Your Brand Comes to Life
The meaning of the word ‘brand’ has really shifted over time.
Once understood to mean a name, sign, design or wording, ‘brand’ now describes more fully what the public think about you – a perception based on the overall effect of your values, personality, tone of voice and style.
1. Imagine Your Brand as a Person
Let’s Get Started
One way to help work out such an abstract thing as the essence of a brand is to try to describe the brand as a person.
This process will give you a chance to take a step back and objectively review your brand in the third person.
This works for:
- Organisations (helpful for teams who want to achieve a unified expression of who they are as a brand)
- Sole operators and employees looking to build their career (helps them think of their professional brand and how that is different to their personal self)
Click on “Download the PDF” to read the instructions and complete the activity.
Complete this exercise for your business or brand; e.g. Joe’s Bakery, or Kirryn Zerna – professional speaker.
Watch the Video for Inspiration...
2. Your Brand Mood Board (Optional)
As an optional extra, this exercise may be helpful to add further clarity to interpreting your brand.
It really helped me when I was shifting my profile from corporate to business owner.
Step 1.
Search for well known people who inspire you.
It could be helpful to think in these 3 categories:
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How you act – character snapshot
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How you operate – personality traits in business/action
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How you look – style icons
Step 2.
You could copy and paste the images of the people onto a Word or PowerPoint document.
Or create Pinterest boards in each three sections.
It’s easy and free to sign up to Pinterest – it also becomes a fantastic image search engine.
Another thought…
As you explore, also notice what stock photos or illustrations stand out and appeal to you as they relate to your brand persona.
Start keeping a file (in your folders, or on Pinterest) – as this will inform the types of images you might share. Here’s an example of my Brand Inspiration file on Pinterest.
Step 3.
Write some notes about the exercise.
Were there any surprises? Did it make you feel excited? Certain? Think about what language and the types of images you’d use, given your findings.
Below are some examples of other people’s mood boards to give you an idea.
