What Does Your Brand Personality Rule Out?

Your brand guidelines say “bold.” Does that mean challenging conventional wisdom, using provocative language, or choosing bright colors? Until your team agrees, the word offers little help when deciding what to publish.

In “Why brand personality matters more than ever,” Julie Reeves argues that personality should help brands choose their creative work, partnerships and behavior toward customers.

Start with a choice the team actually faces. Here are three examples of how a brand might interpret its traits.

Bold. A brand that challenges conventional wisdom could pass on a perfectly accurate “five best practices” article and examine which familiar practice customers should stop following. Both articles need evidence. The trait helps the team choose the argument, even when the safer idea would be easier to approve.

Warm. A customer’s order is late. The response acknowledges the inconvenience before explaining the delivery policy. That choice rules out a cheerful, generic greeting that sounds friendly but ignores why the customer is upset. Warmth changes what the company pays attention to and what it says first.

Irreverent. The team can make fun of an industry ritual without making fun of the customer who follows it. A joke about needlessly complicated jargon might fit. A joke that embarrasses someone for asking a basic question would go, even if it were the funniest line in the campaign.

Put the chosen example and the rejected one beside the adjective in your guidelines. Explain why one was chosen and the other rejected. Now a writer, designer or service manager has something concrete to work from, and a reviewer has a reason to give beyond “it doesn’t feel like us.”

Your team won’t agree on every execution. But a concrete example gives people something to discuss beyond whether the work “feels like us.”

At your next review, pick one adjective from your guidelines. Ask what it would lead you to approve—and what appealing idea it would lead you to turn down.

That is when a word in the brand guidelines starts helping someone make a decision.