Tone and voice. Verbal branding. Verbal identity. Brand language strategy.
If you work in marketing, you’ve probably heard at least one of those terms before, and they all sound very fancy and cool. But they are all essentially saying the same thing.
Brand voice.
But what is brand voice? And more importantly, what does it look like?
I gave a talk this month all about brand voice, and today I wanted to share just one section of it with you. The bit where I talk about all the things brand voice is made up of, and what you need to think about to create your own.
And of course, I’m going to start with a flow chart.
The Skeleton
Before we even get to the overarching brand personality, we need to go right back to the beginning and understand what makes your business tick. What are the things that influence the way you communicate, and the way your customers expect to be communicated with?
This is influenced by a lot of different things. Like your business strategy, and your corporate culture. Your brand values – the things you care about as a business. Your target audience or audiences. And the people that make up your organisation, who can have a big influence on your approach and voice. Your vision (that big thing you’re working towards), your mission (the steps you take every day to achieve that big vision) and your market position – whether you’re a heritage brand that’s been around for a while, or maybe you’re a new challenger brand, or you’re creating a new category altogether.
All of these things are linked to and influence the shape of your brand voice. There are loads of other things I could have put on that list as well, but we would be here all day! The point I’m trying to make is that it’s all interconnected, and each has an influence on the others.
The Organs
Once that skeleton of your brand voice is in place, it’s time to flesh it out a bit. At this stage, I usually define this core brand voice with three or four unique characteristics. And unique is the important word here. We’re not talking about being friendly, or professional. That’s not a tone of voice, those are manners, and if they aren’t coming across in your content then you have bigger things to worry about. And while we’re at it, I’m going to throw the word ‘expert’ in there too. Because who doesn’t want to sound like an expert in their field?
I’m talking about unique characteristics that aren’t givens, that can help you build and shape a recognisable identity.
The Skin
When you speak to the outside world, this unique voice passes through lots of filters. Some of these factors will be external, and others will be internal. It’s a bit like the skin layer of your brand voice. Some of these filters can include the purpose and aim of any particular piece of communication and the channel you’re using – whether it’s social media, TV adverts or letters to individual customers.
Then there’s your target audience, who you’re speaking to, their expectations, their preferences, and what they think of your brand (if they even think of it at all). The market conditions can have a huge impact too. Think about the current cost of living crisis and how that’s influenced how brands communicate with the public. The political climate, you always need to be sensitive to that.
All of these outside factors influence how you speak as a brand.
The Vocal Chords
Finally, your tone of voice is then expressed through word choice (the words you use), grammar, syntax (which is sentence structure) and style choices. Like how you write headings, how you write calls to action micro copy and all of those different choices. It’s the tone that you use in each different piece of communication. So, your brand personality and voice will probably have a few different tones depending on who you’re talking to and why you’re talking to them.
The real challenge of all of this is that your tone of voice will flex and adapt to these factors, but it must always remain true to your core brand voice. So, if one of your core characteristics is ‘energised’, then your tone of voice in any piece of communication will always be on that energised scale. It’s never going to slip into being laid back or relaxed.
That might all sound a bit much, but I like to think of it a bit like how we as humans communicate. The way that I’m communicating with you now is a little different to how I speak to my friends at the pub, or how I speak to my parents, or when I had a boss, how I’d speak to them. But it’s all true to me. It’s just all different facets of me, and slightly different ways of expressing myself. But they’re all true to my core.
And that’s why this process is so important. In order to understand how to flex and adapt your word choice to suit the environment and medium you’re writing for, you need to have a strong understanding of your core brand voice and personality. If that all sounds a bit too complicated, then give me a call and I’d be happy to help. Or you can download my brand voice workbook to start the journey yourself.