Feb 09, 2021 | Updated Feb 16, 2021
by Joshua Ngala @JoshuaNgala
This article was originally published on joshuangala’s WordPress blog

Brand personality is the human characteristics that can be attributed to a brand. It reflects the values passed on to consumers by company employees.

It’s for that reason that personality traits such as integrity, honesty and commitment give an institution a unique differentiation. 

Such characteristics inform the behavior of an organization through its services and its employees who represent the brand.

The way an office speaks of its products or services ideally reflects the kind of a person it would be, were it human.

As a result, a brand without a personality has trouble gaining awareness and developing a relationship with customers.

1. Employee personality can hurt a brand

Employee personality can hurt a brand. To control this, an institution must live to its core values and belief system.

Jenny Schade, a brand expert puts it that the promise an organization makes to consumers is not only delivered through products and services, but also through the behaviors of the employees who represent the brand with every move.

It means that the organization’s employees play integral part in its vision and the strategic plan. It trickles down from the Chief Executive Officer to the office cleaner.

Tangible and intangible values

The creation of both tangible values as well as intangible ones is proportionate to employees’ professional conduct and personal lives.

Brand disaster happens when the institution only gives promises to external public while ignoring the employees manifesting a bad culture.

Lack of an appealing workplace and unfair treatment are equally injurious to the employees who must live the brand every day. Such a stingy culture ignores diversity and perpetuates discrimination.

It scathes personal and institutional reputation because employees are the workforce through which the company fulfills its brand promise.

2. Employees should be proud of their brand

Brand promise of a company can be achieved through performance requires people. Employees should “feel good and be proud’ about the institutions they represent.

This gives them a crystal-clear understanding of exactly what the company expects from each of them.

One of the mistakes that some institutions make is to disengage the internal audience and coldly deal with external key players as suppliers, contractors.

Respect and use of good words build employees. Lack of it means the institutional brand attributes such as prestige would be lost. Brand experts emphasize that Company Employees should be married to brand.

Researches find that brand identification is influenced by factors such as prestige, satisfaction, corporate communication, and attractiveness.

The best individuals to further these attributes are the happy employees.

A bond with stakeholders enhances a company’s image through multiple social networks. As a result, the stakeholders influence one another in the formation of consumption attitudes, behaviors and decision making.

3. Trustworthy employees help achieve objectives

Branding has emerged as an integral feature of any institution’s strategic plan considered a key organizational asset.

An institution’s uniqueness therefore can only be considered achievable by having credible, reliable, responsible and trustworthy individual employees.

These personal characteristics directly have a bearing to the extent to which an institutional value meets the economic, psychological or functional needs of voters.

An institution can build a great brand by designing comprehensive public relations strategies to salvage its image.

This is only achievable when employee ambassadors are considered and the institution lives to its values.

Employees remain the foundation of a company’s brand personality.