Your brand isn't a person. But your customer is.

“If your brand were a person, who would they be.”

This is one of the most common questions asked when people begin to ‘redefine their brand’. And it’s something I even have asked clients myself in the past.

We want brands to feel human, have their own traits and values. Anything to avoid them sounding like hollow corporations. And personifying them is a seemingly quick way to access their emotion and tone.

But in practice, this approach leaves most businesses with the same result of the same vague analogies. I’m pretty sure over 60% of businesses describe themselves as “approachable” and “inspiring,“ whether they’re an independent yoga studio or a high street bank. And I can’t explain how many female solopreneurs describe themselves as “your big sister in ”.

Not to mention the fact these character terms are entirely subjective, and likely immediately interpreted differently by each employee and customer. “Fun” is one I see frequently, and one that makes my skin crawl each time because honestly what businesses are real customers actually describing as fun? Fun for me suggests humour, light-heartedness, an experience that actually brings me joy. I see some people describe Aldi as “fun”, but whilst I would agree their marketing team is funny, when I’m physically in their store and browsing and trying to buy my weekly shop, ‘fun’ is not a word I’m using for that experience. Groceries are an essential. Equally a client recently told me they see their brand as “fun”, and when I dove into that, they meant bold colours, a bold social energy and coolness to their approach. So entirely different to my interpretation of funny. And for their customers, “fun” might mean something else again.

So when so much of brand strategy is about shaping perception, why are we using tools that invite endless misunderstanding?

The rise of Brand personification

In the 1990s, Jennifer Aaker designed her Brand Personality Scale, which grouped personality into five broad dimensions of: sincerity, excitement, competence, sophistication, and ruggedness. This is briefly described by Al Lleong as:

1. Sincerity: Brands that are perceived as down-to-earth, honest, and wholesome.

2. Excitement: Brands that resonate with being daring, spirited and imaginative.

3. Competence: Brands that are seen as reliable, intelligent, and successful.

4. Sophistication: Those exuding an upper-class charm.

5. Ruggedness: Brands that invoke outdoorsy and robust attributes.

Around the same time, workshops were starting to borrow from psychology and archetype theory. With the overall goal of giving brands more ‘human’ like traits would make it easier for customers to connect.

Since then, there’s been endless iterations of Aakers’ scale, resulting in even more personality word banks, celebrity comparisons, and of course the ever present “if your brand were a person, who would they be?” question.

Example word bank that I myself have used with my clients.

For years this approach has enabled founders to get creative by simply giving their brand a character in the real world. But easy doesn’t always mean effective. I fear that the very point of Aaker making her model a scale, and not just a word, in order to make the approach a more precise description, has been lost in the name of ease.

Words alone are failing us

Instead of utilising scales, more and more brands are just simply naming 3 words they can use to describe their brand. Words that may feel affirming to the founder, but are failing to differentiate the brand.

It’s also quite an overwhelming experience. Asking a founder to distil their entire business into a handful of traits will likely result in them freezing up or listing broad words in an attempt to capture everything. Because they’ll want their brand to be everything. Warm and professional, bold and approachable. Listing any independent words gives businesses the chance to try to please everyone, which we all know ultimately attracts no one.

And as I’ve already touched on, this then leads to misinterpretations. Listing words like “fun” can lead designers to create visuals on their own interpretation, copywriters to draft tone of voice on another, and the client to end up confused or not listened to because their own interpretation that they imagined never made it onto the page.

This is backed up by the study from Azoulay and Kapferer, who concluded that “the present so-called personality scale merges all the human characteristics applicable to brands under one blanket word –‘personality’– thus losing the distinctiveness of the facets of brand identity; personality being only one of them.”

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Brands have evolved

The global tech boom in particular has “ushered in brands that might not fit snugly into Aaker’s categories”, as Al Lleong puts it. Because how do we “categorise a brand like Spotify or Airbnb? They might simultaneously evoke excitement (with their innovative offerings) and competence (given their market leadership).”

In a world where people want to relate to brands, simply stating a few personality traits is no longer relatable enough. Brands need to excite, need to show authority, and need to show a human side. And there’s far more needed to create a strategy that does all that than simply defining a few personality traits for your tone of voice and vibe to embody.

Customers have also evolved.

As consumers, we are expecting more and more of brands. Not only in how they serve us but in how they stand for their beliefs. A 2018 study from Accenture showed that 63% of consumers are buying goods and services from companies that reflect their personal values and beliefs, and 62% of consumers want companies to take a stand on social, cultural, environmental, and political issues close to their hearts.

Data from Accenture suggests that consumers were buying from purpose-led companies.

But recently this is contradicted by results such as a 26% decline in Bud Light sales in the months after they collaborated with Dylan Mulvaney, a transgender influencer, to release a special edition beer.

The pandemic, worldwide recessions, and more dividing political issues of late have without doubt changed the landscape for brands. There’s more competition than ever, the pace of businesses is only getting faster, and different tech tools available to start, grow, and magnify brands are becoming more widely adopted each day. So it was perhaps naïve of us in the 1990’s, when many of these psychology backed frameworks were created, to not think of how the very psychology of the customer would change.

It has to be about the customer

My core problem with asking the question of “If your brand were a person, who would they be,” is that it makes it all about your brand. Not your customer.

Your customer is a real-life human. So rather than making up an imaginary persona, dive into the community your business is showing up for.

What is their personality?

What are their beliefs?

What are their priorities?

What are their problems?

What are their desires?

You don’t need to personify your brand when you can realise that you have an actual person in front of you that you can instead research and describe.

This makes your overall map much simpler when you’re using data-backed information rather than a series of adjectives your exec team have come up with.

Many of these frameworks aren’t necessarily outdated, they’re just based around the wrong question. It should never have been about who you are as a business. It should always be about who your customer is as a person.

The chameleon effect

As humans, we have a tendency to simply mimic or mirror other peoples behaviours, especially when we want that person to like us. This is known as the chameleon effect. And so mirroring your customers personality rather than trying to come up with an entirely new persona is the most human thing a business can do.

If your customer is political, align yourself with their political values.

If your customer is looking for a funny and bold service provider, be funny and bold with your business.

By all means use the Aaker scale for this, or whatever variation most calls to you. But whatever you use, rather than trying to make up this imaginary person, base it on the one you’re trying to impress.

Once you reframe how you approach this, everything should instantly become clearer.

And if you still can’t answer that initial question of who your target customer is, then that’s what I can help with. So reach out to see how we can work through defining the basis of your business strategy.

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