Promo 101 - Finding Your Brand Personality

To maximize the effectiveness of your promotional products, you need to make sure they are aligned with your company’s image and values… but what if you’re not sure what those are? Sometimes when you’re deeply involved in an organization, it can be easy to get lost in the details and lose sight of the big picture. Whether you haven’t ironed out your brand’s core image and values yet, or you just need a refresher, we’ve put together some of our favourite exercises from across the web to help you align your marketing plans with what’s most important to your business.

If you take the time to go through a few of these activities with your team, we promise you’ll have a better understanding of the heart of your business, and you’ll be one step closer to achieving a unified brand image–complete with a well-constructed promo collection!

1. Mission Statement: Does your company have a mission statement? A mission statement is simply a summary statement of the goals and values of a company or organization. If your company has one of these, you can use it as a strong starting point for the other activities on this list. If not, you may want to create one based on the results of the activities. A mission statement should be short and to the point, providing the necessary information to your internal team and target audience about your company.

2. Brand Personification: Alright, now for the fun! Not only is this exercise a blast to go through, but it works wonders in developing a deep understanding of your brand and its place in the market. The main premise of brand personification is to consider this question. If your brand were a person, what would they be like? The key to getting the most out of the activity is to get into ridiculous and seemingly unnecessary detail – what kind of car do they drive? What do they like to do in their free time? This article takes it a step further, suggesting that you imagine your business’ persona went to a cocktail party with its target customers and competitors. How does your business interact with others? What makes them stand out? If your brand got a little tipsy at the party, what would they be like?

This activity will help you and your team to deeply understand your brand’s personality, and how it interacts with those around it. Is it seen as a fun-loving jokester? A quiet but supportive friend? An admired leader? Marketers can use these insights to shape their brand’s messaging in a voice that suits its unique personality!

3. Choose Descriptors: In this next activity, provide your team with a list of attributes and ask them to rank them according to how well they describe your brand. To take the exercise to the next level, you can take Forbes’ advice, and turn it into a game of “this, not that”. This activity allows you to understand what your company is, or what you want it to be, while at the same time, defining what it isn’t. For example, you may find that your company is simple, but not minimalistic; or mature, but not boring.

This exercise can help you to create a visual identity, develop marketing materials, and select promotional products, that suit your brand while keeping in mind the balance of attributes (trendy vs timeless, whimsical vs. practical, minimalist vs. maximalist) that you want your brand to exemplify.

4. News Headlines: This is another exercise where you’ll have to embrace your creativity. Pretend it’s ten or twenty years from now and your brand has made the front page of the news for its achievements. What has your brand achieved in that time? What does the article say? By envisioning what success looks like in this way, you and your team will have a tangible idea of what you are striving towards in everything that you do at your business. This provides both a sense of motivation and a sense of direction!

After completing exercises like this, it’s important to come together at the end of your session to create a list of key themes, findings, and directions that have come up in your discussions. Write a concise description of your brand identity, values, and ambitions. Use these to begin developing a mission statement if you don’t already have one–and turn back to your findings when ordering promo products, creating ad campaigns, or making any decisions that may impact your brand!