PR is all about storytelling and relating to the general public on a personal level. To make meaningful connections with your target audience, you must know how to speak to them in a way they can relate to. In other words, to resonate your message with your audience, your brand needs to exhibit a distinct personality. It makes a memorable impression on your customers about your brand and helps them understand what to expect from your company.
The personality you built around your brand is an accurate representation of who you are as a business, and how you want to be perceived among the customers. It is a simple way of distinguishing yourself from the competitors and clarifying the customers on what you offer that makes you the better choice. This helps in driving new business to your company and results in increased brand awareness.
It’s no secret that humans are subjected to brand messaging to get them connected to the brand they advertise. There are several perks of giving a face and personality to your brand, be it a human or a mascot. It is critical for your business because of the overall impact it makes on your company.
Brand personality is essential when you’re trying to generate future business, and it helps in building a unique and attention-grabbing professional image around your brand. A firmly established brand with distinctive personality increases the value of the business by giving the company more leverage in the industry. It sets the brand as a more appealing investment opportunity because of its firmly established place in the market.
The Importance Of A Strong Personality
The key to giving your brand a personality is letting your customers know about the vision of your company and what they can expect from you. Creating a brand personality establishes an identity for your customers with whom they can interact with. It’s about making a company that quite often come across as cold and impersonal look like something that people can relate to.
If customers like your brand personality, they will want to befriend it and will feel loyal towards your brand. Also, they may buy into the culture around your brand, wishing to make themselves look more like the brand personality you create by associating more often with your products and services.
The persona surrounding the brand brings in customers who want to develop these characteristics themselves. There is a lot to gain from giving a personality to your brand. It helps customers to identify your brand, increases brand loyalty, and ensures that your brand image reaches the right audience.
Examples
One of the most famous examples of brand personality is The Colonel from KFC. The story of the founder of the restaurant chain has been embellished, and the historical figure has now been turned into a mascot.
There is also Ronald McDonald, The King, and Wendy. All are represented as fictional characters that give customers a cartoon face to identify the respective restaurant chain.
You don’t need to create an entirely fictional person, but it will be helpful to put a person front and center for your marketing strategies and to build your brand personality. This can be achieved through marketing videos, shop floor demonstrations, and customer service conversations.
The personality doesn’t always have to be the same, but the message they convey should match the branding for your company. They should be portrayed as warm, friendly, and relatable, along with being professional and respectful.
From the colors to the fashion, and even the persona that your brand present, carefully choose every aspect of it. Also, the kind of people that are featured in marketing strategies is vital to give people the right idea about your brand and what it stands for. Just make sure not to make drastic changes to the appearance of your spokesperson, making him/her feel uncomfortable or out of place. Pick a person whose personality resonates with your brand and let them be as they are. The genuineness will add more credibility to your brand.
Benefits Of Giving Your Brand A Face
Gives an Identity To Your Brand
Having a character or human personality as the face of your brand gives your business a unique identity. Though your logo can be used to recognize your brand, having a face as an identity appears more personal and engaging to your consumers.
People don’t connect with logos in the same way that they connect with human-like characters or people. So giving your brand a face that people can promptly identify and associate human traits establishes your brand as friendly and relatable.
Helps To Remember Your Brand Easily
Research on memory has revealed that people manage to have an easier time comprehending faces than names. When you add quirky and notable personality traits to your brand, customers are even more likely to remember your brand.
For example, several fast food companies have created distinct personalities in an attempt to set themselves apart from the competition. Take a look at McDonald’s, Wendy’s, Burger King, and KFC. Each one has them has the unique human personas that let customers identify them quickly.
Builds Trust and Connection
A professional appearance and well-strategized branding around the personality established will help the company build trust with customers, potential clients, and investors. The personality you give your brand is what everyday customers will empathize with, and ideally, make them trust your brand.
Take Vodafone India, for instance. The brand immediately comes to your mind at the very sight of their brand personality, ‘ZooZoo.’ Most of their PR efforts are based around this brand personality, making their campaigns a huge success.
People are more willing to do business with a company that has a well-established professional portrayal. Having a professional personality gives the impression of being industry experts. It makes the general public trust your company, the products, and the services it offers, and the way it handles the business.
Just remember, the human personality you give your brand should be the basis of your ideas and strategies throughout all your PR efforts. Thus people will easily recognize and connect with your brand whenever they come across your brand personality, increasing the success rate of your PR efforts.
Improves Employee Satisfaction
When an employee works for a robustly built brand with a distinctive personality and stands with it in all its activities, they will be more satisfied with the job they do and have a higher degree of pride working for the brand. Working for a company that has a high reputation and helps in high regard among the general public makes working for that company enjoyable and satisfactory. Having a branded personality helps employees feel more satisfied and possess a sense of belonging to the company.
Becomes More Trustworthy
Customers trust humans more than they trust companies, especially when the person is someone they already knew or the human trait is something that they relate to. So when your brand can symbolize attractive human characteristics, people are more liable to trust you and your brand. Once customers start trusting your brand, they will be more likely to buy from your company and also recommend your products and services to their relatives and friends.
They Will Recognize Your Brand Easily
People easily recognize the companies they patronize. A human persona is a great way to deliver your brand’s message. It appears to be part of the same demographic as the target group that you have identified in your marketing personas. When people see themselves reflected in a brand and its culture, it becomes easier for them to witness how the products or services can fit into their lives. This boosts your conversion rates.
Enables A Way To Interact
People love interactive content. Nothing lets people engaged with a brand more than a real conversation, and when you use a human face for your marketing strategy, your customers feel like they know who they are talking to. The level of comfort offered not only increases the chances that they will opt for your brand but also helps to boost engagement during your social media campaigns.
Having a human personality creates an identity for your brand. It forms a connection with your target audience, setting you apart from your competitors even if their products/services are reliable and own a great story. It’s up to you to make use of a real person or a fictional character. The success of the campaign strategy lies in incorporating these characters into your marketing efforts to build the strongest relationship with your target group as much as possible.
Effortless To Set Up Campaigns
PR campaigns are an essential component of branding, and advertising strategies directly reflect the brand and its desired personality. Launching a PR campaign is an exciting time for any business. With all the planning and brainstorming, it can be incredibly easy to come up with big ideas for setting up the campaign. But the plan you come up with may not match the look and feel of your brand, defeating the core focus of your PR efforts.
That being said, having a distinct personality for your brand makes it clear for you to plan and ideate. When your brand has a personality that people have already connected to, you can focus on the successful running of the campaign rather than spending too much time on coming up with multiple strategies.
Increases Conversion Rates
The reason why many successful PR campaigns include a human personality in their strategies is that it allows brands to form a strong social connection with your customers and investors. And no matter what industry you operate in or how big or small your business is, connecting with your existing and potential audience on a human level helps you in increasing brand engagement and boosts conversion rates.
Ways To Humanize Your Brand
Select An Apt Spokesperson
You can’t choose just anyone to represent your brand. A spokesperson should be professional, polished, transparent, and well-trained to handle any public encounter. Be it the CEO, a well-known celebrity, a known person in your industry or even your PR representative. Whoever you opt for should be a good match with a persona that matches with the vision of your brand.
Remain Genuine
Decide what your spokesperson should stand for and stick to it. Be true to your audience. You don’t have to set things up to show your brand as a leading one. Be genuine, and it will bring in more customers over a period of time. It also builds trust among your target audience.
Make People See You
Your spokesperson should be visible to the general public. Appearing in on-camera messaging, delivering speeches at public events, and communicating with customers directly are some ways to put them out front. They can also write blogs, give media interviews, or conduct seminars providing expert information about your industry. All these will help in establishing your brand as a thought leader in the industry.
Demonstrate Consistency
One speech a year, a blog once a while or occasional tweets won’t help the spokesperson in representing your brand. Remember, you are asking people to trust your brand enough for them to buy your products or service. It is not a one-and-done deal. To build the relationship over time, make your spokesperson churn out consistent content.
Engage In Conversations
People don’t like one-way communication. They always wish to take part in two-way communication. Find ways to engage with your target group both in-person and on social media. Use Public Relations to communicate your message in the right tone. The more they interact with the customers on a personal level, the more customers will see that you value them.
Hire A PR Agency
Some companies are so used to legal and corporate terms that they forget that everyone – employees, key stakeholders, media, and customers need a more personal approach. Therefore, go for a PR agency that helps in humanizing your brand.
Bottom line
As a brand, making an impact in the increasingly crowded digital space is quite tricky yet achievable by giving a face to your brand. Giving a face to your brand allows you to build a rapport with your target audience, making your brand look more familiar, approachable, and authentic. If you can take control of your brand’s image and the narrative around your brand story, you can put your brand in an incredibly powerful position. Also, social media is a great way to communicate and engage with your target group. No one will be able to beat your business. If you are a new start-up and you’re daunted by the possibility of putting yourself out there, seek out guidance from a PR agency.
We help you establish the face of your brand for better brand building, customer connections, enhanced delivery of messages, and increased sales.
