“He who stands for nothing falls for everything.”
The saying applies to brands just as much as individuals. If you don’t know what your brand stands for then you will crumble due to competitive forces.
The key to knowing what you stand for is knowing who you are.
Did you ever notice that your competition is always trying to define you? Look at Samsung’s recent string of ads that paint the iPhone as out-dated, passé, and even (gasp!) un-cool. In their ads, Samsung casts young, hip people as Samsung-owners, and older, out-of-touch, ignorant shoppers as iPhone owners who are blindly following each other.
Your competition wants to define you. If you don’t define yourself your competition will do it for you.
Success means never letting the competition define you. Instead you have to define yourself based on a point of view you care deeply about. ~Tom Chappell, Tom’s of Maine
3 Steps to Building Brand Personality
1) Know who you are.
Go through a third-party discovery session with a brand development expert that can ask questions that will uncover your brand identity.
2) Articulate your identity to all of your employees.
Often you’ll find C-level executives and Directors know the brand identity best. However, they are often the furthest-removed from the customer. Unfortunately the “front line” employees have the least training regarding brand personality.
3) Filter and test for brand integrity.
The word “integrity” comes from the Latin word Integer which means “wholeness” or “perfect condition”.
Brand integrity means having one brand identity through all of your brand touch points.
A company’s web, social, in-store, online, and customer service experiences all must be evaluated as an extension and reinforcement of the brand personality.
