Defining Your Personality

Digital Marketing - Study Notes:

Brand personality

We're going to have a look at the importance of brand personality through your content marketing.

How you speak to customers

Are you friendly? Are you approachable? Are you warm? Or are you more formal and a little bit cold? This will be determined by your brand objectives and by the type of business that you are.

What's appropriate for your individual industry?

Tone of voice

Are you upbeat? Are you endlessly optimistic? Or are you a little bit more real and hard-hitting? Consider what your business proposition is and what your consumers are going to respond and resonate with. And lastly, what style do you come across in?

Imagery and style

In terms of your imagery and your video style, are you slick and are you dark? Are you too cool? Or are you very fun and upbeat and bright and colorful? Think about the brands Coca-Cola versus Mercedes-Benz. Two very different brands in terms of their look, their feel, their tone of voice, and their style.

Importance of brand personality

Why is it important for you to have personality in your brand?

• Point of difference: It adds a point of difference versus your competitors. It enables you to be able to vocalize what your business proposition is, and allows for a resonance with your target audience that is right for you that doesn't have duplication with a competitor set.
• Unique vantage point: It allows you with a unique vantage point, where your customers can see the unique proposition that you offer within the market that differentiates you from your competitors.
• Resonance: It offers that resonance with the end consumer. People don't like thinking of brands as cold, hard businesses. They like thinking of brands as people with a story to tell. And certainly having the why behind what you're selling, and being able to act with conviction and a personality, will help it resonating with a consumer.

Example: Old Spice

Here's an example of great brand personality that's been focused through content marketing.

Old Spice, the men's deodorant and aftershave brand have a really unique tone of voice. They have a Twitter following of over 215,000 Twitter followers, making them one of the most followed personal care brands on the planet. Their personality centers around three key pillars. One is humor. They don't take themselves too seriously. They use a really quirky style in terms of their content, they speak their minds, and they're very honest about their approach.

As you can see from this, they don't feel the need to conform with their competitors' view on elite performance or male masculinity. They're here to have a bit of fun. And lastly, they're quite provocative. A lot of personal care brands try to paint the picture of increasing attraction or desire with use. With their particular execution, they use the Old Spice guy, who's a bit quirky, a bit funny, and elicits the emotional response of laughter and humor.

What story do you want to tell?

Again, they're shattering the norms and they're not conforming to what the industry expects them to do. And they have a very unique personality that offers them a USP within the market. Roughly, elements of your personality can be themed into three overall categories.

Functional

There's the functional. This is the less emotive side of your brand, very much around the educational story of the why you're selling.

It also talks about what your service offering is and potentially your products.

Emotional

Then we get into the emotional side. This is the part that really resonates with people. It's the humor, the passion points, the interest sets. What makes you exciting? What makes you relevant? What makes you funny?

And what makes you ultimately relatable?

Essential

This is the call-to-action piece that we talked about previously. Where you're located, what your price points are, your availability, and your distribution, and how consumers can actually engage with you thereafter. Your personality is defined by how hard or how soft you go in these particular areas, how forceful you are with your messaging, and also, what element plays the biggest role.

For some brands like Dove, for example, emotion is everything. However, if you were working in a small solicitor, functionality and essential information may be more important to you than the emotive aspect of what you're actually marketing.