Brand personality creates customer curiosity and loyalty.
Does your brand have character? I don’t mean does it have a logo or a color scheme or a specific niche within a market — I literally mean character to the point of personification. If not, boy howdy, I’d recommend getting started on it soon. In a world of avatars, selfies, icons, and reality show celebrities – brand personality cannot be underrated.
Why in the business world should your brand have a distinct character, personality, or feel to it? Simply put, because character is something with which it is easier to bond or make a connection. The same way humans are drawn to cute pets.
Personify a brand: give it attitude, make it cute, make it posh – whatever best fits the desires of your customer base – and you will instantly get more brand loyalty. Your customers can bond with a logo, but they can bond with character. Do that and your marketing message will be much more sticky. A standardized, and sterile branding is like asking people to bond or identify with a fork or a spoon. People like shiny things. Cute things. Things that they want to be… So give it to them in your branding.
If you want customer loyalty, they need to bond with your product and business. With the sad passing of Steve Jobs, we’ve all been reminded how his character, his personality and drive and creative influences all were ways we characterized the Apple brand. Apple’s brand is much more than the logo. The logo MEANS something. Other possible examples?
The gecko… Flo the customer service rep… Ronald… the Pixar desk lamp… these are literally characters. But these characters… characteristics… get projected onto the brand. Whether it be a quirkiness, playful, dry humor, whatever. Red Bull does this without a specific character, but with all of its events, sponsorships, and endorsements. To “be” Red Bull is to push the envelope, be on top of your game. Already, we see two ways to create a personality with your branding. And customers can identify themselves with personality… they can relate to it, bond with it, and hence your branding greatly impacts customer loyalty.
You see this most often referred to as brand personality. The key component again being that customers can connect with something that is personified or has characteristics that are similar to their own (or more importantly similar to who they want to be). 
Big or small business alike need to address their brand personality on a regular basis. In the beginning to establish your market and brand, and ongoing so that you can continue to effectively be part of your target consumer market’s culture.
So what does your branding SAY about your business? What is the character and personality of your business? You might have an amazing corporate / company culture that is a major asset to your overall business, but is that also portrayed in your branding efforts? Ask yourself (and others) if your brand were a person, what sort of person would it be? What sort of clothes would your brand wear?
Once you know what sort of personality it does / should have, make sure that your marketing materials effectively reflect it. The bottom line: if your marketing effectively demonstrates personality and character, then your customers will identify with it on a deeper level, or at least more strongly. Moreover, it will help you get new customers who, because they are drawn to the brand personality, will be the most likely to be long-time, returning clients.
