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After defining your Brand Personas last week, we will now turn the lens around and look at the personality of your brand itself. This is super fun, as we basically treat your brand like a living being, giving it character, to make the following part – the visualization – so much easier and clearer. The Brand Personality encompasses a set of human characteristics attributed to your company, allowing you to define a clear Tone of Voice for your brand. Sometimes, we have noticed, it can be difficult for founders to distinguish between their own personality and their brand’s. In that case, we love to invite them to play with a little exercise, where you imagine your brand as a person who invited you to breakfast, visualizing the outing in as much detail as possible. From where you meet (is it a homecooked meal, beach picnic, or a trendy new café?), what they look like and wear, what they order, to what you two talk about. As you can imagine, the analogies you draw here are pretty straightforward. A white t-shirt and jeans are casual, and understated, while a poufy flowery dress points to a more expressive and flamboyant brand. Similarly, a black coffee versus a green juice or a double caramel macchiato with whipped cream tells quite the story, no? It’s also helpful in imagining how your brand would speak and address the topics that matter to them most. Do they shout from all the excitement, or gently whisper? Do they lecture or rather engulf you in their bubbly enthusiasm?
All these hints will help you formalize your Tone of Voice guide, always remembering your values and brand positioning, of course.
Another helpful element to define a Brand Personality is the Brand Archetype quiz. It helps you hone in on the overarching characteristics of your company and what matters most, and acts as a great foundation to build off of for more detailed personality traits. Fernweh’s Archetype is a combination of a Creator and a Lover, with a hint of the joy-seeking, freedom-loving Jester spirit. And the Brand Personality we have come up with looks like this: Fernweh is an incredibly empathic, free-spirited, creative, and curious soul that tends to care about the well-being of others first and foremost. Fernweh is someone that will pull you aside on a walk and show you hidden treasures in plain sight, always taking time to appreciate the natural world and illuminating the beauty and humanity in all things. Fernweh has traveled well and always adopts the mindset of a visitor everywhere they go, even in their hometown. They relay tales to you of foreign locales with a sense of wonder and appreciation that broadens your horizons as well as theirs. Fernweh is the friend you have that inspires and shows you a future beyond what you knew could exist. When you have trouble envisioning possibilities Fernweh can see, share, and inspire that future with you. Fernweh doesn’t lie to you or allow you to carry on with parsley stuck in your teeth. Fernweh will always be compassionately straight with you, they are the friend you can count on to be transparent and encouraging at the same time. Fernweh is the person in the room that puts their hand up to firmly but politely challenge the phrase “because that’s how it’s always been done.” Fernweh will take the utmost care in their work, ensuring that the quality is of the highest standard and details matter to them. They have a deep enduring love for people and the planet. This leads to the following Tone of Voice guide:
We let love lead our creative and personal interactions. That means, while we vow to always be honest and straightforward we are never cold or dismissive. We never pray upon a customer or client's insecurity to sell them anything. We encourage everyone willing and interested to see a more beautiful, sustainable, and caring option. With love and curiosity, we probe ideas and projects to see if we are creating and building in the best way possible. Our language is straightforward but not judgmental or condescending. We strive to show you a better alternative and a brighter future, not chastise you for past mistakes and current missteps. Clear and confident but not braggy, we take our work very seriously but keep our tone light. We want to invite you in but never push you through a door you aren’t ready to walk through. We keep our eyes up and our hopes forward and do not dwell in doom and gloom. We like the phrases “wouldn’t it be fun” and “how might we” as entry points to our discussions instead of “usually we” and “we should.”
In addition, we love to add a slide in our strategy decks that summarizes all of the above in “we are/we are not” bullet points.
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