What’s brand voice and brand personality?
Your brand voice and brand personality are two very important parts of your entire brand voice. They are the elements that help you and your team create consistent messaging whether they are delivering customer service or creating social media posts. Your brand voice and brand personality are the driving factors behind the vocabulary and tone in everything you and your team creates.
So it’s important to understand the distinction between brand voice and brand personality.
Your brand personality is about the real qualities, expressions, and emotions it embodies the most. Yes, you need to give your brand HUMAN characteristics. Identifying your brand personality will play a huge role in determining the tone, feel and flow of your copywriting and messaging. For more information on the psychology behind brand personality, check out this article.
How to determine your brand personality
To think about your brand personality, you’ll want to determine:
Is your brand conversational and playful? Loud and assertive? Sensual and intuitive?
Where does your brand personality sit between these extremes.
Formal___________Chatty
Detached_________Warm
Professional_______Wacky
Serious___________Humorous
Relaxed___________Lively
Just like a person, your brand might have different voices for different audiences but you they should always be guided by those high level brand personality traits. Consider how the voice might change in different circumstances such as the first time you communicate with a client versus how you talk to the most active members of your social media communities.
Another part of brand personality is clearly defining the brand’s phraseology, or the common phrases, sayings, words, sign-offs or slang that are often used in marketing, content and customer communication without much thought. For instance — I tend to use “Hey Guys” a lot when opening up in video. I also say “awesome” and “totally” too, even in my writing.
Why should you bother defining your brand personality?
A brand is a living entity and you need to think of it as such. Your brand communicates what you stand for, and makes you unique. It helps your target customers distinguish you from your competitors; and the connection is much more emotional than you might think.2
Defining a brand personality and putting it down on paper will help other copywriters who may work for you stay consistent in their messaging. It will help your team appear more cohesive in their branding and messaging if everyone is on the same page.
How does your brand voice personify your brand personality?
Brand voice is one part of the brand personality but it is the defining point in how your message is put together and the emotion behind it. Brand voice is the vocabulary, tone, and rhythm of the words you choose.
It includes:
Your vocabulary: The words you use. Is your vocabulary sophisticated or simple? Simply put, do you use big words or little words?
Your tone: This is the air of authority behind your words. Are you speaking AT your audience or TO them? Are you more of the friendly neighbor next door type of vibe or the authoritative voice of a professor?
Your rhythm: This is how long or how short your paragraphs and sentences are. How quickly is your reader moved along the page?
If all of this sounds overwhelming and you’re thinking “well how do I go about getting this information to the copywriter? Sounds like more unneeded work!”.
To put it lightly, this is part of the copywriter’s job. They’re not just a wordsmith. They’re not just writing words on paper for you. They’re making your brand cohesive across anywhere all channels. They’re helping you remain cohesive in your messaging AND convincing your readers to take action. Click here to read more about what’s it like to work with a copywriter.
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