The personality of your brand reflected in everything you unfold to the big world, as well as your internal communications. That is not just visually with color palettes, imagery, and design. It’s also linguistically. 

Just as a person’s personality is reflected in their tone of voice and dialogue, the same can be said for the written language brand practices and the subsequent impression it creates. Think of a friendly person, their tone of voice is likely to be pleasant, warm, and caring. In contrast, someone who is more of a daredevil of the show may come across more confident and slightly aggressive.

Brands work in exactly the same way. That’s not to say there’s anything wrong with either of those mentioned; as we’ll touch on later your brand values will naturally influence your tone.

However, speaking to your audience the wrong way for sure make you feel like a sting - your target audience rejects your blog posts, social media pages, or even your products/ services. 

Readers always want to make an emotional connection with the brands they follow. They look for the content that speaks to them - not at them. As a marketer, you must know your target audience and how to make that content click. But the task, as ever, is a bit harder than it seems.

Let’s take a closer look at what’s a brand voice, why it’s important and how to create a brand personality.

What Is Brand Voice?

Brand voice refers to the emotions and personality infused into the company’s communications. 

It includes everything from the words and language you use, to the personality and images your marketing assets aim to invoke. It plays an essential role in making sure your message cuts through the noise and makes a lasting impression on potential customers.

Why Is Having A Brand Voice Is Important? 

The most enduring companies have a strong personality and a clear sense of purpose. As a brand, your message is delivered consistently everywhere with an established brand voice. 

Developing brand recognition with your audience requires consistency and repetition. If your personality or messaging appears to change frequently, it’s harder for audiences to know exactly what you’re all about. As a result, your efforts are likely to fall flat and lose out to a better-branded option.

Brand Voice Vs Brand Tone

In addition to the brand voice, it is also important to understand brand tone. 

Brand Voice	Brand Tone
This describes your company’s personality.	The emotional inflection applied to your voice.
It is consistent and unchanging	It adjusts to what’s suitable for a particular piece or message.

While your voice remains consistent, the tone may change according to the context of your messaging. For example, a social media post about a fun sale would have a more light-hearted tone than one breaking news about a company crisis.

What is Brand Personality?

If you don’t know what brand personality is, it’s time to learn. In simple terms, customers naturally ascribe human characteristics to brands they follow. For instant Dove, the cosmetic company has a warm and feminine personality. Whereas Red Bull the energy drink company has a young, brash and slightly irreverent brand personality. 

Types of Brand Personalities

Most brand personalities can fit into five broad categories. Each category has its own personality traits and strengths:

• Competence - Reliable, intelligent and successful. Customers are attracted to brands like this because they believe they will get the job done. Brands like Microsoft.

• Ruggedness - Thick-skinned, tough and outdoorsy. These brands make buyers feel powerful and remind them of nature. Brands like Woodland.

• Excitement -   Daring, imaginative, and up-to-date. Maybe they push the limits, but playfully. These brands are good at creating a lot of hype and building excitement in their audience, like Mountain Dew.

• Sincerity -Wholesome, genuine, and honest. Customers love brands like this because they are believable and trustworthy. These brands keep to their promises and meet expectations. Brands like Cadbury.

• Sophistication - Charming, high-class and refined. It usually takes time to exude sophistication as a brand, but once they get there, these brands are poised, polished, and make their customers feel classy and elegant. Brands like Armani.  

How To Create A Brand Personality 

When trying to figure out where your brand fits into all of this, you basically have to ask yourself: Who would my shoppers love to hang out with?

From here on out, you should be visualizing your brand as a human being. How does it look? What should it sound like when it speaks? These characteristics, fuel the emotional and associative qualities of your brand that your customers will connect with.

And, answering these questions will also help inform the type of branding you choose to do later on.

There may be some human characteristics already inherent to your brand, whether they come out through the silly holiday memes you post all over Facebook, or the serious-but-informative newsletter you send out to followers once a month.

However, your brand’s pre-existing traits should contribute to the same emotional message rather than contradict one another. And remember, brand personalities are only effective if they resonate with your target audience.

You should already know who your target audience is, what their pain points are, and how they communicate. With all of this in mind, it’s time to follow all the steps that answer your query about how to create a brand personality.

Step #1 - Consider The Competition 

As important as it is for your brand personality to reflect your brand message, you also want to stand out next to your competitors. The secret here is to take a different path and focus on sincerity. After all, it’s a good way to uniquely position yourself in the market and differentiate your brand from others. 

Step #2 - Get Adjective On The Paper 

Describe your brand in one word - then do it again, again and again. Fill up a page with the adjectives that best picture your brand image. Now pick the three descriptions that best fits with who your brand is. 

Step #3 - Do SWOT Analysis

A SWOT analysis will help you better understand your brand. Considering the characteristics of the brand will help you find the features you want to define in the brand. Defining your brand’s features is very importing if you’re struggling with how to create a brand personality. SWOT stands for:

• Strengths:  Positive attributes of your brand that provide an edge over your competition.
• Weaknesses: Features that prove to be negative to your brand.
• Opportunities: Changes and trends in your industry that offer opportunities for your brands.
• Threats: Components in the industry that may cause problems for your brand.

Step #4 - Have A Conversation With Your Brand

Yes, you read that correctly. Now that you’ve discovered which features define your brand, the best way to determine your brand voice is to speak with it! Ask your brand a question; how would it answer you? Is it:

• Informative?
• Serious?
• Futuristic?
• Relatable?
• Simplistic?  

The list of possibilities is long but worth exploring. Once you figure out what your brand voice is, you’ll be using the linguistic style in everything you do, from the content you create in the way you answer your customers’ FAQs. Your brand voice is one of the key ways you’ll be transmitting your entire brand message to your audience, so take the time to get it right!

For details read - How 3 Things Will Change The Way You Approach Creating The Perfect Brand Strategy 

Step #5 - Be Consistent 

Once you have understood what your unique brand personality is, commit to it. 

The way your brand behaves should be in line with the traits that define it – if you’re funny, spread humor across your campaigns; if you’re polished and elite, don’t make practical jokes your thing.

Of course, if something isn’t resonating with your audience, then don’t worry about tweaking your personality to be more in line with what they want.

Bottom Line 

Developing a unique and consistent brand personality is a must for any company that wants to make the most of its existing customer base while also attracting new customers. If you take the time to really consider what you want to say to your customers – and what they want to hear from you – you can create the kind of brand personality that turns prospective customers into paying ones.

By the end of this article hope you got your answer about how to create a brand personality. Share your thoughts with us in the comment section below. 

Have a good day!