YouthNation: Building Remarkable Brands in a Youth-Driven Culture

Chapter 15Brands Are People

As we have established, most people use social media to follow people and not brands, so if you want to make your brand shareable and attract advocates you need to turn your brand into a living, breathing persona. In a world where the newsfeed squeezes us all together, now more than ever before, just as people have become brands, brands must become people.

Creating a Brand Persona

Transforming a brand into a living, breathing element is a new challenge for modern day marketers. Traditional advertisers have relied on a brand to speak through its logo and advertising. Today, however, consumers expect to hear from the brand directly. When a brand talks to consumers, it needs to sound authentic, interesting, and engaging. Enter the creation of the brand persona.

Building your brand persona beyond just a logo and a corporate entity will dramatically increase your business's ability to enter the conversation where it counts. It is the only sustainable way to penetrate the newsfeed, where your consumers are undoubtedly spending their time this very moment—both as I type and as you read this. The steps to designing a social brand persona involve three core elements: look, tone, and feel.

The three core elements of brand persona

• Look: If you are running a business or a marketing department, then you likely have a logo that adorns your business card or signage. Well now its time to bring the logo to life. The look of your brand persona needs to extend ...