Brand voice: a lasting impression.

Having a strong brand personality as a brand is important. In some cases, it’s even a key asset for the brand. Being able to speak differently in some cases can persuade customers to buy your product, even if it’s more expensive.

What is a brand voice or personality?

Apple is stylish, casual, smart, cool. MTV is quirky, young, energetic. People do not think about brands as abstract concepts, they see them as personalities. And some personalities connect better than others. A brand voice is the unique voice that fit’s a brand. It’s how the brands looks and feels, it’s how it talks. It’s how a person answers the phone and how facebook posts are written.

Why do I need one?

People think they make buying decisions based on the functional benefits a brand has. This one is a bit cheaper, this one has a better screen. But in reality, a lot of the buying is done on the subconsious level, how do they feel about the brand, how do they connect on an emotional level. So having a clear personality makes sure customers know what to expect. It also allows people working for your brand to know how they need to talk, so the brand can be consistent.

Defining brand attributes

The spider graph allows you to quickly identify the most relevant attributes for your audience.

How do we start defining the personality? There are a couple of important steps:

• Associate how you want to be percieved, what personality traits are important for them.
• Look for a few well known personalities (fictional or non-fictional) that they you would like to associate with the brand. Then ask why.
• Focus on easy recognisable traits, not intrinsic qualities. For example, ‘Honesty’ is not easy to be ‘seen’ in an instant. That is more of a ‘value’ and less of an attribute. How can we show honesty? By being consise, clear, open,…
• Make a list of these attributes, circle out those that work the best and form a cohesive whole. A maximum of five could be enough.
• Each attribute can have a certain ‘impact’. Decide what attributes are the most important for your target audience. You can plot the different attributes in a spider graph and create a personality profile.

How to implement brand personality

Creating the brand personality is important a couple of things:

• Tone of voice: create the right tone of voice in your copywriting.
• Visual identity: it’s the first parameter for how it should look visually.
• Real life: making sure the brand is consistent trough online and offline is very important. By clearly defining this you will be able to train staff to be ‘on brand’ all the time.

This article is written as part of a collaboration between HolaBrief and Let’s talk branding.

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