replaced. Only the differentiation established by brand personality is the most profound for consumers and is the most important and solid.
3. Emotional value: Brand personality is the main factor affecting customer satisfaction and loyalty. Brand personality reflects customers' feelings about the brand and is emotional thinking. Emotions will accumulate into powerful appeal over time, which is the key to building long-term relationships.

3. Brand creative guidelines help build brand personality

This is where a brand creative guide can help you, but it’s important to understand that a brand creative guide is not the same thing as a brand style guide.

The style guide defines the image and look of the brand (my colleague has long hair and dresses like a geek), while the brand creative guide details how the brand touches people's various senses (the summer heat reminds me of his kebabs).

While a style guide describes more technical specifications, such as logo size and color, a creative guide is designed to appeal to all of your audience’s senses and determine what feelings your brand should evoke.

A brand creative guide is a set of defined creative specifications that apply to all presentation situations and explain how your brand identity should be creatively represented.

No matter where your brand appears, whether you are running online advertising, planning in-store displays, running social ads or launching other forms of promotional activities, brand creative guidelines can ensure that your brand identity is authentic, pure and inspiring.

With creative guidelines, your brand identity can remain consistent despite social and cultural changes. Let’s say your brand is known for being “masculine.” If society’s perception of masculinity changes, your brand design will evolve, but your brand identity will remain the same.

Most importantly, creative guidelines help those who produce marketing materials, such as advertising agencies, suppliers, and internal teams, understand your brand identity and know how to shape your brand identity.

This is important because the more these agencies or teams know about your brand, the better they can help you build an outstanding brand.

IV. A Case Study

Axe, a global men’s grooming brand, developed a creative guide to keep pace with the times and align its brand identity and strategy.

A decade ago, Axe’s creative strategy revolved around how to give men an edge in dating, with the brand’s famous ads featuring attractive women and “masculine men” as characters.

As time went by, society’s view of masculinity changed and became more diverse. Men began to pay attention to personal care and use men’s grooming products to better express their charm. Axe realized that they also needed to change, but its iconic brand identity could not change.

Axe’s creative guidelines played a key role in this change, helping Axe stay true to its brand identity of “masculinity” while exploring newer and more contemporary ways to interpret this identity.

Axe took a new approach: there is no set definition of masculinity, and updated its creative guidelines to do so.

Based on this change, the company showcased attractive men from various industries in its new advertisements. With the slogan "Discover Your Own Charm", the company encouraged men to discover their own uniqueness, while promoting the idea that using Axe products can help men show their unique charm.

This is also a strategy. In fact, it is to redefine the brand personality based on the brand positioning. The brand communicates from the customer's perspective. Only when the brand positioning is determined can the brand personality be determined.

5. How to Create a Creative Guide

So, how do you create a brand creative guide? First, you need to create a brand identity.

That is to say, first of all, you should clarify the brand vision and brand goals, and determine the target audience. At the same time, you should also find a series of adjectives, such as kind and considerate, generous, youthful, natural and authentic, to describe the brand personality.

These adjectives represent the personality qualities of the brand, giving the brand humanistic traits, ideals, aspirations and value pursuits - all of which are more likely to impress people and attract customers.

Once you’ve identified your brand traits, you need to think of synonyms that relate to those personality traits. For example, if one of your brand traits is “powerful,” you might think of synonyms like: competent, convincing, authoritative, energetic, etc.

By using these synonyms, the creative guide can help you define which qualities represent your brand identity and which do not. “Competent” and “convincing” may be too weak, while “authoritative” is too strong, and “energizing” may be the most appropriate.

It may be helpful to convene the people responsible for designing brand identity, such as designers, marketing personnel, public relations managers, etc., to conduct an internal brainstorming session and list relevant synonyms.

After listing the synonyms, you need to connect the brand with the five senses of human beings and continue to give the brand human substance.

People experience the world through each of their senses. Therefore, if a brand can impress every sense of the target audience, they will remember it more deeply and feel that the brand has more connotations.

But what if the product isn’t something people can smell or eat, like perfume or food? This approach still works because all the senses have connotations that fit with your brand identity.

You just have to make a hypothesis about your brand. "If my brand of sports car had a smell, it would be spicy. If it had a particular fragrance, it would be a pleasant new car smell."

To connect your brand to the five senses, start with each of the five senses: sight, touch, smell, hearing, taste, and think about how your brand connects to each of these senses to make it unique.

1) Vision

Think visually and find color schemes, photos, and illustrations that represent your brand. In other words, set visual standards that reflect your brand identity. Let’s say your brand identity is “casual”, then non-posed, everyday photos will be able to show your brand identity, while photos that are obviously posed will not be suitable.

2) Touch

Think about the feel of your product and describe its appearance and texture. How does the packaging feel? If you were to open a pop-up store, what materials would you use? What kind of tactile sensation do you want your product to have? Think about whether your product is heavy or light? Is the surface smooth or rough?

3) Sense of smell

From an olfactory perspective, it is extremely important to describe the unique smell of your product because smell is the most subconscious way to trigger emotions and is the easiest to remember. Does your product smell musky, floral, or sweet?

4) Hearing

From an auditory perspective, designing a unique voice for your brand will help copywriters write copy that sets the tone of your brand. Ask yourself, if you were to hire a voice actor, what kind of voice would you want him to have? What kind of music would complement your brand?

5) Taste

Finally, consider the taste. Suppose your brand's main product is a kind of food, what does this food taste like? Is it sour, sweet, or spicy? Can these foods make people think of your brand? When you hold an event, what kind of food will you use to entertain guests?

Do you know how to create a creative guide? Then come and create your creative guide to highlight your brand personality and attract more "die-hard fans".

6. Some Principles

1. Creativity is not so much a job as it is a kind of customer-centric thinking. I think it can be a process like this: empathy - definition - conception - model - testing.
2. How to shape brand personality: Consider consumer expectations - shape brand personality based on brand positioning - establish brand personality through emotions - demonstrate the potential of brand personality and enhance beliefs - reinvest, communicate and strengthen brand personality.

at last

Whenever it comes to "brand", we must remember:

Brand is user thinking, and brand is formed in the user's mind.

Returning to the brand personality, we must remember that the most attractive person in the crowd is always the one with a unique personality. This personality is not just about clothing, appearance, and behavior, but the unique personality behind it.

However, we should note that personality is too difficult to understand, but personality guides behavior, and behavior can reflect personality, which needs to be viewed dialectically. Otherwise, when inappropriate behavior is inconsistent with the personality being promoted, people will think it is split, and credibility will be significantly reduced.

The shaping of brand personality belongs to the brand building part of brand growth. Brand growth is a series of processes. Please refer to "2023 New Brand Growth Methodology" and "Brand Building Quick Guide".