Brand Personality: How To Incorporate It Into Your Packaging

Consumers have limitless options in 2022, so how can you stand out from the competition and establish yourself as a trustworthy brand? It all comes down to brand personality and brand identity.

Here’s everything you need to know about brand personality and how to incorporate it into your packaging:

What Is Brand Personality?

Brand personality attributes human characteristics to a brand to give it a more personal and relatable feel since people are more likely to purchase from a brand with a personality that’s similar to their own.

While there are countless adjective choices for your brand personality, there tend to be five main categories of traits:

• Exciting
• Sincere
• Rugged
• Competent
• Sophisticated

And here are some real-life examples of brand personalities to provide you with a better understanding of the concept:

• Apple would fall under the “competent” category as an innovative leader in high-quality technology products.
• Tiffany & Co. would fall under the “sophisticated” category as one of the world’s most prestigious and high-end jewelry brands.
• Jeep would fall under the “rugged” category with vehicles designed for rough and tough adventures.

Why Does Your Brand Need a Personality?

But what exactly is the point of giving a non-human entity (a company) human characteristics? Here are some of the reasons why this is done:

Communicate and Connect With Customers

Creating a human personality for your brand helps you communicate and connect with customers. Customers are unlikely to purchase from brands that they know nothing about, which is why brand personality goes a long way toward winning over potential customers.

Differentiate Yourself From the Competition

Creating a set of human characteristics for your brand also helps differentiate yourself from the competition so you can reach your target audience. When you’re in a crowded field of competitors, you need all the help you can get to stand out in the crowd, and you can accomplish this with a brand personality framework.

Establish Your Values and Message

Creating a personality for your brand can even help you establish your values and overall brand message. Essentially, it acts as a promise to your customers regarding who you are, what you care about, and what you offer.

How Can You Develop Your Brand Personality?

With these benefits in mind, now is the time to develop your unique brand personality if you haven’t done so already. Here are five steps to help you navigate through the process and create a personality that fits perfectly with your brand:

Step 1: Consider Who You Are

First, you need to consider who you are.

Think about why you started your company in the first place and the problem that you’re trying to solve. Think about your values, culture, priorities, and goals — these are all dimensions of brand personality. The answers to these questions should help guide you through the rest of the steps in the process.

Step 2: Consider Who Your Customers Are

Next, you need to consider who your customers are so you can establish that emotional connection. If you’re unsure of this, you may want to create a customer persona. A customer persona is a detailed description of your ideal customer that goes beyond basic demographic information. The goal of a customer persona is to come up with a description that sounds like a real person with hobbies, wants, fears, motivations, and more.

Once you’ve established who your customers are, you can start to think about what they’d want to see in a brand personality. One of the best ways to do this is to think about the words they’d use to describe their own personality. Customers are more likely to purchase from brands with similar personalities to their own.

Step 3: Consider Your Competition

Before you move forward with developing your brand personality, it may also be helpful to consider the brand personalities of some of your competitors. And while you shouldn’t copy them completely, perhaps you can take a few elements and add a unique twist to the rest.

Step 4: Choose Appropriate Adjectives

Now it’s time for the hardest part of the process — actually coming up with adjectives that reflect all the information you’ve gathered thus far. Even though any adjective will do, it might help to look up some common brand personality traits online for a more comprehensive list of potential traits.

It helps to start by choosing your category out of the five mentioned earlier: exciting, sincere, rugged, competent, and sophisticated. Once you’ve established your main trait, you can incorporate a few other adjectives to round out your brand personality and tone of voice to feel more authentic and unique.

Step 5: Reflect Your Chosen Adjectives in Marketing and Packaging

Finally, you need to take your chosen brand personality adjectives and incorporate them into your marketing campaigns and packaging design for a visual identity.

In terms of marketing, for example, you could join new social media platforms, create new content, and start to establish your brand voice through your copy — all while gaining more followers and recognition for your brand from your target market.

How Can I Incorporate Brand Personality Into Packaging?

Once you’ve established your brand personality, you can incorporate it into your packaging.

But how can you take a few words and transform them into visuals that you can incorporate into your packaging? Here are a few different ideas:

Packaging Copy

For starters, you can show off your brand personality through the copy on your packaging. Let’s say that you chose the words “trendy,” “casual,” and “funny” for your brand personality. Your copy could then reflect these words by using slang, jokes, and puns.

Alternatively, let’s say that you chose the words “classic,” “professional,” and “serious” for your brand personality. You wouldn’t use the same approach for your copy and would, instead, use more formal language in your tagline or copywriting.

Packaging Color

You can also show off your brand personality through the colors that you use on your packaging. Believe it or not, colors actually say a lot about your brand thanks to a psychological concept known as the psychology of color, which asserts that different colors evoke certain feelings in people.

So for your brand that’s “trendy,” “casual,” and “funny,” you definitely wouldn’t want to choose neutral colors like black, white, or gray for your packaging. Instead, you would want to choose fun and exciting colors like yellow, orange, and pink.

Meanwhile, for your “classic,” “professional,” and “serious” brand, you would want to choose more neutral colors that match these traits.

Packaging Font

Another underrated way that you can incorporate brand personality into your packaging is through your chosen fonts or typography. Similar to colors, fonts say a lot about your brand.

For example, script fonts like Lucinda Calligraphy or Mistral would be ideal for a “trendy,” “casual,” and “funny,” brand whereas serif fonts like Times New Roman or Garamond would be ideal for a “classic,” “professional,” and “serious” brand.

Packaging Material

Last but certainly not least, your chosen packaging material says a lot about your brand personality. For example, magic white mailer boxes would be a suitable packaging choice for a “friendly,” “trendy,” and “sleek” brand, whereas kraft boxes would be an ideal packaging choice for an “adventurous,” “worldly,” and “humble” brand.

Another key factor here relates to packaging sustainability. If you’re trying to establish an image of a brand that cares about the environment, your packaging needs to reflect that. A great choice here is corrugated cardboard which can be recycled up to seven times.

Wrap Up

When you work with custom packaging providers like Box Genie, it’s easy to incorporate your brand personality into your packaging. You can start by choosing a box design and material that fits your brand image and values.

From there, you can add colors, images, and copy that mesh well with your brand personality to give your customers a one-of-a-kind unboxing experience.

Sources:

Brand Personality Definition | Investopedia

Buyer Personas: What They Are, Why They Matter and How to Best Build One | Entrepreneur

How to Choose Cost-Effective Retail Packaging Materials | Fit Small Business