What's Your Brand Personality?

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What's Your Brand Personality?

A Distributor Channel Marketing Moment

🕒 3 min read

By Desiree Grace


You know that person; they are the life of the party. Your partner in business has a never-ending supply of stories and tall tales. A colleague is super-smart, knows numbers, and is a financial whiz. These are all recognizable personalities.

Brands have personalities, too. Like people, some are better than others. Why should you care about your brand personality?

Brand personality is how you humanize your brand, stand out from your competition, strike an authentic chord with your target market, and, really, provide a quick, short take on who you are, what you stand for, and what customers can expect. It's also a good standard to measure your decisions against.

Perhaps your brand is all about environmental responsibility. Do you rely on a third party for recycling without verifying their bona fides? No, not consistent with your brand personality.

How do you express brand personality, especially in a B2B environment?

Visual identity and other sensory cues communicate your brand personality. This could be your logo, your signage, how clear your counter is.

Communication style and tone of voice matter. Make sure they align with your brand personality. If your outbound communications get right down to business, with little room for chit-chat, that's okay if that's your brand.

How your brand behaves needs to be on point. See the example above. In brief, you need to deliver on your promises. If you say you have 24/7 service, you better have someone pick up the phone at 2 a.m.

A great example is a super-regional distributor with a brand personality that expresses "we are for the unstoppable." They take great pride in being reliable and being available, night or day, Saturday or Thursday, when their customers need them. They get rental equipment to the job site quickly and efficiently, too. The image, the communication, and the behavior are all aligned with their brand personality.

Brand Personality as a Recruiting Tool

Brand personality can be a recruiting tool, too. Want those data analytics majors to feel like they will have interesting, relevant work? Make sure your brand personality speaks to a culture where all contributions and viewpoints are respected. You might be competing against some powerful software companies, but frequent layoffs are not a great prospect for those graduates with hefty student loans. The stability and importance of the electrical industry might just resonate.

Speaking of recruiting, don't try to be something you are not. If the target customers or recruits want something flashy and exciting, and that's just not you, don't waste time, theirs or yours. You want the customers and the new hires that appreciate you for who you are; the brand personality should be a good match, just like your best friend. That power utility with a line-down? They appreciate the team that is there for the unstoppable.

So, whether your brand personality is relationships matter, good ol' boy you can count on, or super-smart tech geek, embrace it and share it with the world. You'll find the customers that appreciate you, and, like friends, they'll stick around for the long haul, with or without a party.


Having trouble figuring out who and what your brand personality is? Or, just need a refresh? Give River Heights Consulting a call: 563-514-1104. We help with voice of the customer, competitive analysis, and brand positioning. We have plenty of personality, too.


TL;DR

Brands have personalities, just like people, and in B2B that personality shows up in your visuals, your tone, and, most of all, how you behave. Keep all three aligned and deliver on your promises. Be honest about who you are, and you'll attract the customers and new hires who are the right fit.




About the Author

Desiree Grace writes the Marketing Moment for River Heights Consulting and The Distributor Channel. Her brand personality falls somewhere between "relationships matter" and "will absolutely notice your cluttered counter." She helps distributors figure out who they are and say it with confidence, party optional.












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