Who is your brand?

Trying to define your brand can often be an exercise in futility. Looking at it with granular detail, critiquing it, breaking it down and studying it can be useful, but it can also take the enjoyment out of it. Sure, you’re serious, but, no doubt you started your brand, product or service as a way to work for yourself and build something you’re proud of, as well as countless other reasons.

Marketing your brand can often be a difficult task. Generating branding, tone of voice guidelines, messaging, mission statements and countless other collateral can be difficult. You have to look at it with a 360º degree lens, and consider all of its parts, breaking it down and considering things that even you hadn’t thought of. It also involves intensive collaboration – not everyone will see or think like you.

When we work with clients, it’s often our job to create these facets such as branding, tone of voice guidelines, values and audience demographics. What we have found immensely useful is thinking of the brand as a person.

After our initial contact with a client, we conduct brand reports for them, which is essentially an interview in which we ask the client questions about brand story, its founding, their personal backstory and where they want to take their product. This often involves clients showing a more personal element to their product and humanising it.

After this, we compile their interview and present it back to them. This takes the form of a brand overview that defines the organisation as a person. We give it characteristics, unique abilities, personality traits and friends, even.

Defining your brand as a person is a great way to get inside the “why” of your service or product, as opposed to the “how”. We, as humans, are social animals and thrive on interaction, intuitively reading and connecting with our friends, family and numerous people, good or bad. 

Bringing our experience of people makes it easier to visualise your brand and bring it to life. Here are a few steps to help you to help you construct your brand, and give it a personality that will help your product and service live and breathe in the minds of your team, and that of your audience. Here’s our step-by-step guide to finding out who your brand really is.

Back story

Think of when you started your business… what were the elements that forced it into existence? What was its conception? Think about what was going on in your life at the time you were developing the brand. Remembering why you started your idea and all the elements that went into its initial development can be useful when thinking about the “early days”.

We often hear from clients how their idea was sparked by something they had read in the paper, or a dream or passion they had held when they were growing up. 

Going forward, this human side of your story can help forge the audience connection, and it’s also something to bear in mind when meeting investors or consultants and business advisors.

Personality traits

This is the part of the character-building process where you can constructively build out your “person” and give them definable qualities. This is where you can shout about the best parts of your “personality” – what it is confident in, how it conducts itself, how it feels within itself, its outward appearance and disposition and how it considers itself. Obviously, this is where you can build on the positive side of your business, filling it with optimistic and shining examples of what the brand represents, which neatly segues into the next category.

Values and beliefs

This section builds on the personality traits, but it helps you mention the aspects you really care about. What drives your brand? What is it here in the world to do? Is it responsible and conscientious? What does it believe in and how can it make a difference to your audience? It’s important to think about how these values can be communicated in your brand messaging and the creative that you display across any marketing strategies, social channels and OOH advertising. Clarifying this will help you and your team reinforce these ideas and notions throughout any creative you generate, and at every interaction the brand has going forward.

Unique abilities

Think about this as your USP, but make it convincing and easy to relate to. Not everyone is a superhero, so ensure you keep it realistic and draw out the distinctive attributes which people can relate to and understand. Really hero the singular and noteworthy. What is your brand doing that is remarkable? There has to be a way of weaving these into your messaging and its relationship with your audience. Don’t overreach when thinking about your personality but be realistic and tread the line between confidence and self aggrandizement carefully. You don’t want to be one of those cocky, self-assured types that repels more people than they connect with.

Friends 

Who are “you” surrounded by? Often who we hang around with, or choose to spend our time with, can say more about us than our words and deeds.

Think about who your friends, or in this case, your audience might be: What is their profession; what are their interests; what do they do in their spare time; what do they care about; what do they relate to?

Consider all of these factors and apply it to your brand. The more you conjure your “friends, '' the more it can help you define your perspective.

Tone of voice

No doubt you’ll be doing this anyway for your product, but give yourself an actual voice. Humanise yourself- how will you speak to your audience? Think about whether there are particular terms or words you would like to use or avoid? This helps you communicate with the people you want to engage with. Also, it assists you with your choice of language and phrases that could be cliched or over-used so as to negatively alienate or exclude any of your new “friends”. Speak on their level and show you care. That way, there’s more chance they’ll be friends for life.

Style

When we talk about this, we’re not trying to bang on about what your brand might be wearing so much as how it carries itself. Similar to the characteristics section, there’s a distinction to be made about outward “show” and how it behaves and conducts itself. Is your product traditional and classic or is it innovative? If it walked into a funding round or investor session, how would it act? It’s important to think about how these kinds of behaviours would translate into your marketing and branding, what colours you use and the techniques and approaches your designs will take.

Ambitions

Think about your back story… What was it that you wanted your brand or product to achieve when you started it? Returning to these thoughts repeatedly helps you getting distracted or going off message in the early periods of your company’s genesis, just after and beyond. Going over this again and again helps you to consider and cement your own significance by reinforcing what you are aiming for, where you want to be and what you want to create and achieve in your journey there. 

Thinking and covering off these sections through the lens of personality creation, we have found, really helps you create a brand or product more thoroughly. 

Rather than generate a 2D, flat version of a service, this technique brings your organisation alive. Your ideas are given almost tangible characteristics that are easier to visualise, speak about and bring into the world

Dream up the narratives, take the steps, develop the voice and crystalize the qualities you want your brand to embody when it enters the world. 

Thinking about branding or marketing your service or product? Get in touch with Phable to see how we can develop and take it further for you today.