Because your business doesn’t need a dancing mascot, a quirky catchphrase or a social media manager pretending to be a sentient biscuit.

Somewhere in a marketing department, someone has just announced that the company needs more personality.

An uncomfortable silence usually follows this.

Then somebody suggests making the brand more fun.

Another person proposes a cartoon mascot.

And before anyone can intervene, a perfectly respectable engineering company has acquired a wisecracking animated badger called Barry.

Barry wears sunglasses. Barry has opinions. Barry now communicates the company’s commitment to precision manufacturing.

Nobody knows how this happened.

Welcome to the strange and occasionally terrifying world of brand personality.

What Is Brand Personality, Anyway?

Brand personality is the collection of human characteristics people associate with a business.

A brand might feel confident, approachable, knowledgeable, adventurous, reassuring or rebellious.

These qualities influence how customers perceive it, how they interact with it and, importantly, whether they remember it.

A strong brand personality makes your business feel distinctive and recognisable.

It doesn’t require your managing director to dress as a pineapple.

That said, depending on the managing director, it might improve certain meetings.

Your Brand Doesn’t Have to Be Funny to Have Personality

One of marketing’s more persistent misunderstandings is that personality means humour.

It doesn’t.

A financial adviser can have a calm, reassuring personality.

An engineering company can be precise, practical and quietly confident.

A technology business can be curious, intelligent and refreshingly straightforward.

None of these businesses needs to start posting memes about dancing vegetables.

Personality is about character, not comedy.

And character is something your business demonstrates through its words, actions and behaviour.

Not through the number of emojis squeezed into a LinkedIn post.

The Danger of Trying Too Hard

We’ve all encountered brands desperately attempting to be relatable.

They use slang nobody in the organisation understands. They describe ordinary products as legendary. They announce that their new invoice management software is absolutely iconic. Occasionally, they call customers their besties.

This is like watching your accountant arrive at a formal dinner in roller skates and announcing he’s now down with the kids.

Memorable, certainly. But perhaps not for the reasons you think.

An authentic brand personality should reflect who you actually are, not who your marketing team thinks might perform well on TikTok.

Your Employees Already Have a Personality. Start There.

Here’s a revolutionary idea.

Before inventing an elaborate brand character, look at the people who already work in your business.

How do they speak to customers?

What do customers appreciate about them?

Are they knowledgeable? Helpful? Straight-talking? Enthusiastic? Reassuring?

Perhaps your engineers are brilliant at explaining complicated problems without making customers feel stupid.

Perhaps your customer service team has a reputation for being exceptionally helpful.

Perhaps your founder has a refreshingly direct approach to business.

These are the foundations of a genuine brand personality.

You don’t have to manufacture one in a workshop involving coloured sticky notes and a consultant charging by the adjective.

You might already have one.

Personality Should Influence Behaviour, Not Just Marketing

A brand personality isn’t much use if it exists only on your website.

If your business claims to be approachable but makes customers navigate seventeen automated telephone menus, something has gone wrong.

If you describe yourself as innovative but require six signatures to approve a new idea, customers may eventually notice.

And if you promise to be friendly but your emails read like threatening correspondence from a Victorian solicitor, your personality needs some attention.

Your brand personality should shape how your business communicates, behaves and treats people. Otherwise, it’s simply another collection of attractive words gathering dust in the brand guidelines.

Be Recognisable. Be Human. Be Yourself.

The strongest brand personalities don’t necessarily shout the loudest.

They’re consistent in their values, recognisable in their communication and appropriate to their audience.

They understand that personality isn’t something you bolt onto a business like a novelty spoiler on a family hatchback.

It’s something that emerges from what the business believes, how it behaves and the experience it creates.

So before commissioning that cartoon mascot, ask yourself a simple question: What do we want people to feel when they deal with our business?

Start there.

Because a brand with genuine personality doesn’t need to behave like a cartoon character to be memorable.

And Barry the Badger?

He’s now Head of Customer Engagement. Nobody has the heart to tell him his department doesn’t exist.

More Thoughts on Branding (Without the Dancing Badgers)

For more entertaining explorations of brand strategy, marketing psychology and the curious behaviour of marketing departments, listen to The Overthinker’s Guide to Modern Marketing Podcast.

Particularly Episode 7: How Brands Become Conversations Instead of Just Graphics and Episode 16: The Myth of Brand Consistency.

Because great brands need character, not costumes.