Brand Persona: The Personality Behind Every Interaction
- Gemma
- Jun 13
- 5 min read
Updated: Jun 26
Why your brand’s personality is the key to recognition, trust and deeper emotional resonance
A strong brand with a scattered presence feels unfamiliar
The product works. The visuals are on-brand. The strategy is sound.
But something still feels off. From one touchpoint to the next, the experience shifts. One message is polished and confident. The next feels flat or out of sync.
This kind of disconnect often points to a missing or undefined brand persona, the personality behind the brand, expressed not just in what you say, but in how you say it, how you show up, and how it feels to interact with your company at any level.
In fast-growing SaaS brands, especially those with remote teams and multiple collaborators, a lack of a unified brand persona creates friction. It makes everything – from onboarding flows, to campaign copy, to customer support – feel just slightly out of step.
What is a brand persona?
Your brand persona is the full character of your brand.
It includes:
Tone of voice
Visual style and emotional cues
Core behaviours and values in action
Personality traits that shape how the brand speaks and behaves
The feeling customers take away from each interaction
Think of it as the person your brand would be if it could walk into a room. Not just what it would say, but how it would say it, what it would wear, how it would make others feel and what it would be known for.
A defined persona turns strategy into expression. It gives your team a centre to write from, design from, and create from.
Why it matters more than ever
In a crowded category where many SaaS products solve similar problems, your brand persona becomes one of the few levers you fully control.
It shapes how your audience experiences your brand across:
Websites and product interfaces
Customer service and onboarding
Social media and paid campaigns
Internal culture and hiring
Pitch decks and investor comms
It also helps your internal team move faster. When there is a shared understanding of what the brand sounds, looks and feels like, teams spend less time second-guessing and more time creating with confidence.
The challenge of growing teams and scattered signals
As SaaS brands scale, the number of people who speak on behalf of the brand increases. This includes marketers, founders, support agents, designers, developers, salespeople and freelancers, all creating content.
If there is no central guidance, each person makes their best guess.
This often leads to:
Emails that feel completely different from web copy
A visual style that shifts from serious to playful to vague
Messaging that is technically accurate but emotionally inconsistent
In distributed or remote teams, this disconnect shows up more quickly.There are fewer casual cues and real-time corrections.Clarity has to be documented, not just implied.
What it looks like when the brand persona is missing
The brand speaks in different tones depending on the team or channel. Customers don’t quite know how to describe the brand. Marketing sounds one way, but the product feels another. Content is rewritten repeatedly because the tone never feels quite right.
These are not branding problems, they are personality problems. The brand doesn’t have a clear sense of self.
What it feels like when the persona is strong
Everything begins to flow.
Campaigns launch faster because the tone is already defined
Design and copy feel like they belong together
Support teams know how to respond with consistency and empathy
Content feels human and distinct, not templated
Customers begin to echo your language and tone in feedback and reviews
It becomes easier for your team to create, and easier for your audience to connect.
Where to begin
To create a brand persona we use an archetype framework, created by psychologist Carl Jung.
His theory was that archetypes are subconscious characters present in all of us, which influence behaviour and personality.
Archetypes help to answer questions like:
How do we want people to feel when they interact with us?
What would our brand say in moments of celebration or challenge?
Are we calm or energetic, warm or precise, direct or poetic?
What do we sound like at our best?
Write those traits down. Test them in real messages. Refine based on what feels true.
Bring personality into the day-to-day
It’s not enough to define tone and traits. They have to be usable.
Consider creating:
A tone of voice guide with real examples
A visual style reference showing how mood and emotion are expressed
A behaviour map that shows how values show up across the journey
Checklists or cheat sheets for internal writers or external partners
The goal is to give everyone the tools to speak and design from the same centre, without needing constant approvals or rewriting.
Consistency doesn’t mean sounding the same everywhere
A strong brand persona is flexible. It can shift slightly in tone depending on the channel or context.
What matters is that it always feels like the same person.
In product onboarding, the voice might be simple and reassuring
In investor decks, it might be focused and direct
In social posts, it might be a little more playful or relaxed
That variation is healthy.The core persona remains the same, grounded, recognisable and human.
Common pitfalls to avoid
1. Sounding like everyone else
When tone isn’t defined, brands tend to default to safe or generic language.
This makes it hard to be remembered or trusted.
2. Writing rules that are too rigid
Tone guidelines should guide, not limit. Give room for expression, while keeping the heart consistent.
3. Forgetting the visual side of personality
Your brand persona should influence visuals too, not just voice.
Consider how tone shows up in illustration, colour, motion and layout.
Persona is not a campaign, it’s a commitment
Your brand persona is not a copywriting project or a quarterly push.
It’s the emotional identity of your brand, lived out across hundreds of small moments.
It helps your team make better choices.
It helps your audience feel something real and it brings your strategy to life in a way that spreadsheets never can.
Does your brand feel like the same person at every touchpoint?
If the answer isn’t a clear yes, it might be time to define your brand persona with more intention.
Book a discovery call to explore how your brand can sound, feel and behave with greater consistency – and connect on a more human level.
About the Author
Gemma Johnson is a Brand Consultant and Creative Director at Emotion Brands. With over 20 years of experience spanning global consumer names like Davines, Secret Escapes, Wella Professionals and L'Oréal, she now helps growing tech and SaaS brands define who they are – and express it with clarity, consistency and heart.
Gemma blends strategy and design with a deep interest in consumer psychology, sustainability and the emotional drivers behind brand connection. Her approach is thoughtful, human, and always evolving.
To explore case studies, visit emotionbrands.co.uk/case-studies
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