Have you defined your brand personality?

Brand personality is attributing human characteristics to a brand.

Having a defined brand personality differentiates your business brand from other brands and helps you to stand out and break through the clutter. It will guide the way you express and portray your brand (how your brand speaks, behaves and looks), and ensure your brand is represented consistently. It will help the right people to connect with your brand, and increase brand awareness.

If your business doesn’t have a defined brand personality, it’s worth determining one. (And then reviewing your brand alignment and strategy against it!)

There are various brand personality models, however, I think for small businesses it’s satisfactory to select a set of keywords to describe the essence of your business personality. Three (max. four) are enough.

For example, an organic produce company might define its brand personality as honest, friendly and principled.

A high-end hair salon could describe its brand personality as glamorous, exclusive and professional.

You can use the extensive (but not exhaustive) list of keywords above to help define your business’s brand personality. Or use a thesaurus to help you come up with the right words. Nuances are important – happy, cheerful and exuberant mean similar things, but each word gives a different feeling (this is also important for your brand language and writing).

Once you have a brand personality defined, your visual identity and brand language and voice will flow from this. And you can get your branding on target.