How to Create Your Brand Identity
Chapter 2: Adding Some Flavor

Lesson 3: Defining Brand Personality

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A lot of people would probably argue that brand identity and brand personality are interchangeable terms.

I don’t disagree, but I do think outlining personality traits to embody is key to getting your employees on board with a rebrand. It’s very closely tied to company culture, or at least it should be.

Your brand personality is based on the core values and beliefs of your business. In this lesson we’ll cover

  • How to create personas

  • Emotions + branding

  • Aakers 5 Dimension Brand Personality Model

  • Brand Adjectives

  • Focus Group Testing

How to Create a Persona

I recommend leveraging a tool, like the Hubspot Make My Persona tool, to help you walk through the different aspects of building a persona including:

  • Demographics

  • Psychographics

  • Business Intel

  • Goals + objectives of persona

Emotions + Branding

This all boils down to one primary question: What do you want people to feel when they’re interacting with your business?

Think about how other brands have created an emotional experience for you.

For example, walking into a Rolex store makes you feel sophisticated and important. When you see Dove branding, you may feel empowered and safe.

What do you want your audience to feel when they see your branding?

Aakers 5 Dimension Brand Personality Model

This framework was designed and published by Jennifer Aaker in the Journal of Marketing Research. It’s a nice tool to leverage when trying to figure out where your brand “fits in”.

The framework shuttles all brands into one of the five categories:

  • Ruggedness

  • Sincerity

  • Excitement

  • Competence

  • Sophistication

This article does a nice job of providing examples of popular brands and fitting them into a category.

Brand Adjectives

Choose three sets of five adjectives for your brand. The three sets could be the same, just with synonyms, or each set could take a different path. For example, Set 1 could be: genuine, fulfilling, original, relaxing, and familiar, and Set 2 could be honest, at ease, seasonal, clean, and encouraging.

Focus Group Testing.

You will need your three sets of five adjectives for this part.

  1. Identify your focus groups. I recommend four people per group and looking for specific types of reviewers:

    1. The brutally honest one

    2. The cheerleader

    3. The one who is intelligent but oblivious to marketing

    4. The one with deep marketing knowledge 

  2. Send out the grouping of adjectives to each focus group, along with a high-level of overview of the work you’ve already done on branding. Ask them to pick the grouping they feel resonates with the brand the most.