7 Tips for Developing a Brand Personality and Brand Personas for Your Business or Website By Catherine Kaputa "Nothing is so powerful as an insight into human nature, what compulsions drive a man, what instincts dominate his action, even though his language so often camouflages what really motivates him. For if you know these things about a man you can touch him at the core of his being."
– Bill Bernbach, legendary advertising creative leader In many ways, brands are like people. And, as I like to say to my self-branding clients, people are like brands. Brands take on human like traits as we become attached to them, seek them out, and assign human personalities to them. After all, like the friends we have, the brands we associate with say something about us to the world outside (and maybe even to ourselves).
Brand Personality A popular element of creative testing has been to ask focus groups, “If brand X were a famous person, who would it be?”
It can bevery revealing and provide helpful marketing information. Often more telling than asking people a more pointed question like, “Why do you like brand X? The request for an analogy opens up inner beliefs and connections about the brand in human terms that most people can identify with.
If you’re an entrepreneur or involved in marketing, write down your company’s brand personality to bring your brand concept to life, and use it as a jumping off point as you develop all the brand’s trappings – name, packaging, advertising, web design, what have you
Brand Personas The counterpoint to the brand’s personality is the customer persona. Personas are customer archetypes written with a rich narrative storyline kind of like a casting call for a movie script. Rather than think in terms of your target market as a generic demographic group, say women 25 – 54, you write a persona about two or three protypical customers, like Vera, Sarah and Nora. Personas are used by ad agencies to help the creative people in developing the advertising, and are now making a big impact in website design and internet marketing. (It’s much easier to develop a website that people like Vera, Sarah and Nora will like, than designing for generic, faceless people.
Personas provide insight into your target groups. Of course, you need to visualize what your personas look like physically, but you also want to explore what makes them tick. What do they like? Hate? What is the context of their lives? What’s the back story? You’ll find that personas make the branding job infinitely easier. Personas help to set the right tone for your PR, advertising, web design and even product development.
Here are some tips from my new book, U are a Brand, on how to develop brand personas:
– Create a fictional bio for each persona. You want to really know these people as a close friend so that your company or product will fit the bill. Made sure you can answer questions about the context of their lives - how they live and what they do.
– Tap into your inner Freud: Tap into what the “needs” 1spoken and unspoken - of your personas. What do they want?
What are their motivations? What bugs them? What’s important? Here is where your intuition can help fill in the blanks – Think outside-in: Begin brand development from the persona’s perspective (Outside). What are their biases and proclivities? Then, develop the Inside (the marketing messages, product design, website design and content) that will appeal to the persona’s mindset – Think in terms of target markets: Be focused and specific:
a company or product that tries to satisfy everyone, satisfies no one. Build your personas around specific, though fictional, people. They should read not as statistics but people you might meet on the street.
– Build a strong visual identity: When you develop your personas, use pictures and other visual references so that you and your marketing people can clearly visualize each persona. If you can dream about them, then you’ve really done your job.
– Trigger the right connections: Find the trigger words and hot buttons that appeal to your brand’s personas and use them in your marketing.
– Tap into soft power. Soft power is about attracting people through branding and other soft ideas: product name, style, and design. If you really understand your personas, this will be easy.
Catherine Kaputa is a brand strategist, speaker and author of U R a Brand, How Smart People Brand Themselves for Business Success (www.urabrand.com Entrepreneurs and marketing mavens can visit BrandEspresso, a website dedicated to branding double shots for growing companies (www.brandespresso.com For personal branding tips and advice, visit www.selfbrand.com.
7 Tips for Developing a Brand Personality and Brand Personas for Your Business or Website - To learn more about this author, visit Catherine Kaputa's Website.
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Catherine Kaputa
(Visit Catherine's Website)
Catherine Kaputa is a twenty year veteran
of branding and advertising – from Madison
Avenue to Wall Street to the halls of
academe to the founder of her own company,
a New York City-based brand strategy firm
that works with people, products and
companies. Visit www.brandesp
resso.com for branding advice for
entrepreneurs and marketers, and visit www.selfbrand.co
m for personal branding tips.
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