Brand Personality Explained (With Examples)

Humans are fascinated by personality traits. The popularity of the horoscope, based on the twelve signs of the Zodiac, is global. People love to belong. They want to identify with a group, and thus brands need to create that belonging for their target market. A great brand promises that when you purchase their product, you share in their personality traits.

A Brand personality is a set of human characteristics that are attributed to a brand name. A brand personality is something to which the consumer can relate. These brand personalities are sincerity, excitement, competence, sophistication, and ruggedness.

Let’s take a look at brand personalities more in-depth now.


What Are The 5 Brand Personalities And Their Attributes

SincerityExcitementCompetenceSophisticationRuggedness
* Down to Earth
* Wholesome
* Honest
* Cheerful
* Daring
* Spirited
* Imaginative
* Up to date
* Reliable
* Intelligent
* Successful  
* Upper-class
* Charming
* Outdoors
* Tough

These brand personalities are what consumers want to experience in the selection of their favorite brands. The brand must promise must be defined in terms of the brand personality and the associated benefits to the consumer. Let’s take a closer look at how brand personalities help the brand to make the customer experience a sense of belonging.


Why Must A Brand Have a Personality?

The need to belong refers to the idea that humans have a fundamental motivation to be accepted into relationships with others and be part of social groups. The fact that belongingness is a need means that human beings must establish and maintain a minimum quantity of enduring relationships. These relationships should have more positivity than negativity and be significant to the relationship partners.

The importance of having meaningful relationships has increased in modern society. Urbanization has caused cities to swell as people seek work and fulfillment that they could not find in a rural agrarian society. Yet, our modern cities are places where many people experience loneliness. They have moved away from their families or tribes and now live in the cities where they need to belong.

Forming a relationship with brands is often a safe way for city dwellers to satisfy their need for belonging. They will seek brands that allow them not to feel lonely. Brands that help them belong to social groups where they can be accepted and feel a sense of belonging. All successful brands create a promise to make the customer feel sincerity, excitement, competence, sophistication, or ruggedness.


How Can The 5 Brand Personalities Help Your Brand

  • A Sincere Brand reminds us of a time or place in our lives when things were good. It creates a feeling of familiarity or of a time when you felt loved and nurtured. These brands are trying to promise that they are like your mom’s apple pie. It reminds you of goodness and health. Honesty and happiness may even be the brand your mom, dad, family, or tribe loved the most. Campbell’s Soup reminds us of the wholesomeness and sincerity of home cooking.
  • An Exciting Brand is synonymous with action and adventure. It is associated with new experiences for the customer. Brands that offer state of the art technology in their products or where the brand encourages exploring the unknown and establishing new limits. An example of an exciting brand is Red Bull (Red Bull gives you wings). The most outrageous outdoor challenges and events where the adrenaline of the action is linked to the effect of the energy drink.
  • A Competent Brand – the brand promises to get the job done. The brand helps the consumer with getting their tasks done efficiently. The brand makes mundane tasks done right the first time, every time. Smart, simple products or solutions to make the complex task easy. Allows the consumer to feel more accomplished as it helps them to get things done. Apple is a competent brand due to its reliable, innovative, high-quality products, packaging, marketing, software, and customer service.
  • A Sophisticated Brand – creates aspirations to be like people that the consumer admires. Wealthy, successful, and famous people are used as brand ambassadors to depict the brands consumers can strive for. Even just owning an item of such as brand can provide a sense of achievement and belonging. The Tiffany & Co brand has successfully established itself as sophisticated, elegant, and upper-class, with a timeless and charming personality.
  • A Rugged Brand – depicts a need to portray toughness and durability to others. These brands relay the sense of the great outdoors. The consumer’s undiscovered and wild unknown needs to feel protected and rely on the brand technology at their disposal. Jeep has been consistent across the board with its clear personality traits of adventurous, tough, durable, and a strong focus on the outdoors.

    The need to belong refers to the idea that humans have a fundamental motivation to be accepted into relation-ships with others and to be a part of social groups. The fact that belongingness is a need means that human beings must establish and maintain a minimum quantity of enduring relationships. These relationships should have more positivity than negativity and be meaningful and significant to the relationship partners.

Brand Personality Examples?

SincerityExcitementCompetenceSophisticationRuggedness
* IKEA
* Campbell’s Soup
* Dove    
* Red Bull
* Nike Coca
* Cola  
* Audi
* BMW
* Apple
* Google  
* Rolls Royce
* Mercedes Benz
* Moet & Chandon    
* Harley-Davidson
* Jeep Wrangler
* Diesel

Conclusion

Brands need to connect with people in order to forge a relationship. The brand personality must impart traits that the consumer can relate to. It is important for consumers to feel that they belong. The consumer becomes part of the tribe associated with the personality of the brand. The consumer even adopts some of the brand personality as part of their own personality.

Consumers associate with certain brands as a way of creating their personal brand. How they want society to view them and to create their status with the brands they wear. The three-piece business suit is worn to work as a symbol of power and success. The make-up, hair, and fashion serve many people with the brand image that they want to portray.

Creative media agencies are experts at helping companies to distill the values of the leadership and the attributes of their products into a brand personality that their target market can relate to.

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