Personas: A pragmatic and useful way to step into the shoes of your customer

Occasionally I have been in workshops creating Personas and every time I realize how easy and powerfull this tool actually is. A persona is a description of the identity of your (target) customer, the user of your product, a stakeholder or even your own company etc., in the form of an actual person.
I have used Personas to create brand identity and positioning, as input for marketing communication, I have used it for insight generation and concept development (in the fuzzy frontend), during product development and for usability design. I have seen it being used to characterize how a brand is perceived today versus the desired perception in the future.
In a workshop it is a very good tool to step into the shoes of your customer, and have a discussion with your team and share knowledge. And a persona is a nice communication tool for internal communication purposes.
I like the description on Wikipedia: Persona - wikipedia
Here an example that you could use as a template to create your own: