Do You Know Your Brand Personality?

How to see your brand the way your audiences see you, in order to make your branding and marketing better.

We all know that we connect better with another person than a nameless, faceless business. So one of the exercises I have always done when helping our clients put a face to their brand is to have them articulate how a stranger would describe “meeting” their brand at a cocktail party. How are they dressed? Do you feel comfortable around them? Are they a good listener? Do you feel like there is more you would like to know about them?

The answers to these questions provide “outside-in” insights into how engaging a brand, product or service is in the market. However, my clients are often so close to their brand that they find it hard to articulate these qualities from an outsider’s point of view. And from those who can describe their brand in this way, I often get subjective or aspirational feedback — not the real, authentic way audiences perceive the brand.

Modeling the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator

So I decided to develop a more objective, “inside-out” tool I call the Brand Personality Profiler to help my clients with this exercise. I started with a well-known model for profiling personality that I’ve always been a fan of — the Myers Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI). I took the assessments that feed the MBTI and rewrote them from a business perspective instead of a personal one. For example, a statement from the MBTI like “You avoid leadership roles in group settings” was rewritten as “You don’t stand out as an industry leader.”

The whole picture of a brand is seen from the start of awareness in demand generation channels, through to becoming a loyal customer from lead generation channels. So I started there, identifying all of the most impactful “lenses” that an audience sees a brand through — websites, advertisements, social media, news, influencer opinions, and the like. I then grouped seven relevant questions into each of four brand personality categories that influence audience perception: Authority, Momentum, Relevance and Resonance.