There are many elaborate ways to identify the brand personality and brand identity, but for most projects our simple 20 questions will help you get a quite good picture that will help you a lot. It's easier to understand what makes a brand interesting if we think of it as a person. Many brands are clearly male, others clearly female - but there is more to it. Find out how to apply my questionnaire and how to use the results.

Personify a brand

If you think about a person, you may first think of its sex - male or female. Brands these days are not so easily to categorize to be male or female. Even cosmetics are now sold to men, so I don't recommend to use any gender in brand identity. It's more like a sketch. This way its not so strict and you can this brand personality to a wide range of media and projects to this brand.

20 easy questions for every brand

The answers to the 20 questions are not "YES or NO". We ask "is a brand more modern or more conservative?" Select one of the radio buttons between the two properties accordingly. You can do this or you can let your client do it for you. I prefer doing it during the briefing with the client. Help your client by saying that he should imagine his brand or firm as a person. If you have some additions to make, for example you client has an exact notion on how "old" his brand looks like, than write it next to the question. It's quick - in 5 minutes your done.

How to use the results of your brand personality questionnaire

The results are right in front of you. You can resume the answers in form of sentences and copy it into the creative brief. You can use it in your presentation, prior to the presentation of the graphic designs you have done. You can also use the results in all stages of your design work - as a checklist. A shot example:

Your results show that the brand is about 40 years old, modern, quite high-class and down-to-earth. Do you think a folder with grunge-look would be the right design? It's not the right style. You can even use it to choose the right font for a logo. Make a chart with 20-30 fonts all with the name of the brand. Now look at them and ask yourself which one looks modern, quite high-class and down-to-earth.

You can see that this brand identity or brand persona as some call it, can speed up your decision process, helps you to give strength to your presentation and is a checklist to not get lost during the design process. It will not limit your creativity, as you can be creative with any brand personality.