Don’t we all make judgements about the way a person talks or writes? Don’t we all, sooner or later, draw conclusions about a person being either helpful, arrogant, warm or lively? It’s no different with brands!
Every time your brand communicates via an advertisement, a social media post or its website, it manifests its brand voice. Have you ever paused to think about what your brand voice’s relevance and impact is on your brand’s positioning? Is your brand voice consistent? Is it effective? More importantly, does your brand adhere to its core brand values? Most probably not. When people think about brands, they often think about their brand’s visual identity. However, there is another critical element that often gets overlooked: voice and tone. And usually, for most brands, their voice was not well-thought or developed in the first place.
Marketeers do spend considerable amount of time and energy when it comes to designing and finalising a brand’s logo, but not enough on the brand voice (which simply put, refers to the tone of your brand, the personality of your brand). Isn’t the core objective of brand strategy to differentiate from its competitors, and to stand out? I believe brand voice can play an essential role in achieving this.
So, before we proceed, what exactly is ‘brand voice’? We all understand that a brand itself is only a brand because it has the ability to generate emotions from its users, right? Brand voice, is then, the personality and emotion which shines through the brand’s communication. For example, let’s take Disney, since it has one of the strongest and most consistent brand identities — their voice conveys submersion into a dream-world of magic and fantasy. The notion of “dream” is communicated as the central tone and voice of Disney. When you visit a Disney theme park, you immediately find that the physical structures reinforce their brand voice, and it does, in fact, seem to be a ‘whole new world’.
Branding is all about getting your desired positioning in the mind of your target user and hence strengthening brand familiarity. This requires consistency and repetition. No wonder brands like Harley have achieved a cult status by sheer consistency. Their tone of voice being rebellious, bold, and fiercely independent. If your brand personality appears to change frequently, it’s harder for audiences to know exactly what you’re all about. As a result, your efforts are likely to fall flat, and you lose out to a better-branded option, despite the fact that your product and service may be of better quality.
So how do we go about achieving this, especially without pausing the existing brand communication you have going on? I am outlining few basic steps to figure out your brand voice. It’s not an exhaustive list but gives you an easy head-start.
1.Understand and deliberately probe the vision or the very mission of your business. Why is it successful? What does the founder or the CEO of the business repeat over and over again? Is this reflected in your brand’s communication?
2.Outline or storyboard your brand voice: Is your brand voice colloquial? Or is it professional jargon? Is it warm and humble? We can use various brand strategic tools to identify and find the right fit.
3.Your customers’ engagement level with your brand is also a great indicator and tool to adjust the tone of your brand.
4.Study and dig into successful brand stories to gain valuable insights and see how the approach is applicable to your brand.
5.Write at least five statements in this format: “We are this and we are not this.” For example, We are fun loving but we are not frivolous.
And of course, one of the best ways to get your Brand Voice right is to leave the job to your brand communication experts, so you’re able to focus on your core competency. If you are keen on figuring out what to say and how to say, and of course, how to stand-out: feel free to hit us up, we would love to decode it for you.
About the author: Suresh Tiwari is the founder of the brand creative and content marketing firm Triverse Advertising Pvt. Ltd. Based in Gurgaon, it offers brand design and architecture, brand positioning, visual identity guide, content marketing, web and advertising services. Under his aegis the company handles a varied portfolio of leading and emerging brands. He can be reached at sureshtiwari@triverseadvertising.com.
Comments
Post a Comment