Reilly Newman | Personality is a powerful combination of unique behavioral tendencies. Personality is what makes you the person you are. The mixture of traits guides your expressions and actions because it is a concoction of your thoughts, feelings, and behavior.
When you think about a friend or loved one, the first thing that comes to mind is their face and their personality. Typically in thought, we reduce this down to very broad strokes like funny, sweet, cold, etc. which envelopes our perception of their personality. The shortcut our mind is making is a consolidated summary of their behavior. Obviously, no friend is funny or sweet 100% of the time, yet our perception may be based on our preference for that trait or that it stands out the most with them.
What has been a common thread through the personalities of past clients or customers? Are they jokesters or serious? Do they enjoy routine and safety or do they like to live life on the edge? These clues tell us a lot about our audience because it reveals their personality to us. This is good for two reasons: First, asking these questions forces us to be curious about who we are serving and what they see as value. It’s also good to be inquiring when it comes to your audience because the more you understand about them, the better you can serve them. Second, this personality we are uncovering and defining inadvertently reveals to us their behavior. Since a personality is a mixture of thoughts, feelings, and behaviors, this provides rich insight into our audience.
The Personality of Your Audience
After analyzing the main personality of your desired audience, you get a great look inside how they live their lives and how they may respond to certain things. Let’s imagine your audience is a relaxed, fun-loving group that loves travel and adventure-seeking. They are very social and enjoy getting loud with friends. Based on this personality, you can really get clear in your brand, marketing, and business offerings. This audience would most likely not respond too well to flowery messaging from a brand that is softspoken and deep. They would respond better to a brand that is high energy, loud, and edgy. It not only relates to them and resonates with who they are, but speaks to their aspirations of their internal narrative. It also helps them accomplish their goal of outwardly expressing their identity to peers through association with a brand that reinforces it.
Imagine the personalities of:
• Someone drinking VOSS water VS someone drinking Liquid Death water
• PC User VS Apple User (Apple campaign based on this: Link)
• Prius Owner VS Ford F150 owner
• Wine Drinker VS Beer Drinker
• Baseball Fan VS Football Fan
• Republican VS Democrat
As you can see in this exercise, some personalities are almost polar opposites while others share some similarities but have a more nuanced differences. This contrast between personalities creates a massive opportunity for brands to relate on a deep level as well as further drive difference between who they do not want to be.
Personality is a funny thing as it can be determined through buying behavior, fashion, likes on social media, friend groups, and other behaviors. This can be collected through observation of your audience as well as watching their online and offline engagements.
These theories have been put to the test by scientists and data analysts in lab studies where they tested people based on personality traits and brand advertising. The results were powerful as people were much more likely to purchase a product when they viewed an ad that was consistent with their predicted personality trait. These studies show users are 50% more likely to purchase in response to personality-targeted ads. By understanding your audience better and focusing on their personality in your brand, marketing and offerings, you could experience a 50% lift in purchase. That’s very impressive!
From a business perspective, the impact of personality-focused brands and marketing is an obvious investment that will bring a solid return. Being more congruent to the personality profile of your audience will improve business as well as make your brand far more appealing and increase its perceived value.
