Brand Personality and Persona & Key Audiences and Communities
TOMS persona
«A brand persona is a collection of personality traits, attitudes and values that your brand showcases on a regular basis to help connect with a certain audience segment. A brand persona can be a person, character, mascot or idea».
Every brand has a personality. By saying personality I do not mean the literal use of the noun but a metaphorical one that help people get to know the company. The personality of a brand is the description of every aspect of it. The profile that the brand want to give to the people. Why the brand personality is so important? Well, the answer is that by the brand personality many things can be defined. The target group, values, even the promotion techniques can be placed in the brand personality. It is like the brand image.
Now we will mention the personality for the brand that we are ambassadors, which is TOMS. As we mention to our previous article, TOMS is a very succesful company that want to change the world and its perspective. The key phrase, which is “One for One”, speaks for itself. For one thing that a customer will purchase (shoes or coffee or sunglasses or bags) another very important thing that everyone takes as granted will be given to someone who needs it. By this I believe that we have created an image for Toms as a human company.
TOMS image is socially responsible. The one thing that this company want to achieve is not money,fame or marketing success, but the help for people who needs it. By their marketing plans or campaigns they want to raise awareness for issues that matters, such as giving water, electricity, medication, shoes and safe births to people who can not have all those. Not all companies contribute like this for the common good and health. So we can freely say that TOMS is a brand that has a social impact to all of us.
The products can say a lot about the personality too. Every product ,even if its is shoes or coffee or sunglasses or bags, it is eco-friendly. The are made with recycled elements and the can reuse again. It really surprise me and my colleges when we visited the TOMS FLAGSHIP STORE in Athens that even the stickers on the cups were made by only paper without the use of plastic. The costumers can have it all with TOMS Shoes. A stylish, affordable, and practical shoe that donates to a child in need when they purchase a pair. So it is a modern and fashionable product too. It is something simple but for sure it has a bigger impact for the society.
The promotion of TOMS can define the brand personality too. TOMS promotes their work and product and even their social awareness via events, social media and campaigns. Every promotion technique is free for the public, everyone can access it. TOMS social media are very active and they have a minimalistic way of promoting the product. Everyone can understand it because of its simplify structure that wants to spread the message as easy as possible. The same thing happens to the campaigns. The are simple, joyful and emotional in some way because it touches the viewer with the pictures of a child holding their new shoes and all the smiles that the company and at the same time the costumer gave to someone in need.
Last but not least in order to analyse the brand personality it is necessary to mention the target group of TOMS. The target group of TOMS contains all ages but mainly men and women between 18–34 years old (teenagers, college students) that with an action of buying a pair of TOMS will become activists. The person that will want to buy and support TOMS’s work wants to take action. He or she will probably love fashion but at the same time the want to be active to a donation so huge that can change lives.
To sum up, I think it is obvious that TOMS has a specific personality. It is a brand that cares about people, humanity, and wants to help the world to be a better place for every single soul on the planet earth. It wants to protect the enviroment by this action. It is a green company, with the sense of social responsibility. TOMS can be characterize as a free spirit and human brand that aims to raise awareness and to be there for those in need.
Georgia Simitzi
Team: Georgia Simitzi Renata Stav Σοφία Τσαβδαρίδου Κωνσταντίνα Μουντάκη Stavriana
Professor: Betty Tsakarestou
