The Cosmic Way To Give Your Brand a Vibe

Want to know an amazing technique for defining a brand? One that is kind of...cosmic? 💫

People are always asking me, how do you create a brand personality?

A common way to do it is to imagine your brand as a person—the cool friend, the down-to-earth intellectual, the well-traveled aunt, etc. This exercise can be helpful, but in many cases, it's not specific or powerful enough.

Several years ago, I started giving my clients a brand sign. As in zodiac.

I'm not talking about pinpointing the date of the brand's founding and running its natal chart. What I do is assign it an astrological archetype as part of its emotional and intellectual operating system. This gives the brand one of the most essential things it needs to be successful: a VIBE. ✨

It started while I was working on the Skylar rebrand. When I came onto the project, the fragrance house's visuals were already done—sky blue with a sans serif logo and gorgeous glass bottles to reflect elevation and clarity in goals and standards. The founder had worked very hard to raise the bar in clean fragrance, developing a way to do eau de parfum concentrations in a safe formula, and they were about to unveil this important innovation. It was ambitious and inspiring.

I saw where Skylar had been and where it was headed and thought: this brand is an Aquarius. ♒

Aquarius is all about innovation, invention, and intellectual pursuits. Its flowing air element is active and lofty. Aquarians are visionaries, progressives who want to make things better.

These themes had already existed within the brand ethos. I was just giving them another way to express them, and they loved it.

Skylar was acquired for a substantial sum a couple of years later. 💰

Recently, I declared my client Araza Natural Beauty to be a Taurus. ♉

Earthy and luxurious, this clean beauty brand is dedicated to a grounded bullishness that is now integrated into its Brand Bible. Again, the founder was thrilled. She now has an archetype—a deep, timeless story to carry forward. ✨