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What if your company were a person—someone you can sit down with, take out to lunch, and let babysit your kids?

Would you like them as you would a best friend, or would you screen their calls?

Often we think of our brands as a foreign identity, a corporate brick-and-mortar presence, without recognizing that its external reputation is like that of a person's.

People by nature humanize things. From "I CAN HAZ CHEEZBURGER?" to creepy mops with faces, we give personality to things that likely have none, because doing so makes them relatable.

But when attempting to define, understand, and promote our brands, we often have an orthodox, impersonal way of doing things. We define our brands through the colors we use, our value proposition statements, and target market. Yet, in the end, we market to humans—and humans, by nature, do not care about what you are... they care about who you are.

By building our brands from the inside out, we can connect with our values, goals, and customers even more. A brand (as many of us know) is more than just a mission statement. It's an overall reputation.

That's where brand personification comes in.

Brand personification can be defined as "a Projective Technique that asks people to think about brands as if they were people and to describe how the brands would think and feel," according to mktresearch.org.

It is a compelling and intuitive method for taking a step back and gaining clarity on who your brand is and what kind of impression you're making on the world.

It's a powerful approach not merely in the case of big corporations that minutely study consumer behavior; it's also applicable to nonprofits and small businesses, where a reputation is a crucial and fundamental part of your business.

A company's reputation (i.e., external personality) dictates the success of the brand.

Luckily, you can take fours steps right now with your business development and marketing team to better understand your brand, so let's get started.

Step 1: Explore your brand's personality

We begin by exploring our brand's personality. Start the process by discussing a series of questions such as these and writing the answers down on a whiteboard:

  1. Would your brand be a male or female?
  2. Is he street-smart or book-smart?
  3. Is she social or an introvert?
  4. Does he have compassion or is he an authoritarian?
  5. Would you trust her?

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Brand Personification: The Ultimate Way to Get to Know Your Brand

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

image of Coralyn Loomis

Coralyn Loomis is a marketing communications expert with a decade of experience helping create and reshape business identities.

LinkedIn: Coralyn Loomis