When you start a business, you automatically have a brand character even if you don’t know and don’t care for it.

The difference between you and another person who is investing in building a compelling brand is control. This person controls the narrative of his brand as far as his customers are concerned. Customers will perceive his business as he intends them to.

Your customers, however, will perceive your brand in ways you would otherwise not want them to. And that is a problem.

Apart from influencing how customers perceive you, branding can create a competitive edge.

Branding Strategy

When you become intentional about your brand, your focus is not only on selling products and services. You also want to create a strong and positive perception of your business.

How can you influence your brand perception?

You do it via every communication and interaction you make out there. Be it your logo, vision, mission statement, advertising, etc.

A strong brand character will automatically set you apart from your competition. You won’t have to try too hard to convince your customers to stay loyal to your business or products.

Your brand, therefore, becomes your competitive edge. Keeping a safe distance from your competition means that your bottom line is also safe.

But you can’t just wake up one day and start branding. Branding has to be strategic and must communicate your company’s values to your customers. One of those strategies that make for great branding is identifying your brand character.

Brand Character

Brand character is the human aspect of a business. Your brand has human characteristics that give it a unique personality that customers can emotionally connect with.

By identifying your brand character, you give your brand identity. A brand character ensures that all actions by the company align with its values.

Brand character is an efficient way for you to build and nature a connection with consumers globally. It is your brand personality that speaks to your customer when making purchasing decisions. Not rationally, but emotionally.

Finding a brand character that aligns well with your brand will help build trust among customers.

Creating a Brand Character that Aligns with Your Company Values

Brand character is synonymous with human personality.

But not the complexity of it since a brand character has to be simple.

A brand character is who you are, but it is also a personality that you can pick. To get your brand character right, your authentic self must align with the character that you pick.

Picking your brand character is a very strategic affair, but it must also include emotions.

Before picking a character for your brand, you need to be clear on three things:

• How do your customers perceive your brand? What are the expressions or adjectives your customers use to describe your brand?
• What are the values and motivations behind your brand?
• Do your customers perceive your brand for what it really is?

Using a brand archetype to identify your brand character can help you align your customers’ perceptions with your values.

What is a brand archetype?

It’s a tool that helps bring out a brand’s personality as well as its uniqueness.

There are twelve brand archetype personalities:

• Innocent
• Everyman
• Hero
• Outlaw
• Explorer
• Creator
• Ruler
• Magician
• Lover
• Caregiver
• Jester and
• Sage

Out of the twelve archetypes, first, you need to narrow down to three that you relate to the most. Out of the three, you must then identify your primary archetype. Your primary archetype will be the anchor of your brand.

There are three questions you need to ask yourself and find their answers to identify your primary archetype:

1. What works best for you?

Among all the products and services you intend to offer, which is the most prominent or profitable?

Differentiating yourself from the competition means that your brand must be simple enough to cut through the noise. It must not be complex. That’s why you need to identify one primary archetype.

That, however, does not mean that you need to ignore the secondary archetypes.

The secondary archetypes are also important. They will help you differentiate from competitors with whom you share your primary archetype.

2. What feels most authentic to You?

You can’t fake your archetype. If you try to be what you are not, your customers will smell it a mile away because there is no authentic connection with them. You can’t get away with it, and your brand, as well as your business, will fail.

The things that make you fit one of the twelve archetypes are what is most natural to you, what you excel at, and what gives you a purpose. Once you have identified that, find out which archetype motivates your brand and the values you stand for, and then align the two.

3. Who is your target customer?

The customers you want to attract will determine your primary archetype. That’s because, for example, customers with a sage archetype will naturally gravitate towards sage brands. If your target customers have a sage archetype and sage is one of the archetypes you need to choose from, then your choice of a brand character becomes easy.

Choosing your brand character is no easy fit. To come up with a great brand strategy, however, it has to be done. Using a brand archetype will give you a track to follow so that your results are more realistic and workable. Unlike the human personality, the brand archetype is simple and will allow you to influence the brains of your target customers to relate to your brand naturally.