Brand personality
“A brand isn’t a person, how can it have a personality?”
A brand needs to have a defined way of acting, carrying itself, looking, feeling, and being. All the characteristics that would go into a human’s personality can also be represented in a brand.

Brand personality in branding
According to a study of “The Influence of the Brand Personality Concept on Consumer Satisfaction and Loyalty”, when a brand is perceived as having human characteristics, it fulfils consumer expectations, leading to satisfaction. Brand personification significantly contributes to building loyalty, with consumers more likely to recommend, repurchase, and resist switching to other brands.
Making sure a brand’s personality is aligned with the overall brand is where an agency like Dawn comes in. We’ll help you understand the type of personality that matches the overall brand, based on things like the audience, brand positioning, and more.
What is brand personality?
In psychology, Aaker (1997) created “The Big 5”, a personality scale. The scale includes five key brand personality dimensions: sincerity, excitement, competency, sophistication, and ruggedness (source).
Whilst we don’t usually go into this much detail, we determine a brand’s personality by asking questions such as “if the brand was a celebrity, which would it be?”
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Brand personality archetypes
Brand archetypes are a way of thinking about brands as personality types or roles. They are similar to personality type assessments for people such as the Myers Briggs personality tests or the enneagram, but are applied to particular brands. They are a universally recognisable, innately understood character type or role that a brand can embody.
Brand archetypes can be extremely useful in helping to define a brand’s identity and how it should present itself to its target audience. By understanding their own archetype (or multiple archetypes), a brand can better understand who they are, what their story is, and the values that drive them. They were introduced to the branding world by Margaret Mark and Carol S. Pearson in their book; The Hero and the Outlaw: Building Extraordinary Brands Through the Power of Archetypes. The 12 types are: Creator, Ruler, Caregiver, Everyman, Jester, Lover, Hero, Magician, Outlaw, Explorer, Sage and Innocent.
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