Brands with Personality: Winning B2B Brands Find Their Humanity First

When is water more than just water? Ask the billion-dollar beverage brand Liquid Death. Between 2022 and 2023, Liquid Death’s retail sales grew 100% from $110 million to $263 million. The brand’s valuation is now double what it was worth in 2022. This warp-speed trajectory is particularly remarkable when you consider what Liquid Death sells: water.

That’s it, water. Granted, their brand is now branching out into flavored sparkling and iced tea varieties, but Liquid Death built its empire on selling plain ol’ H20 in a can. So how did it gain such a chokehold on the saturated water market? By creating an irresistibly irreverent, unapologetically brash, and instantly recognizable personality. In the ultra-bland world of bottled water, Liquid Death’s brand doesn’t just stand out. It screams at the top of its lungs — and consumers are buying it up by the caseload.

Liquid Death’s branding prowess is undisputed. That’s largely because the brand they’ve built is very much a living, breathing entity complete with a robust personality. Chances are, you can describe that personality too. Let’s try a little exercise: if Liquid Death were a human, what kind of person would it be? What character traits would it have? What music would it listen to, what car would it drive, what sports teams would it follow, what’s its favorite ice cream flavor, does it wear boxers or briefs or go commando? How old it is, what’s its job, what shows does it watch, what does it do for fun? If you can answer these questions (and you probably can), the Liquid Death brand team has done its job.

The Power of Brand Personification

Identifying, articulating, and projecting human characteristics are key to developing an effective brand personality — and key to differentiating your brand from the competition. According to a recent consumer survey, 57.5% of people are more likely to purchase from a brand with a strong personality. We’re pretty sure Apple, Nike, and Coca-Cola would agree with that assessment. But that’s B2C. What about B2B?

As B2B qual market researchers specializing in complex technology, healthcare, and finance studies, we don’t often have the opportunity to research water brands. But we firmly believe that B2B companies have much to gain from creating and communicating strong brand personalities  — perhaps even more so than B2C brands. Here’s why.

Deeper Audience Connections

B2B brands that have an identifiable personality are more likely to resonate with their audiences on a personal and emotional and not just logical level. In the data-driven and clinical worlds of tech, healthcare, and finance where perceived parity is often rampant, making those deeper emotional connections is what clearly sets your product, service, and brand apart.

Consider pharmaceutical companies whose drugs compete for mindshare against me-too and generic alternatives. Having a brand with a strong, recognizable, and compelling personality behind the drug gives it a significant leg up in the competitive landscape.

Relatability, Authenticity, and Likeability

A well-developed brand personality can also make your B2B company more human, authentic, and relatable for your audience. Because even though you may be B2B, you’re still communicating human-to-human. If your audience likes you, they’re more likely to choose you over your competitors. They’re also more likely to become loyal customers who do repeat business and refer you to others.

Communicating Core Values

A brand personality is a powerful way for B2B companies to reflect and communicate core values. It allows you to show your customers what matters most to you and how you operate as an organization, without lecturing to them. Your brand personality shows your audience who you are, at your heart. And when customers feel like they know you, they’re more willing to trust and engage with you.

The Trust Factor

More than 80% of consumers consider trust a deciding factor in their buying decisions. That trust-building is particularly critical for technology companies that provide mission-critical solutions to businesses, for pharma and biotech companies who have patients’ lives in their hands, and for finance companies who must communicate credibility, stability, and confidence. Simply put, the stakes are higher for B2B than for B2C. So creating that trust is essential for any B2B company whose products and services directly impact their customers’ jobs, lives, and bottom lines.

Show You Care

B2B companies with a strong brand personality place a priority on how their audience feels about their brand, with less emphasis on simply selling them a product or service. According to research from the Content Marketing Institute, 44% of B2B marketers prioritize their sales message rather than their audience’s needs. Your brand personality can be a powerful way to focus less on speeds and feeds, and show your customers that you genuinely understand and care about them.

Foundation for Your Messaging

Your B2B brand personality provides the building blocks on which to build your messaging across all communications and platforms. Knowing who you are as a brand from the get-go ensures consistency with your message at every audience touchpoint. This in turn bolsters brand awareness, recognition, and loyalty. Which is why it’s important to identify and craft your brand personality sooner rather than later.

Personification Exercises in Qual Research

Qual research offers B2B brands a massive opportunity to gauge the strength and weaknesses of their current brand personality as well as identify characteristics and traits that resonate most with their target audiences. In our experience, we’ve found personification exercises to be an effective tool in focus groups and interviews for both goals. Here’s an example of what those exercises might look like:

• Ask the basic prompt, “What kind of person would this brand be?” followed by an exploration of characteristics, traits, and preferences.
• Use word association to encourage respondents to explore phrases and descriptors that come to their mind when they think of the brand.
• Lead guided meditations and creative visualizations, prompting respondents to describe what they’re visualizing.
• Share a list of personality archetypes (creator, sage, caregiver, innocent, jester, magician, ruler, hero, regular guy, rebel, explorer, lover) and ask respondents to select those that describe the brand.
• Ask respondents which celebrity(ies) the brand most closely embodies.
• Show respondents pictures of different types of people and asking them to identify which ones remind them most of the brand, then explore reasons why.
• Ask respondents how they feel about the brand, followed by how they think the brand feels about them.
• Put the brand in a hypothetical situation (such as at a party), and ask respondents what the brand is doing in that scenario.
• Invite respondents to ask the brand any question they want, as if it were a real person, then imagine what the brand’s response might be.

Any ideas you’d add to the list? We’d love to hear them.

Brands That Personalize, Win

To date, there hasn’t been much of a push for brand personalization in the B2B space. We think that’s a huge missed opportunity. We also think that the first B2B companies to develop, embrace, and amplify their own distinctive and differentiating brand personality will have a significant competitive advantage in reaching, connecting with, and winning over audiences.

So, we leave you with this question: If your brand were a person, who would it be? And if you’re not sure of the answer, we’d be happy to help you explore it.