What does brand personality actually mean and what on earth has your business got to do with it? It sounds a bit like corporate jargon, but it’s actually very simple…

Good old dictionary.com says it’s:

• The sum total of the physical, mental, emotional, and social characteristics of an individual.
• The essential character of a person.

Simply put, it’s the traits or qualities that describe you.

And, when you say it like that, obviously your business has a personality too.

Most people can probably answer questions about their own personality fairly easily. I reckon you know if you’re a calm person, or a roller-skater, or a good listener, or the tallest k-pop crochet-bomber in London.

Your logo or your products may grab your audience’s attention but just like us as individuals, it’s your brand personality that your audience connects, resonates, and falls in love with! And that’s what we all want — connection!

How to build your brand personality

There are lots of different ways that brand strategists and individuals can build a brand personality, varying in how deep you want to dive into the process. Whether you use archetypes, brand keywords or Sims 3 traits (u-huh), this gives you a solid foundation that allows you to understand how your brand interacts with the world.

A popular way to define your brand personality is based on the ideas of Swiss psychologist Carl Jung, where your brand is aligned with one of 12 Archetypes — including types called The Rebel (doing things differently), The Caregiver (selfless and kind) or The Sage (full of knowledge).

If you love the game like I do and decide to choose Sims 3 traits to decide your brand personality (well done you for leaning into your individuality) then your Bella Goth combo could be: Good, Adventurous & Mystical.

How does this work though?

I mentioned that your personality helps you figure out how to interact in the world—how to look, act, speak, etc—just as you would as a person. So, let’s imagine your brand walks into a Caffè Nero and places an order. Here’s how it might look:

• The Rebel wouldn’t be seen dead with a PSL and order something wildly off-menu.
• The Caregiver might order a round of Fairtrade lattes for both herself and the rest of the team.
• Bella would order the brand new Gothiccino and donate her change to charity.

Notice how the item matches perfectly with the person (brand) based on the archetype attributes listed above. What coffee shop drink would your brand would order? By thinking about your brand as a person, it makes it easy to add on-brand personality to not just your visual identity but any area of your business.

Brand Keywords

Building brand personality isn’t so difficult after all, eh. Especially not if you’re working with a brand strategist at the start of your branding project, as they’ll go into detail to uncover exactly what attributes and behaviour best reflects your business based on your story, your audience, and your goals.

If you don’t have a brand designer or strategist to work with or you’d like to make a start on building your brand personality straight away, then you can use brand keywords to get started.

Write down as many words that feel like a good description of your business and how you want it to feel to your customers/clients/people. Is it Natural? Playful? Refined? Daring? If you aren’t sure where to start, you can use the list below (hot tip: print it out, highlight the ones you like and cross out the ones you don’t). Once done, go back through the list and refine it — maybe there are words that are too similar or don’t quite feel right anymore. Keep refining until you have 3-5.

50+ Brand Keywords to Help Build Your Brand Personality

Congrats, you’ve got the basis of your brand personality.

You can now use these keywords as a compass to ensure that your business is always acting as it should, in any situation — like the words used in your Instagram captions, what sort of merchandise you have, or even what coffee shop you host a launch event in.

This is where the real fun begins!

If you need a little more help with defining your brand personality or how to apply that personality to different areas of your business, then let’s chat and start your playful brand journey.