In this episode
In this episode, Rory and Dan explore the concept of brand personality, emphasizing its importance in creating a strong emotional connection with customers. They discuss the foundational elements of branding, including differentiation, consistency, and the development of a unique brand style. The conversation highlights the significance of understanding brand archetypes and the impact a well-defined brand personality has on business success.
Key takeaways
- Differentiation helps brands stand out in a crowded market.
- Understanding brand archetypes aids in defining personality.
- Consistency in branding fosters trust and loyalty.
- A unique selling point is crucial for brand identity.
- Emotional connections drive customer loyalty and satisfaction.
- The internal culture of a brand reflects its external identity.
Transcript
Rory Holland (00:42)
Welcome back. Dan, good to see you. My name is Rory. I’m the founder and CEO at CSTMR.
Dan (00:50)
And hi, my name’s Dan. I am the brand identity specialist at customer.
Rory Holland (00:56)
Well, welcome Dan. Good to see you again. Excited to pick it up here with episode three. And before we jump into the name of this and how we crafted that, I wanted to do a quick recap of what we talked about so far. So in the first episode of our five-part mini series, we talked about the importance of brand foundations. And we followed that with laying a brand strategy and plan down. Then we talked about the role it plays in marketing.
And now, today, we’re going to talk about what I love the name you came up with. We’re going to talk about giving your brand a soul and crafting your brand’s personality and style.
I’m excited, Dan. I think this one’s right up your alley.
Dan (01:46)
It should be, yeah. Yeah. I’m looking forward to it, and I want to share with people as much as I can about what it’s like if you can bring or add personality to your brand. So that’s what I would hope to, you know, for people to take away that if you can bring or add that level of personality that’s a good thing.
Okay, yeah, that’s it. In the financial world Rory, personality it counts for a lot, right?
Rory Holland (02:16)
Yeah, absolutely.
It does, it does. Yeah, and so let’s, you know, I wanna set this up for our listeners.
We banter about the term personality and brands and I think often people who aren’t in marketing aren’t designers like yourself and brand strategists maybe don’t think about it that way, but we do and that’s our job is to help build powerful brands. And so bringing a brand to life so to speak from our experience requires actually giving it a heartbeat giving it a style,
giving it a personality. And far too often we see financial brands are a bit bland, boring. And I think there’s lots of reasons why that is. But I wanted to reference that as a starting point because that’s fairly common to see financial brands that haven’t done the foundational work. And I think you had used the word, the word sterile when we were talking prior to recording.
And I think that’s often what people associate with bigger corporate brands in the financial services world and financial institutions. We want to break that up and we’re going to talk about how to do that today. But there’s a couple of key things that I found and I wanted to get your thoughts on this, where I’ve seen that are key to brands building a powerful personality and identity. And that’s first.
That’s first, differentiation. And what I mean by that is taking the strategy and the foundational work that’s been done that’s really done a good job of defining the brand’s personality and really kind of crafting its unique style and then doing that in such a way that’s going to help it differentiate itself and stand out from the crowd.
And ultimately when that happens, you can have a really powerful emotional connection with a brand. It gives that opportunity to exist. And then there’s more beyond that, but I wanted to get your thoughts on just those couple of things, differentiation and connection.
Dan (04:43)
Yeah, absolutely. And there’s an analogy that I use when I’m trying to explain that personality part of a brand. And I get that, I get people to visualize their brand as a person. Okay. So if you just think of your brand as a person and that person will have different elements that make up it’s, you know, that persona, if you like.
Rory Holland (05:12)
Mm-hmm.
Dan (05:12)
First of all, their face. And I would recommend you think of your brand’s face as the logo. It will be that first thing that comes to mind when somebody mentions, you know, the name, our name. You know, that’s the first thing we do as humans. It’s like, well, you know, I’m gonna go meet Rory. And it’s kind of like there’s a little flash in your mind. So you kind of put that face to that person. So that logo is very much the face of the brand. And then as a person, we’ve got our face, we know who that person is, but they have their own style. So the clothes that they wear. Put across an image, they give you a vibe, if you like, of what that person’s going to be like, whether they’re dressed in, you know, head to toe in leather because they ride motorbikes or they’re in Lycra because they like to go out and ride that, you know, push bike. There’s whatever they’re wearing, there’s that first impression and that’s the style of a brand, the colors, the fonts, you know, is there an illustration style that would sit with a brand?
And it’s any touch point with a brand, not just, you know, these, these digital things that we’re talking about here, that if they’re on a website, but even how someone would hear a brand or feel a brand, you know, the quality of paper that are packaged, things are packaged up with.
That’s important and that’s very much part of defining a personality and a style for a brand.
Rory Holland (06:40)
Yeah.
Hmm. No, I love that. I think the notion of it being the face of the company, I think is really important to take in because indeed it has some, there’s so much emotion behind people’s buying decisions when it comes to finance. And so I think it’s often overlooked, particularly when we work with some clients that are more either product or tech-focused or they may be bankers as a trade.
So marketing is not something that is in their wheel house, so to speak. So helping bring it to life is so important. And I wanted to follow on that. And it’s thinking about how do you make that? How do you see that making an impact compared to the competition in some, maybe some of the cases that we’ve done when we see the actual result of some of the work.
Dan (07:48)
In terms of the personality and style, is that what you kind of hunting for an answer on the how it impacts businesses?
Rory Holland (07:56)
Yeah, I’m thinking about what we see in the market. Let’s just line up a number of, say, business lending brands that we know as business owners ourselves here and working with a number of different ones. Many of them look very much the same. So when a brand does a good job differentiating itself and bringing that personality to life, what is the result of that from your experience compared to the competition that isn’t following that path?
Dan (08:28)
Okay, so if a business, if a financial business or any business has spent the time to uncover what their brand foundations are, go back and listen to episode one and two if you haven’t already, because that explains how important it is to set the scene and to document what your brand stands for and the reason why it exists.
And the reason that that’s important first is I guess with going back to that analogy of a person, that person will have been brought up in a certain way. They will have had influences, external influences that shape them into the person that they are. So very much like that for a brand, you need to understand that.
So things like the values that we’ve talked about, if you know what you stand for, you know, the type of person that you are and the one of the very first sessions that we go through, or you’ll remember this from some of the brands that we’ve developed is to find out or help those business owners understand, you know, visualize a person.
So we use an archetype exercise where each there’s 12 different archetypes that we use that we build into the workshops and each archetype has a different set of traits.
And that starts to help that business become a tangible thing in a way. So, okay, you’ve got, you know, your business exists. It kind of does X, Y and Z, but let’s give it some personality. And that’s what we’re talking about here. If we’re going to give something soul, add personality and style, the easiest way for us as humans is to think of it as another human.
That’s my, you know, I, that’s how I approach it. I think other, you know, designers or brand experts do it differently. This is the way that I found most successful and, you know, most relatable. So yeah, we give it, we come up with an archetype, which we can attribute traits. We can then really say, this is how we’re going to act. This is how we want people to think of us as.
Rory Holland (10:30)
Mm-hmm. Yeah, yeah.
Dan (10:59)
And once we’ve got that, you know, once we’re able to sit back and say, yeah, we’re a, you know, we’re a sage. We are all about helping deliver wisdom into the world. And we’re kind of all about improving you know, more information for different people, et cetera. That’s just one example. Then there’s a process of that style. So what’s this archetype going to wear? What’s our business going to look like to our audience?
And that’s an important point there. I paused on it because so often, and tell me if you agree with this Rory, so often business owners take a personal stance on the visuals of their business. So when it comes to the design and the colors, quite often they’ll say, I don’t really like that red. Okay. Well, you don’t like that red, but actually your audience are going to relate incredibly to it because you’re selling, I don’t know, fire extinguishers and red is the one that jumps out at them. So do you, have you experienced that, you know, over time?
Rory Holland (12:11)
Yeah, I want to go back to something you said that really rings true to me is in staying on the notion of a brand as a person. You mentioned core values. And when you know what you stand for and you know who you are.
It’s authentic. It’s true. It rings true. It is true. It’s real and it’s genuine. And I think there’s sometimes subtle circumstances where that makes a major impact when people make buying decisions. And then I think there’s some major choices people make to not purchase from a brand because it feels, I’m going to use the word disingenuous or it’s inconsistent with maybe what they’re seeing and what they’re hearing and what they’re experiencing. If that consistency isn’t there and it’s coming from a core of truth based in the values of the business and their mission, it can fall flat. It could actually have the reverse effect.
Dan (13:19)
Massively. Yeah and it’s a big thing because, you know, when we work on values and we’re in those early episodes, that foundational part, everybody’s got to buy into that because it filters down. That’s what that business should be, you know, should stand for. And again, bringing that back to this topic about personality and style and, and the idea or the notion that your brand is a person.
Rory Holland (13:33)
Mm-hmm.
Dan (13:49)
You’re not going to go out with that friend who says one thing and does the other, are you?
Rory Holland (13:55)
No. Our instincts are too strong.
Dan (13:58)
You’re going to be thinking, no I’m not going to be.
Rory Holland (14:07)
Yeah. And I think it’s important for our audience to recall this portion of it because I think this is at the crux of the difference between a brand that is viewed from the team that’s leading, putting it together as a visual aspect more visual than it doesn’t incorporate the core aspects of the values, the beliefs, the mission, it has to come together well, if you want to make the impact that you desire in the market and not come off as disingenuous.
Dan (14:57)
Yeah, I was going to go down a different route with this and say that we often hear a lot of people say, yeah, but I don’t even, I don’t know what my personality is. You know, I don’t know what I want to come across as or how.
And I think really Rory, that’s where as experts that we have to step in and say, you know, that’s what we’re here to do is to help you understand what that, what that voice is for the brand. Sometimes they may have had a kind of personality or persona that’s existed for a number of years, and it might just need a little bit of help. A bit like if you were going to go and choose a new outfit and you hadn’t shopped for a while, you probably want a little bit of a hand picking the right clothes. Or you might come out of that shop with something that’s not quite right. You know?
Rory Holland (15:50)
Okay, you got it. Yeah. And not all of our clients are built the way that we’re talking about. And we don’t expect them to be. Meaning, like you said, not everybody can well articulate their own personality. I know it’s something I struggle with. You need help from outside people to give you the perspective that you need to be able to define in some ways to yourself.
And maybe realizing that there’s some things you need to change to be the person you want to be. I think it’s similar applied in our experience and some of our clients, particularly clients that are refreshing brands or refining brands or looking to scale that have an existing brand is helping them understand where they are today, how they’re perceived, and is there a disconnect in any way, even minor or major, between who they think they are and how they’re really coming across, so that we can then have a starting point to say, okay, does this line up with your core values and where you want to go in a business? And if it doesn’t, and it’s not consistent with where we’re headed,
Let’s define a strategy and an identity and a personality that does get us there. And, but let’s make sure it’s consistent throughout the entire marketing strategy.
Dan (17:20)
Absolutely, and I’m pleased you mentioned consistency because that’s a big one, but also, bringing up that notion of soul again, and that feeling, so there’s an emotional connection that should happen between a customer and a business. The brands and the businesses that do it well make those customers feel like it’s just like, what’s the word I’m looking for? It’s second nature. I’m buying it from there, you know, because they get me. They understand me. So when we’re talking about having a soul, it’s the connection between the two. If that brand can do it well, if a brand can connect well through its personality and style, it will have customers in droves and they’ll be most importantly, the right customers.
Rory Holland (18:21)
Yeah, doing it well and being consistent, that aligns with the loyalty and the delight that we talk about that we want our clients, customers to receive and enjoy being loyal, being delighted with the services. And it really comes with the consistency that they’re portraying the personality, the brand traits that we’re putting forward consistently in all their messaging, all their communications in the user experience, in the customer service, in the sales process. Like these are things that really end to end, if done properly, are being addressed to make sure that consistency is there. Would you say that’s what your experience has been?
Dan (19:11)
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, and I was about to sort of come back on that and say, you know, the impact that this has on customer perception is that it’s that first, there’s a couple of things, the customer perception, there’s the first impression and there’s a lasting impression as well. So it’s the first up, ooh, I like this.
And then the follow-up is, I’m going to go back. I’m going to tell my friend about this brand because it’s so good. So that first impression, but the lasting impression as well.
Rory Holland (19:47)
Mm-hmm. Oh, I love that.
Dan (19:54)
In terms of getting that personality and style, getting it right. It’s a tricky one. And the point that I wanted to bring up on this episode as well is that, you know, not everybody has, I’m trying to put it in that analogy of a person again, like not everybody wants to walk out with bright pink Mohican hair to stand out from the crowd, but there will be a quality that person has, or each individual has, that when they get to know a group, they become known for it.
Perhaps it’s the knowledge in a subject, or perhaps it’s the way that they make something for dinner. I don’t know, but there’s, for me, every brand will have a quality or should have, as we would call it, a USP, a unique selling point. And that kind of opens this, should open this Pandora’s box of, this is what we’re good at, this is who we are, let’s get it across in the right way.
Rory Holland (20:51)
Mm-hmm. Yes, we’ve talked about the impact of a brand personality on customers’ perceptions. And we begin to dive into a little bit, at least covering the process of developing unique brand styles. You wanna unpack that a little bit?
Dan (21:33)
Say that again and developing the what?
Rory Holland (21:37)
The process, unpack the process that we go through to develop that unique brand style that we’ve talked about.
Dan (21:50)
So how do we do that? Well, we’ve already said, and you must do, and you must listen to episode one and two, because if you don’t have foundations in place, you’re not, you know, you’re nothing for that creative energy to feed out or feed off from. So we uncover an archetype, we discover we need to label and help that business visualize that brand as a person.
So that archetype is set, we understand that person, the traits, we can add traits into that. Cause not, you know, perhaps the archetypes, they fail or fit a certain criteria, but often, more often than not, you know, a brand needs to become its own. So we can add traits into that. And then we start to build up a much better picture.
Coming out from your kind of your character, your archetype, the next step is to talk about how that character, that brand communicate. So there’s a tone of voice that we need to understand. So tone of voice, how are we going to be heard? Written? Yeah, could be. Or it could be audio. There is just different ways that we would want to communicate and that tone of the brand that the personality and style needs to have.
Once we have that as a designer, this is, you know, this is kind of my ultimate because I now, I’m able to, not everybody can visualize or start to say, well, this color is going to work really well for that character to come across in this way. And this font, that’s going to have the right feel, you know, it’s, this is quite I don’t know, picking something around and quite a down to earth brand. You know, we need to talk to the everyday person on the street. We’re not going to pick a very fine, flourished font for this one, but this one’s doing the job.
So there are all these elements, colors, fonts, then like the clothes of this person, this brand, that comes together in the mood board. So that mood board will be the menu, if you like, of choosing what you do and don’t like. But we should at that point be, you know, well aware of how that brand wants to come across. And so the mood board that is.
You know, that starting point of personality and style. That’s the first time that your brand, you know, you will have experienced it being visualized more often than not. So if it’s a rebrand, there’s going to be new colors there. There’s going to be things going that you’re like, actually, this feels more, more like the brand, more like how we want to be, how we want to come across. So once we have that mood board, once we understand the kind of, you know, the traits and what that brand is.
Then as designers, we get stuck into it. So we talked about that logo, the face of the brand. We can look and say, well, this is how that logo needs to be developed. Does it, is it getting adapted from an old one? Are we developing something completely new? It doesn’t matter. We’ve got all the foundations there to build from. So we’re looking at logos. We’ve got all the identity and the visual elements now that come together.
And that’s presented as a brand handbook more often than not a style guide as well. There’s some dos, there’s some don’ts, you know, a bit like etiquette. If you’re going to go out, you’ve got to act in a certain way, and behave in certain situations. And that in, in its shortest form, Rory, that’s really how we end up with a brand person with a personality and style that should represent itself.
Rory Holland (25:41)
Yeah, and once that’s done well, I wanted to talk with you a little bit about and share with the audience how we’ve seen real world impact on a proper brand personality and style expressed well and documented and brought to market in such a way consistently from end to end that can actually influence the success, the financial success of a company.
Dan (26:16)
Yeah, massively. I mean, I don’t have figures to hand, but I know from business owners who’ve come back and they’ve worked with us, that not only is there an increase in, you know, money turnover, you know, there is, they’re making more sales. Generally the staff feel better about things because depending on what the stage of brands are in, a brand should filter down through every element and aspect of that business.
And if you get that right, then there is this sense of, you know, working towards the greater good. And if they, if an employee knows that that’s happening or knows what they’re doing and is able to do something consistently, they’re just doing it, they’re doing it better and they’re doing it better for your business. So getting that personality and style right is at the rock face of where that customer’s coming to engage with it.
Rory Holland (27:23)
Yeah, and we wouldn’t be able to share specific brands and companies we’ve built and worked with and the actual financial impacts, but it’s meaningful. And I think you said something important. And that’s, and it might seem, for those of our audience members that are skeptical of this, but are still listening, and I hope that they are.
You don’t have to be a mission driven organization to have clear core values that each team member knows why they’re there, what they’re there to do, and how not only the brand and the business, but their role in the business is expressing those brand values and that brand personality and that brand style to make a positive impact on their customers in the world.
That is, I believe that is a true statement across every organization in the world. Even those organizations that aren’t maybe purely mission driven, and I understand that there’s certainly some that aren’t and that’s okay, but they’re still providing a service to their customers and that they’re doing it from a place of truth, meaning their core values are defined and clearly expressed in their brand strategy, in their brand personality, in their brand style, and in how they talk about themselves and how they conduct business from, you know, we say the top of the funnel, from the first time that someone experiences a brand digitally, be that a Google ad or a social or content or whatever it may be, to dealing with a customer service rep because they’re having a challenge. That, from our experience, both in business and being a fintech and financial marketing and design agency, we’ve seen real-world impact, not only on the people in the companies, but the impact they make on their customers, meaning positive, and then the results are financial success in a more meaningful way than their competition who might not be looking at the world from the lens that we’ve helped our clients look at.
Dan (29:36)
I like the word meaningful in that outburst because if a brand, you can tell if not a, well, probably the wrong word in that term, not even.
Rory Holland (29:41)
You’re calling that an outburst.
No, it’s cool. I’m giving you a hard time. It’s cool.
Dan (29:54)
Yeah, wrong word, you can pull me up.
Rory Holland (29:55)
It is an outburst, Dan. I gotta speak to that. No, no, it is an outburst because I just want to speak to that, Dan, because you just brought something up for me in that I have the privilege of talking to lots of business owners every day, those that have come across us, been referred to us that are looking for success in a way that they believe we can help them achieve it. And sometimes it’s about brands, sometimes it’s about other things, but often brand is an element of a business. As you said, it’s the face of the business. So if the face of the business is off, nothing is gonna work right. Or be optimized. But I am a little bit outspoken about this because I see opportunities every day to apply the things that we’re talking about. And I see the skeptical nature of some folks and I understand some of the skepticism.
But allowing yourself to get behind what we’re talking about here will generate the types of results and impact that you want to generate versus skipping a lot of the first two episode steps, skipping a lot of what we talked about, and just going hire a designer and just say, we want a fresh face. It’s kind of like getting a facelift, but you’re sick as heck as a human being and you’re not working out, you’re not eating right, and that sort of stuff. Your face might look good, but on the inside you’re dead and or you’re slowly dying.
And I don’t mean that as a strong statement. I do mean it as a strong statement. I mean that as a strong statement because business leaders need to hear it and I’m not afraid to say it. They don’t want to talk to me after that. But those that do that see the light, are the ones that are looking for meaningful impact. I’m off my high horse now, Dan, I’ll give you the mic back.
Dan (31:51)
Yeah, and that’s all right. And I liked it. And you’ve used that word meaningful again, because if a brand’s not meaningful, I generally find that the founders or the owners, there’s a kind of empty space within them because the brand should be their vision more often than not.
And if it’s not right, or if it’s not like you were saying about, you know, that the body’s sick and the face is kind of looking all right. As, you know, as a business owner, you don’t want that. You want to feel like everything’s working. Right.
Rory Holland (32:35)
Mm hmm. Yeah, yeah. And it’s otherwise I’m going to state the obvious. This is from my perspective, my opinion from the folks that I’ve hundreds and hundreds of people I’ve talked to as business owners. For those folks that are in it for the money. This falls flat. Now, we’re all about profit here at CSTMR. We are a for-profit company and we want our clients to succeed and be profitable. But we don’t we’re
Dan (32:38)
to get it right, you know?
Rory Holland (33:03)
We don’t work with companies who are in it just for the money. That to me is an empty statement. And there’s a hole there that money will not fill. And we can’t fill it no matter how hard we try to help those types of companies with that type of leadership.
But if you’re tired of that, or you feel like that’s what you’ve pursued, and you want to get it right and move your business in a different direction, I think what we’ve laid out as a path here in this episode and in the prior two is a way to get to something more positive.
Dan (33:19)
Yeah, something more meaningful. There’s that word again.
Rory Holland (33:41)
Yeah.
Dan (33:45)
So I’m just looking at times and I’m also looking at what we’ve got coming up next. Shall I tell people what we’ve got coming up next? Rory.
Rory Holland (33:52)
Yeah, let’s do, yeah.
Dan (33:57)
If you found this episode interesting, great, because what we’ve got coming up next is all about visualizing it. So again, it’s probably going to be a bit of a creative one, Rory, isn’t it? But crafting a resonant brand identity. So when we’ve talked a little bit about identity itself, what’s going to go into that and what makes it an identity that will resonate with your audience.
Rory Holland (34:22)
Yeah, I’m excited for that one. I think I say that every episode, but I love, I love the topic. Yeah. Yes, absolutely. Well, thanks Dan. It’s been a pleasure. Thanks folks for listening. We’ll look forward to catching you next time.
Dan (34:27)
Yeah, it should be good. We’re always excited.
Great stuff. Thanks very much.
