Why do Supporters Think Most Charity Brand Personalities are the Same? (And Like it That Way)
A smiling middle-aged Asian woman wearing a headscarf with her thumbs up.
In this edition of Stories For Social Good, I discuss:
what a brand personality is, and why charities need one to stand out
the reasons why, oddly, people think words like ‘established’ are personality traits
why today’s charity and consumer brands share the same tone of voice issue
You know Saffy? Isn’t she just so informative? I completely love that about her. And Chris? Totally established, right? He’s so… er… officially recognised… if you know what I mean.
You don’t? Well, perhaps you should. According to a recent nfpResearch study, informative and established are among the top 15 most sought-after personality traits of UK charities. Of course, charities are not people. But surely an organisation’s brand personality is meant to be the human bit – the bit we can relate to, the qualities that attract us to it.
So why do supporters of charities rank these mundane qualities so highly?
A strong brand personality gives the brand a human-like identity. Just as we’re attracted to people whose personality traits attract us emotionally, the same is true for our relationships with brands.
I’m writing this on a Macbook Air out of a desire to associate with an innovative and creative brand (even though, at the same time, I don’t like the fact that Apple is a corporate behemoth). And you won’t find a ROLEX watch on my wrist because I’m not especially prestigious or glamorous (or wealthy, for that matter).
Strong brand personalities reliably represent their products or services and the people who buy or use them. This is why strong, rugged builders wear strong, rugged Caterpillar Footwear boots to do strong, rugged work.
But it’s not always the case. Some products are receptive to a range of different personalities being imposed upon them. Take dairy-free milk, for example. Alpro appears youthful, fun and healthy, while Oatly is bold, provocative and witty.
Youthful, fun Alpro and bold, provocative Oat'ly branding
It’s true in the charity sector too. The way Scope talks about disability is direct, challenging and steadfast, while Sense come across as positive, joyous and celebratory.
Direct, challenging Scope and positive, joyous Sense branding
So, how do we know the right personality for our brand? There are lots of methods, approaches and formulas. Behavioural scientist Jennifer Aaker believes brands can be characterised by five core personality dimensions. Alternatively, some brand strategies turn to psychologist Carl Jung’s 12 personality archetypes. For tone of voice guru Nick Parker, there are precisely 11 primary brand voices (I highly recommend Nick’s Tone Knob newsletter by the way).
Betwixt and between all these lists, frameworks and guidelines, there’s plenty of scope to develop the personality that’s right for you. Usually, brand personalities are made up of four or five different words, so the range of permutations is considerable.
Whatever form they take, the best brand personalities are distinctive and memorable. They’re also communicated via a strong, consistent tone of voice, which is the emotional glue that helps your message stick in your audience’s hearts and minds.
We know that many charities occupy incredibly special places in the hearts and minds of their supporters. So why are they so commonly thought of merely as informative and established?
Sorting the emotional wheat from the descriptive chaff
Don’t get me wrong. Informative and established can be really important qualities in a charity or purpose-led brand.
If was told I had high cholesterol, I’d hope British Heart Foundation could provide some helpful information (I was, and they did, thanks BHF). If I had a spare £100,000 and wanted to give it to an animal charity, I’d probably look for one that has been around more than a couple of years (I don’t have this sort of money, but when I do…).
It’s just that, as I said at the top, as personality traits, informative and established are at best pretty dull ones, and at worst, not really personality traits at all. Delving deeper into nfp's top 15 traits, we come across responsive, which in human terms appears to indicate little more than that our specimen is alive. Then there’s campaigning, at which point we must seriously ask if ‘brand personality’ is really the right framing here.
Informative and responsive are surely base-level requirements for any charity. Established distinguishes some charities from others, but it’s not a personality type. Campaigning describes a set of activities charities carry out; it’s not a human characteristic.
A good test is to imagine how wildly different actual personality traits could be applied to these imposter terms.
For example, informative people might share their knowledge tediously, playfully, dynamically or authentically. An established person could be funny, rebellious, creative or austere.
Is Playing it Safe a Risky Game?
The good news is that the top three in nfpResearch’s list were actual, real, bona fide personality traits. They were, drum roll… trustworthy, caring and supportive, which feels about right for charity brands. If I were asked to come up with some personality words to describe the charity sector, these would probably be up there.
But here’s the thing. These words are great for describing the charity sector as a whole. Indeed, the study shows that at least two of trustworthy, caring and supportive featured in the top three traits for every charity cause: animals to Alzheimer’s, poverty to digestive health, cancer to the Armed forces.
The problem is that these three traits are so overwhelmingly generic that they risk sucking all distinctiveness out of individual charity brands.
Funnily enough, a similar thing is happening with consumer brands. Strategy guru Joe Burns recently pointed out that ALL brands now want to be Your Cool Friend, which Joe brilliantly sums as the voice of an HR manager who sends too many GIFs in Slack.
As is the problem in the charity sector, the more brands that get drawn towards a few seemingly popular, resonant and engaging tone of voice words, the less people will be able to tell them apart. And when there are around 170,000 charities in the UK and increasingly fewer people feeling able to donate, the competition for share of voice and wallet is very much on.
Of course, there are lots of charities with distinctive, memorable and consistent brand personalities and tones of voice. Alongside the aforementioned Scope and Sense, we might think of Comic Relief (vibrant and irreverent), National Trust (expert and friendly) or Greenpeace (bold and daring). And many more – please feel free to add them in the comments.
But the nfp study should give us pause. Yes, we want to be trustworthy, caring, supportive, informative and responsive. But what else? What distinctive set of personality traits will make us stand out and our audiences lean in?
📣 📖 Story of the Month 📖 📣
I love this campaign from The Hygiene Bank raising awareness of the difficult choice millions face between eating and buying toiletries.
The Hygiene Bank's edible soap campaign.
It’s a beautifully crafted message about a little-thought-of cause, and the simple, direct elegance of the copy is reflected in the design. The tone of voice is carried consistently in words and images across the site to powerful, disruptive effect.
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