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Jared Henriques

Brand traits

Brand traits: your brand's personality

Brand Traits are the distinctive characteristics that define your brand's personality. They shape how your brand looks, sounds, and behaves across all touchpoints. In essence, they're how you want others to perceive and experience your brand.

Why it matters

In the tech industry, where products and services can often seem similar, Brand Traits play a crucial role:

  • They humanize your brand, making it more relatable and memorable
  • They guide your communication style and customer interactions
  • They inform design decisions for your product interface and marketing materials
  • They help attract and retain employees who resonate with your brand personality
  • They differentiate you from competitors, even when offering similar technologies

Defining your brand traits

To identify your Brand Traits, let's use a more intuitive, human-centred approach:

The overheard conversation exercise

Imagine overhearing a conversation about your brand. Ask yourself:

  1. What words would excite you to hear them use to describe your brand?
  2. What words would you hate to hear them use to describe your brand?

This exercise helps you identify both positive traits to embody and negative traits to avoid.

Personifying your brand

Once you've identified key traits, it's time to bring them to life:

  1. Imagine a person who embodies these traits. Who are they?
  2. Develop their story. What's their background? What motivates them?
  3. How would this person behave in different situations?

This personification helps crystallize your brand traits into a more dynamic, relatable entity. It provides a reference point for decision-making and behaviour across various scenarios.

The power of separation: brand identity vs. founder identity

A crucial benefit of personifying your brand is the separation it creates between the founder's identity and the brand's identity. This separation is particularly valuable for tech startups and growing companies:

  1. Founder Freedom: By creating a distinct brand persona, founders can free themselves from the pressure of personally embodying the brand at all times.
  2. Scalable Brand Identity: A personified brand can grow beyond the founder's personal network and reputation.
  3. Team Empowerment: When the brand identity is distinct from the founder, it's easier for team members to understand, embody, and contribute to the brand's growth.
  4. Objective Decision Making: Separation allows for more objective brand-related decisions, based on the defined persona rather than the founder's personal preferences.

exercise

Bringing your brand to life

Engage your team in this expanded exercise:

  1. Conduct the "Overheard Conversation" exercise
  2. Identify 3-5 core traits from the positive descriptors
  3. Create a persona that embodies these traits
  4. Develop scenarios and ask how this persona would react
  5. Discuss how these reactions align with your Purpose, Vision, and Promise

Remember, this persona should feel authentic to your company's culture and values. They're not an aspirational figure, but a genuine reflection of who you are as a brand.