Why Authenticity Is the Most Important Part of Your Brand Personality

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When your brand personality doesn’t match who you are as a person, it can create a disconnected, inauthentic experience for your customers. This is especially true if you are an entrepreneur since you are the heart and soul of your brand. Your goal is to create a more authentic brand personality.

During a recent talk I was giving on brand personality, I was asked a couple of good questions: “How much of my personality should be my brand’s personality? Should I try to come up with a different personality for my brand, or should I just be myself and let my own personality come through in my brand?”

First, let’s get on the same page about what your brand personality is. Your brand personality is the look, feel, and sound of your brand. It’s how you come across to your audience. Much like your own personality makes you more interesting as a person, your brand personality makes your business more interesting. A well-defined personality makes your brand feel more human and more authentic.

Your brand personality should not create dissonance

The problem is that most people choose a personality for their brand based on what they think people want, rather than using their own unique personality. For a solo entrepreneur, this can create dissonance. Because you, along with your amazing personality, are the heart and soul of your brand.

When you apply a personality to your brand that’s not your own, you lose your individuality and often end up looking and sounding like everyone else. Most importantly, your brand personality doesn’t feel authentic to you or to your customers.

Instead, you should try to incorporate your own personality into your brand as much as possible. Here are a few reasons why:

• It’s a great way for your brand to stand out. You already are a unique individual, when you use your own personality in your brand you are automatically different from everyone else.
• It’s easier to convey. It’s much easier to communicate your own personality because it’s YOU! You’ve been honing your personality your whole life!
• You’re more relatable. People relate to real people, so when your brand feels like a real person you create better connections and build stronger relationships.
• It feels authentic. When your brand personality is a reflection of who you are as a person, it feels more natural, more comfortable, and more authentic.

When you are the face of your brand

Using your own personality is pretty obvious when you’re the face and voice of your brand. If you are a wellness consultant, Pilates instructor, or gym owner your entire business is based around you. People aren’t buying a widget, they are buying you. You are the brand.

A good example of this is a gym owner I came across recently on Instagram:

I saw @abbott.the.red flip the camera off mid sled push, so I flipped the camera off mid sled push. #ShesTheCoolest #NoFucks ????: @ericalivoti

A post shared by Krissy Mae Cagney (@krissymaecagney) on Jul 22, 2017 at 8:12am PDT

Krissy Mae Cagney owns Black Iron Gym. She is the brand. Without a doubt, her personality is the personality of her brand. She is rebellious, wild, and free-spirited, and so is her brand. Her personality is her brand’s personality. She’s true to herself and it works. She’s definitely authentic.

When you are not the face of your brand

Other times, you are not the face and voice of your brand. Maybe you own a bakery, a doggie daycare, or you’re a wedding planner. You are not necessarily selling yourself, but rather an end product or service. You may not be the face of your brand, but you should still infuse your brand with your own individual personality.

My good friend Rachel DesRochers does this extremely well. She owns a cookie company called Grateful Grahams, but her brand’s personality is all her.

Rachel may not be the end product, but just like her personality, the Grateful Grahams brand is honest, vulnerable, passionate, altruistic, and 100% authentic.

Take action today

I would encourage you to start incorporating your own personality into your brand. A good place to start might be choosing your brand archetype. I wrote a post all about your brand archetype, which you can find here.

Don’t overthink it, just use your own personality traits to humanize your brand. When deciding on what adjectives you should use to describe your brand, simply use the ones that feel the most like you.

When your brand personality aligns with your own, your brand is more relatable, more human, and more authentic. Your brand naturally stands out from all the rest, and you automatically differentiate. This creates a more authentic experience for your customer, builds relationships, fosters brand loyalty, and leads to a more sustainable brand.

It takes a while to fully develop a brand personality, but over time it will become increasingly more finely-tuned and more authentic. Just keep working on it, and always remember to be your unique, authentic self.