What are brand attributes?

Hello?

Hello.

Hi.

How's it going?

Aren't they tiny? Aren't they tiny out there. Hello everyone it's Matt. And it's...

Chris.

And it's another Monkey Monday.

Yeah. And this week we're talking about brand attributes.

Brand attributes. it's a nice, easy exercise, that anyone could do, help them understand their brand, without doing big, expensive workshops. it's a good little thing. So what are brand attributes.

Well, is it seven? I haven't even looked at, I think, I think it was...

Six or seven, something like that.

But you'll see, there's a link to a worksheet that you can follow along. And, you'll know the number that's in there.

Count it yourself! We're helping teach people how to count as well as do brand attributes.

Exactly. But we'll go through each bullet point and you write down what is the answer for your own company. And we'll talk you through each section.

All right. Where are we starting then?

We're starting with culture.

Culture. So culture, basically, how would you describe your company culture? And is this something that you can pivot from your core values? Do you know what they are? You could just do three words for this. Sometimes that's easy. So you could describe your cultura as collaborative, creative, and fun. You could write a longer sentence such as you know, we're a place for quiet, contemplation and reflection. Maybe you're a monastery.

Of course, you're a monastery.

A monastery branding. That's what we do most of the time.

Also, you could be a fun company driven by its enthusiastic individual people who want to make a difference.

Yeah. So a longer sentence will be fine too, but you just kind of want to sum up what your culture should feel like in some meaningful way.

Yep. section two, is your brand archetypes. What kind of company are you and how do you stand in the marketplace? And here is a graphic. Ba-ding!

That's a good sound effect, Chris. So are you the innocent like Dove, the hero like Nike, regular guy like PG Tips. I'm just reading stuff out. You can see the list here.

It's lovely. I'm going to read out one more. the jester and that's Skittles.

That's me, isn't it. I think it's important to try and do one, a lot of companies, they go, oh, we're this or this. And sometimes you just have to live with being two. But if you can define it down to one, that's really helpful.

Yeah. And it's amazing how companies don't think about this at all. So they just,we're just a company and business is just sort of boring and it doesn't have to be, you just got to do something a bit different. I think it's good. Useful tool. The next one is customer.

Yeah. Describe, your key audience, really. And again, you kind of have to just narrow this down to the most important audience. We all have a variety of audiences we maybe want to talk to sometimes. So is your key audience DIY enthusiasts? Are they teenage footballers? Sometimes it's kind of difficult to describe exactly who they are. And you have to use a bit of shorthand and then fill that in over here. So if you're going to, if you get a bit stuck, you might have to do a bit of a wrapper. Starbucks, I think refer to their customer as - rightly or wrongly - cultured millennials. But what does that really mean? So if you're not sure, try and get a phrase that feels right. Do something over here to really describe who they are and there's loads of audience stuff you can do just to try and get that clearer in your team's head as to what that means.

And then after you've done that, you need to move on to your voice. how do you want to communicate? Three words can be good for this. our list is not definitive.

Yeah. And a good thing I think to do here is, is to maybe check. If you get three words, stand for instance, check what that feels like against all of your competitors, because if all of your competitors are living in the, I dunno, the formal side of this, this chart, and they are, they would describe themselves as professional, informative and technical. Do you want to be the same as that? Tone of voice is a really good opportunity to zag when everyone else is zigging and it lets you, communicate in a way that could be more fun. And there's some great examples out there, of people who have gone off-piste and just, just changed one of those three words into something that's a bit more exciting and different than everyone else.

And after you've chosen your voice, you need to choose how you want to look. And this is pretty easy to do. How would you describe your visual identity? three words can also be good for something like this, but you might go for something like minimal or maximal, bright, colorful, bold, understated, and subtle, retro. I came up with relaxed elegance as one as well. That would be nice.

So yeah, just find the word that you think fits your visual style the best.

Yep.

We think one of the most important parts of your brand attributes is how do people feel once they've engaged with your brand? What do you want them to go away feeling? What are their emotions? So do you want them to be happy? Do you want them to feel informed, entertained, reassured, scared? you kind of raised her eyebrows at scared Chris, but there are, if you think of Led By Donkeys, they might put stuff out there that kind of makes you want to get a bit angry, even, or maybe it's the opposite side. Maybe you want people to walk away from your brand feeling relaxed or potentially inspired. So what do you want, what feeling do you want to invoke in your audience?

And then we move on to impact. What benefits does your brand bring to your customer? Maybe safety, security, peace of mind, or, giving them more time to spend with their families. maybe to make work a happier place, more fulfilling and fun place to be, or improving their health and wellbeing.

Yeah, there's loads, I mean, it's really digging under the skin of the benefit you're bringing your audience. if you're not bringing them any benefit then why would they even bother interacting with your brand? and finally, it's difference, and this is, some people call it your USP or whatever you want to call it, but it really is why should anybody interact with your brand versus every other brand that's doing the same thing as what you're doing. So are you faster? Are you cheaper? Are you more reliable? Do you have a better range than your competitors? Are, is your service better? Is it a more complete rounded service you're giving people. Are you more local to your audience? Are you doing something remarkable with sustainability that your audience would appreciate versus your competition? Are you more caring? What do you do? What do you give your audience that's different to your competitors?

Yeah. So then you've got a full list of brand attributes, which you can then use and, put out to the entire team and make sure that so collaborative process in the first place. But then once you start creating marketing material or any tweets or anything, you can then go back to make sure that every one of those, pieces of literature is going out is going out in the right way.

Yeah. It can really help even just people who are doing your social media. For instance, if they know that you're allowed to be, you know, quirky and fun. And you are the disruptor. You can go out there with confidence and license that you're staying on brand because this is what your brand attributes are saying. So it's a really good, easy crib sheet, if you like, of how everyone that's involved with communicating for your organization can visually get your style right. And communicatively say things correctly. Not like my sentence, just there, which was a bit poor.

Yeah. Like I, I like the, the example that, there's the burger chain Wendy's over in the States and, Obviously one of their attributes is being cheeky and funny and they put a tweet out about some guy wrote to them on Twitter and he had his baseball cap on back to front in his Twitter feed. And they just said, this isn't the 1990s man, and you're not Bart Simpson, so turn your hat around. You know, things on social media like that, which will get retweeted more. Here's the CEO of our company doing some really boring thing.

Oh, here is a handshake that we did with somebody, and nobody cares about. And I think just, I mean, Wendy's obviously sound like a bit of a disruptor there as well, they're the cheeky disruptor, and once you've got that license, they can do some really cool, fun things. if you don't have these things described, then you might fall into the trap of just putting out the typical kind of corporate bland Manila envelope kind of posts. Today where you succeeded in doing some thing unextraordinary.

Do you think we succeeded in doing something extraordinary today?

I hope we did. Thanks everyone.

Yes. Join us again for another Monkey Monday.

Maybe we'll bring you another worksheet.