BRANDING

Does Your Brand Name Fit Your Brand Personality?

Robust, dynamic, or spirited? Photo by Brett Jordan via Unsplash

If your company or product were a person, what kind of person would it be? Reserved or bubbly? Impetuous or deliberate? Cute or stately? A poet or a lumberjack?

Now: How well does your company or product name reflect that personality?

This isn’t a trivial exercise. Identifying your brand’s personality is a tough but essential step in any naming exercise and a key element of your naming brief. It’s especially challenging with startups, many of which are still blank canvases.

But it’s not an impossible task. And, happily, it’s a rewarding one.

When I work with clients on brand personality, I borrow a few tricks from personal-style consultants, who use archetypes to analyze their clients’ appearance and help them shop more effectively: The Ingenue, The Diva, The Sophisticate, and so on. You know these types even if you aren’t especially into fashion: the friend who looks completely at home in a gold-trimmed velvet cape or a dramatic scarf; the colleague you can’t imagine wearing anything that isn’t perfectly tailored — even T-shirts.

Brand-personality archetypes work in much the same way. They identify authentic, essential characteristics of your company, product, or service that connect on an emotional or visceral level…