What is a user persona in branding?
A user persona is a tool used in the creation of a brand to represent an ideal person or archetypical user. The idea being that it is easier to design with one person in mind - distilling the character traits of an audience segment into one person - than it is to design for many voices!
What is included in a persona in branding?
Often, designers create a persona poster as a visual reminder, to ensure the user is at the forefront of the design process. There is a balance to be achieved when creating a user persona between enough information that personas can differentiated between and go onto help decision-making, whilst also not being restrictive or overwhelming.
We’ve developed a toolkit to help you develop your user persona.
Usually, helpful information in the creation of a persona in branding includes:
- A fictional name
- Information about the type of neighbourhood they live in (rural / urban)
- A job type – you could choose a specific job title, or you may find it more helpful to keep that vague
- What is their family situation like? Who do they live with?
- What do they spend their money on?
- Do they save?
- If they are in the UK, what class are they?
- How do they interact with other brands?
- How do they interact with marketing?
How do you use a persona in branding?
Once you’ve created a persona, it is often useful to create a poster so that you can refer to it. It should being to feel like you know the character of your persona, and you can start to make decisions on its behalf. Unlike a UX user persona that speaks about ‘pain points’ and ‘goals’, a brand persona is perhaps more holistic? A character should emerge that you can measure your brand identity against. Will Phil, the pig farmer, enjoy your cosy coffee shop? Will Margaret, the recently retired teacher, want to book a holiday in the Alps?