Humanising your business for new world thinking

The Pandemic opened up the eyes of audiences who once may have let things go unnoticed. In this new world thinking, markets are changing because the customer mindset has changed.

Is your brands personality and business approach adapting to the market evolution?

Personality plays a huge part in how we interact and connect with others; we are drawn to like-minded people with personality types that we can connect with. When a person has a great personality they can be fun to be around, make us a better person or even inspire us to be better – becoming a positive influence and being memorable for all the right reasons.

Well, it works the same way with your brand.

When addressing your brands personality, with the goal to be memorable, it is important to ensure the traits that the brand expresses enable it to connect with the customer. Embodying a personality that your customers can positively connect with will help your brand get ahead of its competitors.

The Apple personality

One brand that utilises brand personality incredibly well, is Apple.

Apple’s brand exudes a feeling of modernity and being cool, this speaks directly to the younger generation – especially Millennials. The image often associated with Apple contains references to the youthful, energetic, fresh-faced demographic – exactly the target market they seek to capture.

Apple adopts a brave, often quirky and eye-catching way of advertising their products, which sets them apart. The brands defined personality traits are consistent throughout the business showcase.

To note: Making sure that your brand’s voice is consistent – effectively communicating who you are and what you are about, is the best way to make sure your customers can connect with you on a deeper level.

Why brand personality is important

Actively communicating with a tone of voice and a visual brand style that is consistent, is effectively increasing the potential for your audience to remember you.

By humanising your brand, through aligning the brand’s traits to the audience, you are maximising the chance that people will see something special, valuable and interesting in what your business has to offer.

The truth is that most people – although they would like to think they are logical – make emotional decisions, and your brand should be in a position to tap into this.

The Patagonia approach

Sports brand, Patagonia, are a manufacturer of clothing and gear for outdoor pursuits – manufacturing products for snowboarding, mountain biking and trail-running, to name a few.

What stands Patagonia out from the crowd, is how the brand puts their social and environmental response at the forefront of what they do. The brands promise, mission and purpose are all aligned; to save the planet.

Everything the company does comes back to this; whether it’s down to the quality of the materials, making sure they produce products guaranteed to last or, whether it’s the causes they advocate for.

The colour palette the brand utilises is colourful but earthy, perfectly reflecting the surroundings in which they are worn by its customers. Their message is simple and the language they use is honest and sincere, at every touch point of the business.

To note: The world has changed drastically since the Pandemic, audiences have opened their eyes to the world around them. If you have a brand that supports this new world ethos, then your customers will become your brand ambassadors as part of the conversation of change.

How to communicate your brand personality

The first step to communicating your brand personality is to define the traits and characteristics it personifies, with a goal of how to most effectively speak to your target customer base.

A key component of this is to make sure that you have a good understanding of the audience’s personality, so that you can successfully target the kind of voice and visual language that will communicate with them.

Through the use of the following points, you can target the key areas that need to be considered to communicate a consistent and effective brand personality.

Visual language:

• The brand logo
• Brand colour palette
• The choice of brand typefaces
• Consistent use of graphic devices, patterns and icons
• The imagery used e.g., photography, video, illustration.

Brand voice:

• The brand name
• The supporting strap line used
• The tone of voice used in internal / external communications
• The kinds of words that are appropriate / not appropriate.

Business activity:

• Relevant and refined service offerings
• Quality and considered customer service policies
• The process of onboarding / offboarding.

The new world ready Levi’s

Jean brand, Levi’s, is one of the most recognisable brands in the world, with various devices that are synonymous with the brand i.e., the red tab, the pocket logo and the jean patch with the jeans being split up the middle by two horses.

The brand has always had a reasonably recognisable personality, coming across as young, rugged, rebellious and free.

However, recently the brand has repositioned itself, refining the personality traits with a highly effective evolution.

Denim is one of the least environmentally friendly clothing materials available, requiring massive amounts of water and energy to create. Levi’s have recognised that their target customers have shifted their focus to more eco-friendly causes, and so the brand personality has adapted to encompass this.

The Levi’s brand voice now focuses much more on social causes, and in particular the fact that they create denim built to last. The advertising is now more transparent and honest, expressing how they haven’t always got things right – this admission of wrongdoing, and fundamental change, speaks directly to the new world market.

In conclusion

To make sure that you can successfully communicate your brand personality to your customers, the key is consistency.

Knowing your audience is essential, this allows you to be able to tailor your brands traits to best communicate with them. Pick traits that reflect the mindset and ambitions of your customers, this will enable you to engage and connect with them on an emotive level – this tone then needs to be echoed throughout all of your marketing and service communications.

Ensuring you have a formidable brand personality verifies that you have a way to stand out from the crowd, and will allow you to build long-lasting, loyal relationships with your customers.

Whatever the brand personality you choose, just be sure that it fits with your core values and aligns with all the elements of your business.

You can read about the processes and methods our team adopts when working on the nuances of a clients brand, by clicking here

If you’re a business owner wanting to re-evaluate and evolve your brand to better align with the new world market, get in touch with our friendly brand experts today by calling us on 01926 754038 or email us at hello@designmc.org