A standard brand guide contains a handful of tools and rules to define a brand’s overall personality and inform its creative activation. For writers, one of the most powerful tools in the kit is the “Is / Is Not.”
Never met one? You’re gonna love it. Just like the name says, the “Is / Is Not” is a list of personality traits that characterize a brand, plus an opposing list of attributes that are not brand-appropriate. Considered as a pair, these lists create a box around the brand’s character, helping to define a consistent and compelling tonality that consumers will grow to recognize, and ideally trust, over time. (Provided that we creatives do our jobs really, really well.)
For example, suppose we’re building a brand that sells personalized matchmaking services for busy professionals. Our “Is / Is Not” might look like this:
| Is | Is Not |
| Professional | Formal |
| Light, Flirtatious | Frivolous, Shallow |
| Responsible | Dull |
| Selective | Elitist, Snobby |
| Smart, Savvy | Intellectual, Nerdy |
When applied thoughtfully, this simple tool is an incredibly effective guide and filter that can inform almost every aspect of brand-building, from strategic planning to product innovation to campaign development. But it’s especially valuable for writers, designers and others responsible for creating a brand’s everyday face to the world.
Of course visual standards, mood boards, brand videos and a host of other tools bring all kinds of additional depth and and inspiration to the party. But if you’re working lean or fast, the “Is / Is Not” can take you far. And best of all, any team can create one with nothing more than a few bright minds and a Sharpie.
Some principles to keep in mind:
Keep it tight. Four to six attributes is plenty. There are lots of reasons for this, but a primary one is practicality. If we expect writers, designers and strategists to keep a list of attributes in mind while working on the brand, that list has to be short and simple. Otherwise the tool just won’t get used. On the flip side, feel free to cheat a bit if you like by doubling up on certain terms for added depth. (See Elitist, Snobby and Intellectual, Nerdy in the example above.) Our goal here is useful, practical inspiration — not scientific precision.
Opposites detract. Imagine receiving the guidance that Brand X is edgy, not boring. I like to call this a duh moment. If we simply pair up opposites, we’re wasting the power of the “Is Not” column by using it to state the obvious. Instead, focus your brand lens by establishing pairs that are close in meaning, but not precisely synonymous. (Consider Professional v. Formal or Selective v. Elitist above.) The uniqueness of your brand lies in the narrow space between these carefully selected terms.
Seek tension. Do you consistently display a homogeneous set of traits? Are you always in just one mood? Just like real people, brand personalities are most believable and compelling (and useful to us as marketers) when they encompass some frictions and contradictions. See Flirtatious and Professional above. Of course we can’t activate contrasting traits all at once — say, in a single headline. But that’s not the intent. A list of personality traits is not a set of boxes to be checked off for every execution. Rather, it should inform the holistic expression of a brand over time and across many touch points. To do this successfully, we need diversity and dimension. As an example, our dating brand might choose to express a more flirtatious spirit in a radio ad or at a live event, but lean more heavily on traits like responsible and savvy in site content about confidentiality and security.
Don’t be boring. If we all played it safe all the time, every brand in every category would be built on this list: trustworthy, approachable, authentic, likable, real. And we would all die of boredom. (See more on authentic and real here.) As brand marketers, our job is to help our brand stand for something specific and compelling in the consumer’s mind, which means we have to work hard to be a little different. This may be subtle (see flirtatious, above — an intentional choice over the safer fun-loving), but these subtleties are the seeds from which original and compelling creative work will grow.
