Creating a Brand Personality Customers Actually Relate To

Understanding the Role of Brand Personality

Brand personality goes far beyond color schemes and logo design. It’s the human-like set of traits and emotional tone that defines how a brand communicates, behaves, and connects with its audience. In today’s market—where consumers are more selective, more vocal, and more values-driven—having a clear and relatable brand personality can be the difference between blending in and standing out.

People gravitate toward brands that feel approachable, consistent, and aligned with their own identity or aspirations. Whether it’s the wit of Oatly, the confidence of Glossier, or the bold irreverence of Liquid Death, these companies succeed in part because their brand personalities feel real, not manufactured.

For marketers and business owners, the task is not just to define this personality but to live it across every customer touchpoint—from packaging to tweets to support emails.

Finding the Right Brand Personality

The best brand personalities aren’t picked out of a hat or copied from competitors. They’re rooted in three key things: the company’s purpose, its audience, and the market it operates in.

Let’s say your company builds wellness products aimed at busy professionals. That’s a different audience than college students or retirees. The tone, vocabulary, visual styling, and brand stories you develop need to reflect that. While the product may be similar to others on the shelf, the way it “speaks” can define its role in the customer’s life.

Headspace is a great example of tailoring personality to purpose. Their brand voice is calm, encouraging, and never too technical—perfect for their goal of making meditation accessible. Their illustrations, guided exercises, and email communications reinforce this tone consistently. It’s not just what they say, but how they say it, that earns trust.

Companies that skip this self-reflection often fall into generic branding—safe but forgettable. Customers won’t connect with brands that feel like everyone else, especially when there are plenty of alternatives in every category.

Values and Voice: Speaking the Same Language as Your Customers

Today’s customers care about what a brand stands for. Values, whether stated directly or implied through behavior, influence trust and loyalty. But values without voice fall flat. A brand needs to sound like it believes what it says.

Voice is one of the most overlooked aspects of brand personality. It’s not just about being casual or formal—it’s about tone, cadence, choice of words, and how you react under pressure. Think of it as your brand’s mannerisms and style of conversation.

Duolingo offers a masterclass in voice consistency. Whether it’s their app notifications, social media presence, or user onboarding flow, everything is delivered with a quirky, slightly irreverent tone. That distinctiveness makes them more memorable and likable—even if the product itself is technical.

When building your brand voice, ask these questions:

• If your brand were a person, how would it speak?

• What kind of humor would it use (if any)?

• Would it be authoritative, empathetic, rebellious, or wise?

The goal is not to appeal to everyone but to deeply resonate with the right group of people. Brands with clarity in voice build stronger emotional connections.

Visual Consistency that Reflects Personality

Your brand’s personality also lives in how it looks—its logo, color palette, typography, photo style, and packaging. These elements aren’t just decorative; they are communicative tools.

Haus built a following by pairing minimalist design with earthy tones and editorial-style photography. The look matches their brand’s personality: clean, natural, and elevated. Every visual element reinforces what they want customers to feel.

Consistency is critical. A brand that’s playful in its social copy but sterile in its product packaging can confuse customers. That friction—between expectation and reality—can erode credibility.

Even small details, like the type of photography used on your website or the way headlines are written, contribute to how your personality is received. They create the emotional environment customers enter when interacting with your brand.

Brand Personality in Action: Beyond the Marketing Department

Your brand personality doesn’t stop at the marketing team. It should be woven into the entire customer journey, from sales interactions to product design to customer service.

Support emails should match the brand tone. Onboarding flows should carry the same attitude as your homepage. Even legal copy and FAQ responses should reflect the brand personality to some extent. This alignment builds authenticity. Customers begin to feel like they’re engaging with a person—not just a business.

Take Allbirds as an example. Their mission to create sustainable, comfortable shoes is echoed in every aspect of their brand—from the friendly, human tone in their product descriptions to the recycled materials in their packaging. Nothing feels out of place.

When the customer experience aligns with the brand’s personality, it builds trust. And when trust is established, customers are more likely to return, recommend, and even forgive the occasional misstep.

Measuring Brand Personality Impact

Brand personality can seem intangible, but its effects show up in tangible business metrics: customer retention, average order value, referral rates, and brand recall. The more a brand feels like someone a customer would want to know, the more likely they are to stick around.

One approach is to monitor engagement across platforms. Are people commenting on your posts with enthusiasm or tagging friends? Are they using your brand’s language in user-generated content? Do customer reviews mention how the brand “feels”?

Brand personality is also evident in how people talk about you when you’re not in the room. Are you described as “cool,” “friendly,” “innovative,” or “basic”? Social listening tools like Brandwatch or Mention can surface the adjectives people associate with your brand—giving insight into whether your personality is landing as intended.

Surveys are another option. Asking customers how they’d describe your brand can surface surprises and help recalibrate your messaging. If people are perceiving your tone as overly corporate when you’re aiming for approachable, it may be time to adjust your style.

Adapting Without Losing Identity

As brands evolve, so should their personality. A company that starts out scrappy and rebellious may need to refine its tone as it scales. But change shouldn’t mean abandoning identity. Instead, it should reflect a maturation that stays true to core values while adapting to new audiences or platforms.

Notion is a good example. As the company grew from a niche productivity tool into a mainstream platform, its brand voice matured. It retained its clarity and creative edge, but the tone became slightly more professional—matching its broader audience. That balance between evolution and consistency is key.

Adaptation also applies across channels. A brand’s TikTok presence might be more casual than its LinkedIn presence—but both should still feel like they belong to the same personality. Different rooms, same voice.

Closing Remarks

A strong brand personality isn’t about being loud or quirky—it’s about being consistent, emotionally intelligent, and aligned with your audience. It’s what turns a transaction into a connection, and a customer into an advocate.

When your brand sounds, looks, and behaves like something your audience trusts and relates to, it opens the door to long-term loyalty. Whether you’re just starting to define your identity or looking to evolve it, the focus should remain on staying authentic and creating an experience that feels human, not mechanical.

In a marketplace filled with noise, the brands that speak with clarity, purpose, and personality are the ones people remember—and return to.