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Guest post by: Catherine Kaputa Become an Author

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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” -
spoken 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.

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