Just add personality

This month we're looking at the role of personality in business and exploring the importance of creativity and individuality. Your 'brand' is the public's perception of your business or product, this includes its reputation, values and of course its personality. 

When most people start looking at their branding they try to create a consistent style across the board - be it a certain colour palette, typefaces or layouts - the first step is often defining a set of rules. This is key of course, consistency will make your business recognisable in an instant however it's also important that the rules you set in place don't lead to predictability in your marketing. There's no point in being consistent to preserve your brand's appearance if it creates boredom. 

For example if you step into certain well known fast-food stores you can have the same tasting burger in every restaurant, in any town, in any country in the world - but what's far more exciting is the authentic, family-run deli around the corner who's changing their hand written specials board every week. Another downside to a robotic consistency is that your competitors can predict your every move, they can even follow your formula and compete with you directly. 

Sharon Rasmussen, co-founder of Mission Burrito says: 

"When we began working with Root Studio around 18 months ago we had a consistent style across our stores and had established brand guidelines in terms of colours, fonts and layout. However, customer and staff feedback indicated that our small restaurant group had begun to look like any other high street chain and we had lost our personality in the way our stores looked and in our marketing materials.  Our determination to 'grow-up' as an expanding company had translated into our brand and we were no longer engaging with our customers in the fun way that had helped bring about our initial success.  Mission Burrito has always been about serving freshly made burritos in a casual and fun environment and our goal was to bring our personality back to the forefront of the brand."

Above all people want interaction. Without a human voice it's extremely difficult for people to connect to your business or to care about what it is that you're doing. 

"Our company has grown through word of mouth so our focus has been on campaigns that engage with existing customers with the goal of converting them from customers to brand embassadors.  A good example is The 24 inches of love  campaign for Valentine's Day 2012. This brought humour and colour back into our stores but also stemmed the thinking for a Man vs Burrito campaign which been a huge success in terms of ongoing customer engagement, pr and sales.   The Man vs Burrito  campaign complimented our annual burrito eater relay race and the Lucha Libre characters illustrated by Root Studio have been used on a wide range of marketing.  As well as in-store marketing materials that have transformed the look of our stores these campaigns have been promoted via social media channels and newsletters and have re-injected the fun into our identity."  

With a little personality and creativity people will start listening, all of a sudden you'll become memorable and begin a long lasting relationship with your customers. 

"Our most recent fresh ingredients campaign has focussed on building on the brand loyalty we've achieved over the last 18 months through educating customers on what goes into their burritos and reinforcing the messaging that we make everything from scratch.  We feel that we've achieved this in a fun way that compliments the livelier brand identity that Root Studio has helped us create and have successfully steered our brand out of the generic bland identity we were in danger of accepting."

So how do you go about discovering your business' personality? 

If your business is just 'you' then you've made life easy for yourself - just look in the mirror. If however your business is a product or service then start asking yourself a few questions - what makes your business different from your competitors?  If your business were a person, who would it be? What would it wear? Who would it hang out with?

Once you've decided what sort of business you are the next step is to decide how you sound. Your tone of voice is important - it can help you stand out from competitors and connect with your audience on an emotional level. It isn't necessarily what you say but how you say it and how you present it. 

When you meet someone for the first time you'll decide whether or not your personalities work well together - if they do you're more likely to have a long lasting relationship with this person. It's the same with your business - keep yourself creative and interesting and you'll draw the attention of the right audience.

If you'd like to discuss your branding or marketing plans please get in touch with us in the studio.