Industry Magazine Get JACK'D Magazine Summer 2018 | Page 20

What Is A Brand
Personality?
BY: DEB GABOR
BRANDING IS, in a lot of ways, the act
of creating expectations for how you will
interact with your customers.
Like an individual’s personality can
give you clues into what interacting
with him or her will be like, a brand’s
personality sets the expectation for
what you’ll experience as a customer of
a particular brand.
Whether that’s the expectation
that you’ll be relieved when you call
Zappos customer service, excited by
the kindness of the team at Passion
Planners, delighted by the fun emails
from Kettle and Fire, or hysterically
laughing at any interaction with Cards
Against Humanity, brands have a
personality, and it dictates what we
expect from them.
The brand personality can help
bring your brand into clearer focus. It
provides you with clues to how you want
customers to experience your brand—
the feeling you want to give them when
they interact with you through your
marketing, customer service, and even
your products.
What’s My Brand’s Personality?
To
understand
your
brand’s
personality, think of your brand as
if it were a human being. Create a
comprehensive list of personality traits
by detailing as many characteristics of
that person as you can.
If you’re having trouble getting
started, begin by considering how old
your brand is. Is it 10 years old? Is it 20
years old? Is it 40 years old? Is it 65 years
old?
Is your brand a man or a woman? Is it
friendly or slightly more aggressive? Is
it a lone wolf? Is it funny? Is it maybe a
little bit irreverent? Does it like to shock
people?
One of my favorite travel brands is
Virgin America. I will happily fly at odd
times of the day or on different days of
the week in order to take a Virgin flight
instead of a flight on one of the usual
suspects like United, American or Delta,
just because I love the Virgin brand.
Most of our domestic airlines have
really dry, authoritarian personalities
(with the exception of Southwest
Airlines). Aside from going “off book”
as an outlaw brand, the Virgin brand
personality is distinctly different from
other airlines. It’s upbeat. It’s funny.
It’s uplifting. It’s irreverent. It doesn’t
feel oppressive and rigid like the other
airlines.
Most travel days, I show up at the
airport thinking, “How am I going to
get screwed today?” When I fly Virgin,
I don’t have that feeling, and I actually
look forward to flying. I feel the brand’s
warmth. It’s welcoming. It’s modern. It’s
hip. It’s lighthearted.
20
In contrast, I recently took a trip to
New York on Delta, another brand that
offers a product that is exactly the
same as what Virgin America provides.
Yet Delta’s personality feels completely
different than Virgin’s. Everything on
Delta was totally buttoned up, all the
way down to the uniforms that the flight
attendants wore — pressed blouses
buttoned all the way up to the top, suit
jackets and vests, and black stockings. To
Delta’s credit, they had an entertaining
in-flight safety video featuring a host
of visual gags to keep passengers’
attention. But the whole experience of
watching that video fell flat because it
didn’t align with the rest of Delta’s more
serious brand personality.
Brand personality is so important for
defining the way people experience the
brand. The brand personality informs
everything from the way the brand looks,
the way it sounds, the voice and music it
uses in its commercials, the actual words
it always says, to the words it would never
say.
Brand personality is another way to
ensure your brand carries the right
tone and character to deliver on
your brand promise to your
customer.