The term brand DNA seems to be coming up in meetings and boardrooms with increasing frequency, but I have yet to come across a formal definition for what people are talking about when they use the term. In this post, I’ll try and pull apart what people really mean by brand DNA, how it relates to actual DNA, and how the metaphor might help us understand brands.

Some Background On DNA

I often hear people using DNA in the context of something being “woven” into the fabric of a brand. This make some sense because DNA is a double helix made of base pairs of proteins, which are linked together by nucleotides. Without getting too picky about the language, DNA is not technically woven together but is more like a twisted ladder of bonded base pairs. Each of the base proteins is itself composed of atoms that form molecules, which you can see in the animation to the right.

DNA as a Metaphor

With a basic understanding of DNA, it seems clear that what people are really talking about is some sort of blueprint, or code, that underlies how brands express themselves in the world. It also implies that there is something essential about brands that gets expressed over a period of time. Perhaps what people are getting at has to do with brand personality.

Brand Personality

In the interest of exploring brand DNA as a metaphor further, I should mention that there is a significant scientific connection between DNA and personality, though there are also important environmental factors. While DNA is expressed in many ways that go beyond personality, my sense is that this is one area that marketers are talking about when they bring up brand DNA. If we assume that this is the case, then we should be able to use the metaphor as a guide for communications and human resourcing.

A Brand Personality Exercise

In my previous post on how to write a creative brief for branding projects, I talked about identifying at least five words to establish brand personality for the creative team. Here is an exercise to help come up with those words, and think about how they relate to each other. It is designed for teams of 4 or more active participants, with data collected from as many as 30 company stakeholders and community members. The individuals submitting data should pick five words to represent the brand in question. The active participant team is then responsible for collecting all the submissions and grouping them into categories. Each category can then be organized into structured affinity groups, or molecules. Finally, the most representative word from each group can be combined into the master brand DNA molecule, which has five primary words and may have secondary words related to one of the primaries. Click on the image below to download an enlarged version as a pdf:

As always, thanks for reading and I’d enjoy hearing what you think brand DNA is all about, how it is expressed, and what use it has for marketers.