Does Your Brand Have a Personality?

Everything in marketing still starts with the brand. And even though you’re going to tailor your brand communications to each channel, device and touchpoint along your customer’s journey, your brand must always remain recognizably yours.

And while today, brand message consistency is more important than ever, it also presents somewhat of a problem. How can you communicate across dozens of channels with consistency without being boring and repetitive?

At the core of this challenge is confusion between brand “personality” and brand “behavior:”

• You first need to decide how you want your brand to come across (personality) – approachable, smart, sophisticated and so on.
• Then, just like a person, your brand may behave differently depending on the situation (which helps to avoid being “boring” while remaining “consistent”).

And just like a human personality sets the tone for how we dress, talk and act, brand personality affects your visual design and tone and style of your communications. It’s what makes a brand look and feel differently from its peers and competitors. It’s also what makes your brand likable and relatable.

To assist you in defining your brand personality, download our free brand personality worksheet.

To dive deeper into this subject, we’ve developed this short video in which Ida Cheinman, Substance151 principal and creative director explains the key differences between brand personality and behavior and provides practical tips for developing each for your brand.