When companies look to interact with potential customers, one factor always comes into play, whether it is consciously or not: the brand personality.
How organisations come across to their audience is the first impression that they will make and one which could be essential to building a strong relationship. That first impression is built primarily on the personality of their brand.
For Kyocera Document Solutions, it meant that our brand personality is the most valuable element of our re-branding project. Defining our values, reflecting them accurately and ensuring that they are always relevant and shared has become our priority.
Defining a brand personality
To define a brand, the crucial first step is to understand it. We identified three crucial features which make up the way in which the organisation and its workforce operates every day.
The first is that you can never stop learning. Even after more than 60 years of innovation, we continue to learn and face new challenges. Tackling those challenges head on is key to our desire to grow our knowledge and get meaningful and valuable answers from every question posed.
The second factor is optimism. We know that the future will bring changes to the world around us, both good and bad, as technology develops whilst the environment comes under increasing threat. Our organisation is confident that together we can face up to these changes and embrace them to make our world accessible and empowering for all.
Finally, we remain down-to-earth. We may be experts in our field, but honesty and integrity are crucial to the way in which we operate. Constantly learning, we know that there is always more knowledge to acquire. Sharing this knowledge requires a humble approach, and that is fundamental to our personality.
Transmitting a brand personality
A brand personality is shared in a number of ways. Whether it is online, offline or face to face, companies must seek to reflect their brand personality in every interaction that they have with their stakeholders.
The way in which a company portrays itself visually shows the kind of company that they aspire to be, the clients they aspire to have and the impact they aspire to make on the world around them. That’s why we have invested much of this brand project in how we come across visually, highlighting the importance of people and our human touch.
Secondly, it is the way in which the brand interacts with its stakeholders. Through an informative tone of voice, which seeks to advise and help stakeholders find new ways to grow, we want to show our customers that we are learning alongside them. It’s the approach we have always taken, from our roots as a small ceramics operation to a multi-national corporation.
Bringing a brand personality to life
However, a brand personality is not something that exists on a screen or on printed materials alone. A brand personality should become an essential part of day-to-day life when working alongside an organisation.
This is clear through our company’s philosophy. Defined by founder Dr. Kazuo Inamori, our philosophy outlines the defining factors of how our employees should behave and the goals that we should set.
With an aim to “respect the divine and love people”, our employees know that they each are brand ambassadors for the values set by Dr. Inamori.
Through the creation of the human touch, reflected by the visual identity of the brand, we seek to add a personal approach to every interaction, regardless of which of our digital touch points have provided the contact. This way, we can provide a long-lasting impression on our stakeholders.
Maintaining and evolving a brand personality
Whilst our philosophy was laid down more than 60 years ago, global brand personalities are constantly changing and evolving. As companies like Kyocera Document Solutions face up to new challenges, we must adapt our aims and goals to fit the environment we are operating in.
Much like this brand modernisation has seen a refinement of the key values that the company operates around, change will help us to better embrace these adaptations and make a stronger personality that is more relevant to the society that we live in.
Part of Kyocera's brand promise is to help organisations put knowledge to work to drive change. Why not get in touch to learn how we can help you?
Or if you'd like to keep reading about our rebrand, read our other posts on the topic:
