There’s no such thing as a boring brand. What, you say? My brand is a total snoozefest! How on earth do I get people to care about my not-so-interesting product? The answer is brand personality!
No matter the product, talking about one thing can get old pretty quickly. Just like people, brands must develop dynamic “personalities” to keep fans engaged. Creating a unique and engaging brand personality is no easy task, but these three tips will help get you started.
1. Establish a Solid Brand Identity:
Establishing a solid brand identity that definitively separates you from competitors is critical to successfully shaping your brand’s personality. This can be a mission statement or a set of tenets that explicitly defines what your brand will always represent. For example, Target has clearly distinguished itself from competitors Walmart and Kmart on social media by not focusing solely on deals and low prices but instead incorporating style, design, and lifestyle into content and a more hip, trendy language to align with their offline brand image.
2. Know Your Audience:
It’s important to know who you’ll be talking to, who you want to be talking to and the likely reasons why consumers choose to follow your brand or visit your brand’s social media channels. Make sure to also identify your audience’s likes, dislikes, and behavioral patterns when developing or reshaping your brand personality.
For instance, If your brand is meant to be informative or serve as an extension of customer service you will have to be more cautious and maintain an authoritative tone to be taken seriously and not alienate current consumers/fans. Capital One Small Business is an example of this type of brand. If your social channels are meant more for entertainment purposes you have greater freedom to explore tone, humor and overall voice. Skittles is a great example of a brand that has crafted a unique brand personality that its millennial audience can’t get enough of!
3. Don’t Be Afraid to Take Risks:
As mentioned, finding your brand personality is not always easy. You may have to test different strategies before you identify a winning persona for your brand. You have little to lose and much to gain. In some instances, it may even make sense to establish multiple presences for your brand to avoid confusing messaging like Allstate. The insurer maintained a more serious tone on their Facebook brand page but created a separate page for their popular Mayhem character which is more dark and humorous to match the character’s persona. The page currently has over 1.5 million fans – over 5x the fans of the brand page!
