Intro

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In almost every piece of marketing advice you’ll read or watch, ‘finding your voice’ is a key part of the process. It gets kind of repetitive after a while. You’re trying to figure out why your marketing isn’t working and you’re being told time and time again to ‘find your voice’. You just want to say, “Yeah, I know!” to the inanimate screen but, in the end, it does little to help you and your marketing strategy. When all of the marketing advice you’re encountering is built on the idea of ‘finding a voice’ and it still isn’t working, it can start to feel like all this ‘voice’ stuff is a bunch of BS.

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There’s got to be another reason why your marketing strategies aren’t working and that’s the exact problem we try to solve in this blog post. We want to walk you through a new way to build your foundation so you can develop a solid marketing strategy and business model.

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We here at Solvi were inspired to think about our ‘voice’ in a different way when we started rebranding the business. It forced us to think about how we wanted to present the brand which, in traditional marketing terms, meant we needed to figure out what kind of ‘voice’ the new Solvi was going to have. But, as we started to list the keywords we thought defined us, we noticed something. These weren’t voice descriptors, they were personality traits. And that’s when it hit, it isn’t about ‘finding your voice’ at all, the foundation of your brand is built on personality…

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Section 1 - Why personality over voice?

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Every marketing strategy needs an authentic foundation that will guide decision making, and ensure everyone remains on the same page. Without this, your brand ‘voice’ will remain a faint echo. The industry is evolving and our understanding of what it takes to form a successful foundation on which to build a brand in the digital age has to as well.

Voices can suffer from feeling inauthentic at times. A brand personality allows your marketers to embody your company values in a way that resonates with your target audience. Consumers are becoming smarter and more in tune with the Internet every day. They know when your social media post was written by a shit-scared social media intern who was given specific voice guidelines and is desperately trying to fit them so they don’t lose their job, versus copy that was written with some actual personality.

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One of the key reasons your audience may not be engaging with your brand isn’t that you haven’t found your voice, it’s that you haven’t found your personality. Take a look at these popular brands and how they engage with their audience in a way that just screams PERSONALITY:

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These brands have absolutely nailed their personalities. The people running their social media are allowed to be expressive in new and interesting ways as opposed to being closed into a box made of traditional voice guidelines.

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Section 2: What is a brand personality?

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Personalising a brand isn’t a new concept. There are hundreds of examples of companies who have successfully adopted this approach, but it’s something that’s been in our minds since the days of trying to find our company voices. Did you ever find yourself landing on words like ‘personable,’ ‘honest,’ or ‘funny’? When you think about it, they don’t represent ‘voice’ as much as they do the thought process behind said voice. I mean, what is a voice without a mind to construct the words in the first place?

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A brand personality aims to bridge the gap between the person typing the words and the intentions of the brand. It creates a more complex and developed understanding of how your brand interacts with the world, its consumers and its own content. It affects how people perceive your brand, whether they’re in your target market or not.

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Developing a personality for your brand also helps development in other areas of the business, not just your marketing strategies. It can inform everything from new products to hiring. It gives you a reference point for what’s expected of your business and how your brand interacts with them. A brand is something that needs to be upheld consistently. It relates to the mission, vision and values of the company and if the personality you build doesn’t embody those then you’ll struggle to use the brand personality to its fullest potential.

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Section 3: How do I develop a brand personality? It’s Taskforce Time!

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Don’t worry, we weren’t going to subvert your expectations for developing a marketing strategy and leave you high and dry without a step-by-step on how to develop your very own brand personality! Feel free to adapt this to suit the style of your company. Remember, this is all about developing a unique brand personality:

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Step 1 - Gather your taskforce! The more diverse it is the better. Make sure every area of the business is represented and ensure you’re putting together a group of people who want to dedicate their time and energy to this; passion will make it worthwhile.

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Step 2 - List as many words and phrases that you think suit the brand. Have everyone do this individually, this is a no-discussion step.

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Step 3 - Compare the lists with all the members of the taskforce. Are there any similar words or themes? What do you realise about how internal team members view the business from their unique perspectives? Have a proper discussion about this with your taskforce and narrow down your list to a few words or phrases; however many you need to holistically, but succinctly, describe your brand.

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Step 4 - Imagine a person who you could describe with these words and phrases. What are they like? How do they interact with the world? How does the world react to them? How do they talk? Have a proper chat with your taskforce about this person, give everyone some time to brainstorm on their own if it’s needed. This is another step that will require a large discussion.

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Step 5 - You’re officially done! You’ve crafted your first brand personality and have a solid foundation on which to build your marketing strategy, as well as a plethora of other business functions. Your brand personality will need to evolve as the business grows and changes, but that’s not something you need to worry about right now. Take the new brand personality for a test drive and see how it feels! You can always make adjustments as and when it’s needed, especially in the early stages. You’ll want your brand personality to eventually reach a state of stability as it will end up guiding many of the daily operations within the business, such as hiring and training.

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All-in-all this process is pretty simple, especially for how useful this will be. Conducting reviews will be very important to keeping your brand personality feeling fresh, exciting and real.

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Section 4 - How to utilise a brand personality

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Whilst it’s always important to consider the customer journey with everything you do, you should also consider the brand personality. Consumers are going to be turned off if you start talking in a way, or about things, that feel entirely out of character.

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A great example of this is the recent M&M controversy where they rebranded their feminine mascots to be more ‘inclusive’ but this is the same company that has ads where the relationship between one of their mascots and a human woman is highly suggestive. Whilst the company could’ve previously been a great example of a brand with personality, their recent actions have proven that they don’t have a clear idea of how their brand is being presented to the world. They tried to claim they had a particular belief system whilst engaging in actions that directly conflicted with their desired messaging. A large part of the reason this went viral is because of how little sense it made. It was a reaction to a conversation that wasn’t happening and clearly doesn’t align with their other marketing strategies. This wasn’t a proper utilisation of the brand’s established personality and they suffered as a result.

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A brand personality can help your business with a variety of things. It can:

• Expand how you’re able to respond to things, i.e. instead of saying your brand has a ‘happy voice’ you say it has a ‘sunny disposition’, the second one illustrates the point that you always look on the bright side, not that you’re positive regardless of the situation.
• Help with the evolution of the business. You can consider the brand personality when developing new products, encountering an evolution within the company, and coming to a crossroads with developmental direction. A brand personality can help you decide what works best for the established brand, how the brand personality can evolve to fit this new change and how they work together.
• Make your marketing seem more human. When your marketers have the ability to play with a personality instead of voice guidelines, they have the freedom to be more creative in their role, which makes the brand’s efforts seem more personal.

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To effectively utilise your brand personality, you’ll want to make sure that everyone in the business is caught up on it, including new developments. You’ll want to pair this information alongside what it means, how you use it and how it affects the work they’re doing. Your team knowing about the brand personality isn’t enough to get the most out of it, you want your team to live and breathe this new way of branding and to incorporate it into everything they do. Ensure this information is easy to access for all departments and encourage the sharing of ideas for its development and evolution.

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Section 5 - Isn’t this basically a voice but with extra steps?

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Well, that’s precisely it. It’s an evolved version of what ‘finding your voice’ is meant to do. The extra steps allow for complexity, nuance and diversity in your marketing communications. A brand personality encompasses the industry's current state while making space for the future of marketing.

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The digital marketing industry evolves very quickly and it makes sense for our language and understanding to evolve with it. ‘Finding a voice’ is outdated and too restrictive for what modern brands are trying to accomplish with their digital presence. There will always be a place for tone of voice guidelines, in fact, they’re an essential part of building a brand personality. Your TOV guidelines should be authentically aligned with your business’s identity in order to be effective and unrestrictive.

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Brand personalities are the future of marketing and businesses as a whole. We’re bringing this updated mindset to the work we do, and we hope we’ve inspired you to do the same.