In this episode of Connecting The Dots we walk through the key elements of implementing some Branding and Marketing fundamentals of creating a Brand Personality.

Personalities have significant influence over who we attract and who we repel. A personality plays a big role in the type of work we do, the type of activities we enjoy and importantly the type of businesses and brands we associate ourselves with. A personality is also a measure that others use to decide if we are the type of person that should be a part of their tribe.

We create a brand personality by starting to think of traits of our brand as if it were a person. For example, if we were to think of traits that would describe Apple we could use words like Different, Imaginative, and Creative. Red Bull’s traits could be described as Rebellious, Dangerous, Adventurous and Brave.

These traits exemplify these brands and their approaches to marketing and are always foundational in any marketing deliverables. Almost like they have thought deeply about these beforehand and allowed the brand personality to flow from their brand through marketing and into how they present and position themselves in the market.

Once we have come up with a comprehensive, but focused, list of traits we are ready to use these to better understand our personality archetype. Personality archetypes are universally repeated and recognisable personalities that we are hardwired to connect with. Peter Walshe further speaks about how all good brands have personality archetypes. There are 12 archetypes that are commonly used; these are the Innocent, Everyman, Hero, Outlaw, Explorer, Creator, Ruler, Magician, Lover, Caregiver, Jester, and Sage.

Now that we have worked out our personality archetype what do we do with it? We do something that most businesses fail to do, implement and execute consistently. We use our archetypes as filters for our decision making.

For our visual branding we use archetype to inform what colours we choose, what our logo should look like, our fonts etc… For our marketing strategy we use our brand archetypes to inform our messaging, our offers and more. When creating marketing objectives we use our archetypes to inform how we design the User Experience, how we create funnels, and how we go about achieving our marketing goals. Finally for our deliverables our brand personality archetype must be reflected in the content we create and at every touch point we have with a customer.

Brand and Marketing Consulting.

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