The brand personality is the chosen character that best communicates the brand proposition to the

target audience. It is not the personality of the target audience, it is the personality that is most
likely to draw their attention, interest them, and encourage them to take action and buy the brand.
A single brand proposition could be expressed through many variants of a brand personality to
present a different voice to the consumer; it is important to choose the one that is most suitable
from these possibilities.

For example, Heineken beer has had a consistent proposition of 'Heineken refreshes the parts
others beers cannot reach.' The brand personality has changed many times from videos of
television celebrities changing their character from sad to happy; to cartoon comic strip
characters whose body parts change in response to drinking the beer. One brand personality
will appeal to a different target audience from the other, but all are based on the same
underlying brand proposition.

The brand personality should be treated very much like a person or character, as this format is
easiest for consumers to understand and accept. This is because consumers have a vast
experience of dealing with human relationships and the nuances of differences in
personalities. They are able to distinguish between subtle differences in brand personalities
and build up their own loyal or disloyal relationships with them.

Brand personalities are often characterized by their analogy to other people, objects and
services:

• If brand X were a car, what kind of car would it be?

• If brand Y were a sports person, what kind of sport would they play?
• If brand Z were a person, what sort of clothes would they wear? Are they male or female?
What would they drink? What TV programmes would they watch? Where would they go on
holiday?

Brand Narrative
Successful brands develop their personality over time, they do not remain static. Their brand
proposition may remain constant, but its expression as a personality needs to be updated to
remain contemporary in a changing competitive environment. A narrative is the story that a
brand personality follows as its flows through consumer culture. As a story, the brand
personality then belongs to a chain of events that can be traced backwards to the past, in the
present and forward to the future. This helps consumers to align themselves with the brand as
it reflects changes in consumer culture. Some brands rely on the narrative of their founder,
such as Bill Gates of Microsoft, to personify the changes in the brand; as his focus and
personality matures, so does the brand's.

The power of a narrative is that the brand personality can also look forward and backward in
a nostalgic or ironic manner or look forward with an optimistic feeling. This sense of time
closely relates to how we witness our own growth, creating joint memories at distinctive
points of the narrative between the brand and us. This means we associate specific events in
our lives with the expression of the brand personality at that time, creating a deeper sense of
relationship and therefore loyalty to the brand. We remember our enjoyment of our first bike
brand, car brand, the first beer brand we drank, the first condom brand we used and the first
hotel brand we stayed at. These all form pivotal moments in our lives and the memory is
intrinsically associated with the brand.
Brand Experience
The best way to generate a successful brand personality is when all the elements combine to
create a total brand experience. This means choreographing a performance of brand identity,
in a branded space, with branded service and resulting in a branded memory. By creating a
memorable experience, something that has actually touched the consumer's heart and mind, a
brand moves on to a level of deep brand satisfaction for the consumer. The interaction of time
and space in creating this memory is crucial since it places the consumer at the centre of an
event in a specific time and specific place, not a generic activity that they may forget. They
provide branded moments that can be captured as an activity that only one brand can provide
or fulfill.

The key to defining successful brand experiences is to create a story that will satisfy the
consumers' desires, without resorting to the tired clichés of current market thinking. New
concepts of people moving in spaces and enjoying the submersion in a total brand
environment can be created, that break the mould of traditional service provision, retailing
and communication channels. Brand experiences help to generate the brand mythology that a
brand needs to develop its personality beyond the two-dimensional