What Is Your Brand Personality?
If your brand were a person, what kind of person would it be? How would you describe the characteristics that make its personality?
It might sound strange, but these are questions worth asking. You see, in business, we often focus on features and benefits of our offerings, and we don’t pay much attention to the image the brand projects.
Brand personality is a set of human characteristics and traits that are attributed to, and associated with, a brand. It is a framework of qualitative value-added elements that provokes an emotional and logical responses by the target market, intending to cause positive actions that benefit the firm.
For example, we might think of a car brand as sporty, elegant, sophisticated, or agile – these are human-like personality traits, not features or technical specifications.
As an organization, you should strive to have a brand personality the target market relates to, favorably. Since effectively projected brand personality boosts the brand’s commercial success and adds to the brand’s equity (commercial value), marketers employ various efforts to shape the way people feel about their brand.
Over the years, sets of ‘predetermined’ trait categories like the “Five Dimensions of Brand Personality” (Excitement, Sincerity, Ruggedness, Competence, and Sophistication) and mapping techniques have emerged, but we find them all rather constraining and detrimental to the creative process, like a ‘multiple choice’ answer. Instead, we prefer to define the brand personality free.
One neat technique you can use to get the process of determining your brand’s personality going, is to think of what celebrity would you choose (assuming money is no object) to endorse your brand in a TV commercial. Successful companies carefully choose a celebrity to represent them who his or her mere presence immediately convey the personality they want to associate with their brand.
At Fractional CMO & Marketing we help clients shape and improve their brand personality every day. Call us, and we’ll be happy to discuss your brand personality with you without any obligation on your part.
Duke Merhavy, MBA, Ph.D. President & Chief Marketing Officer
What Is Fractional CMO & Marketing?
Fractional CMO & Marketing is ‘Your Outsource Marketing Department’ when you need expert marketing leadership and marketing services to accelerate growth and improve profitability, but you’re not quite ready to hire a full-time Chief Marketing Officer or your own marketing department Our unique arrangement is the most efficient, innovative, and cost-effective formula for you. Click on the image on the right to watch a short video.
We Help When You Need To:
- Generate more of the right kind of leads
- Close more sales faster
- Get repeat sales
- Formulate a more effective message
- Produce powerful sales tools
- Establish brand awareness, recognition, and preference
- Differentiate your brand from the competition
- Improve customer satisfaction and loyalty
- Develop lasting relationships with customers
- Introduce new products
Season’s Greetings! The Tradition of the Holiday Card
By Polly Stroup, Editor and Copywriter
It’s one of the most tried and true traditions! Sending holiday cards to employees, customers, and clients and thanking them for their contributions has made the day of many. Who
would have thought the tradition of sending holiday cards began with the invention of the penny stamp?
In 1843 the British postal system introduced “Penny Post,” allowing senders to send a letter or card anywhere in the country by affixing a penny stamp. There couldn’t have been a better invention for the act of spreading holiday cheer.
Prominent supporter and employee of the postal service, Sir Henry Cole was a popular fellow. His task of sending personalized holiday greetings to friends was quite an undertaking. His thought: Why not just mass produce one message to send to everyone?
He asked artist friend, J.C. Horsley, to design a greeting card that would embody the spirit of the holiday. The card also included the salutations, “To” and “From.” With the production of his own cards a success, Cole saw a commercial opportunity for people to send Christmas messages cheaply, thanks to the penny stamp, and with less hassle. He and Horsley produced replicas of the original card to sell for about 8 cents per card, selling thousands.
While Cole and Horsley get the credit for the first mass-produced holiday card, it took several decades for it to catch on. Once it did, it became an integral part of our celebrations, whether for family or business associates!
Reminder: It is time to prepare for the holidays – Plan to send your customers holidays greetings and thank them for their business during the year.
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