Tone of Voice London
Ed can build a tone of voice that keeps your brand on song.
Make every word count
In an increasingly transparent world, your brand must communicate clearly and consistently at every touchpoint. Tone of voice is vital your organisation on three levels:
BRAND – a recognisable brand voice helps differentiate you from your competitors, helping improve consistency and recognition in your communications at every touchpoint.
PEOPLE – a strong and consistent tone of voice helps your people express the brand consistently. As brands become increasingly service-led and the digital social world continues to expand, everyone representing your brand needs to be trained and armed to communicate with your customers in the in the right way.
BUSINESS – tone of voice helps you address the challenges your business faces in an increasingly transparent world. In good times, it’s relatively simple to communicate clearly but when things go awry, reputations can be made or destroyed by saying the right things in the wrong way.
What is tone of voice?
Put simply, it’s the way your brand speaks. Like people, brands have a range of moods and messages to communicate. From making an announcement to handling a complaint or an apology; from delivering good news to dealing with a technical problem or a commercial faux pas. And addressing a wide range of stakeholders, shareholders, customers, staff and communities.
Brand voice building blocks
When I create a tone of voice for a brand I start with a simple equation:
Personality + Attitude + Content = Tone of Voice
Or, to put it another way, who is speaking/writing, what’s their take on the world and what do they talk about? This is a start-point that lets you build a brand voice that is rooted in your brand personality, purpose, mission, vision and values. That way if you’re a serious bluechip company there’s no danger of sounding like a wacky yoghurt maker or an anarchic brewer.
One brand, many voices
Once you have defined your tone of voice, how do you make sure it is used consistently when there might be thousands of people representing your brand? The answer is to be found in clear and simple guidelines that are usable and applicable in every channel, from your website to customer services, from a Tweet to a conference speech. There should always be space for people to bring something of themselves to the shared values, attitude and personality of your brand. It’s these elements that underpin your tone of voice rather than specific language (although this obviously plays an important part). As the great adman, Bill Bernbach put it:
“Most readers come away not with a clear, precise, detailed registration of the contents on their minds, but rather with a vague, misty idea formed as much by the pace, the proportions, the music of the writings as by the literal words themselves.”
If your brand communicates in a tone that draws in the reader and something about your key messages chimes with them, you’re on the right track.
What tone of voice is not
It’s easy to confuse tone of voice with helping people to write better. Beware of tone of voice guidelines that are actually just guides to better writing. Clearly, good writing is always the aim but explaining the mechanics of grammar and punctation is not going to help anyone write in your brand voice.
Consistency is key
This piece started with the idea of creating consistency. These days, brands don’t have a front door – you can’t control where people come in. So their first contact could be a question or complaint to customer services, a banner ad, a flyer, an Instagram post or a sponsorship message. Brand guidelines are often written by and for comms experts but that’s just the tip of the brand iceberg. It’s rare for there to be tone of voice guidance for anyone else in the brand below the waterline. The opportunity is to drive consistent and recognisable brand expression (and therefore a better brand experience) through the whole business from top to bottom.
How can I help build your brand voice?
As a tone of voice consultant in London, I have worked with all kinds of brands in the UK and beyond to help them uncover and express their tone of voice effectively. From luxury automotive brands like Rolls-Royce and Bentley to an anti-money laundering software business and HMRC, from luxury yachts to charities and a map-maker for the everyday explorers. You can see some examples below.
And if you’d like to find out more or have a chat with experienced tone of voice consultant, Ed, about how we can work together to bring your brand’s tone of voice to life, please get in touch.
Click on the logos to find our more about the Tone of Voice development I’ve done with these brands:
“Ed writes beautiful, endlessly flowing words. If I had to sum up his unique offering, it would be his chameleon-like ability to find the brand voice and write in an absolutely authentic tone. Most importantly, he always writes copy I want to read to the last full stop.”