The Klean Kanteen Brand Persona
Joy McKinley
*Note: This article is a class assignment for BUS 465 — Integrated Brand Promotion and Advertising at NCSU Poole College of Management.
Hello everyone, it is my pleasure to introduce you to Joy, the brand persona for Klean Kanteen.
Joy is 20, and comes from the small town of Chico, California. She goes to college in Portland, where she is studying environmental science, but she’s close to her family and goes back home whenever she has a long break. She has two younger sisters, Karissa and Rachel, and two dogs (Sierra and Shasta). They technically have a cat too, but she’s never around. Plus, Joy is a dog person anyway.
Joy’s favorite pastime is anything active and outdoorsy. She takes that after her parents, who made it their mission to teach their daughters how to be around nature and appreciate it. They used to go camping in Yosemite a lot, but Joy’s favorite time of the year has always been Christmas at the Lassen family cabin. This is especially true after last year when her mom got her and her sisters matching Subaru SUVs to make sure they had a solid car for all their adventures.
While in school, Joy tries carpooling whenever she can, because as much as she loves her Subaru it doesn’t make it an EV. She goes thrift shopping if she needs any clothing because there’s no point in buying something new when people waste so many good items already. Moreover, Portland thrift stores are full of Patagonia, North Face, La Sportiva clothes, and so on. She is vegetarian, even though her boyfriend is trying to get her to go vegan, and she loves going to farmers' markets and community gardens to get her food.
Last but not least, she values kindness, reliability, and integrity. She will take the word of a friend over social media suggestions any day, and will stand up and support anything that she thinks is right. That is why she has been buying Klean Kanteens ever since she got her first allowance. She loves the fact that the brand is from her hometown, and is a B corporation. She especially appreciates their recycled steel collection, because she strongly believes in the concept of a circular economy and is convinced that everybody can make a difference. Moreover, due to her passion for nature and integrity, she scored an internship with them last summer and truly loved it. She never realized how much effort goes into being sustainable and staying competitive in the market, but since she had that epiphany she has vowed to do her very best to help sustainable companies out.
That is why, after years without social media (because it does portray a beautiful but unrealistic version of reality), she has taken up a new online presence to spread the message about sustainability and ethical businesses in today’s world. In her spare time, she now travels around Portland and interviews local businesses that have creative and sustainable ideas. She hopes that, with a greater following, she will be able to make it a full-time career.
