August 2008

Bring Your Brand to Life with
Voice and Tone

Voice and tone may sound like fluffy literary terms, but they're keys to connecting with your audience. Learn how to use them and make your brand come alive.

By Selena Welz

“Don’t use that tone with me!” Did your mom ever say that to you? Mine sure did. Usually in response to a snarky comment about doing chores or homework. She wasn’t responding to what I said exactly, but how I said it.

Keep that same principle in mind when communicating with your audience. Certain tones will resonate with certain audiences. Figuring out which tone to use depends on knowing specifically who your audience is, and just as importantly, who your brand is. That’s where your brand voice comes in.

Many companies spend lots of time and money developing their brand’s visual identity, then fail to match that with an appropriate voice and tone. If you focus all of your effort on the visual aspects of your brand, you’re missing an opportunity to further connect with your audience, stand out in the marketplace, and bring your brand to life.

Similar, but Different
Voice and tone work in concert, but can be identified separately:

• Voice communicates your company personality; it’s who customers “hear” when they read you’re marketing or site copy.
• Tone communicates a company’s attitude toward the audience and subject matter.

While tone may vary based on context and subject matter, voice should be consistent across your marketing material and website. This is not to say that all copy on the website should sound exactly the same. But there should be a set of qualities that remain consistent and make your voice recognizable and distinct.

Identifying Brand Voice
Before working with tone, you must first establish your brand voice. Chances are, you already have a good idea of what that is, but maybe you just haven’t articulated it yet. What adjectives did you use while developing your brand’s visual identity? These may serve as a good starting point for identifying your brand voice.  

If you don’t have a list of brand adjectives, begin building one. Brainstorm with colleagues or interview C-level executives. After developing a list of desirable adjectives, narrow it down to a handful of three to five key terms that accurately describe the brand personality you’re trying to present. Who is this person? What are they like? How do they express themselves?

For example, investment firm Goldman Sachs has a long history and focus on big-money, corporate transactions. The brand voice tends to be serious, refined, and dramatic. Note the formal “in which” construction in the following example:

Our goal is to help our clients realize their objectives, and to help shape the debate in every sector in which Goldman Sachs is involved.

If you were to translate the Goldman Sachs brand voice into a persona, this is clearly someone who takes himself or herself seriously. The objective point of view leaves no room for personalization—it’s all about the deal. This is an appropriate brand voice for Goldman Sach’s audience of corporate executives and high-end investors.

Now compare the following copy from the Washington Mutual website, targeted to a middle-class consumer and small business audience. Note the effect of the first-person point of view:

You’ll know it right away: We’re really not like other banks. We’re informal, friendly and fun. We take our customers’ money seriously, but not ourselves. We even call ourselves by a fun name that started out as a nickname years ago: WaMu. We’re the bank for everyday people.

WaMu’s brand value is based on its approachability and personalization. It speaks directly to its audience in a friendly, casual, disarming voice. WaMu is interested in making banking easy and fun and creating better lifestyles for its customers. The brand voice embodies those values.

Find what your audience cares about and how those qualities can be expressed through your brand. Once you identify some brand characteristics and develop a voice, you need to establish your brand’s point of view toward your audience. That’s where tone comes in.

Working with Tone
Tone in writing is expressed by word choice and sentence structure. For example, you may be a friendly, positive person by nature, but your choice of vocabulary, volume, and manner of speaking would alter significantly if you were talking to your company’s CEO or a grandparent, versus hanging out with your friends after work. You’d still be friendly and positive, but your tone would change depending on your relationship to the person you’re speaking to.

Knowing your audience and how it communicates is the first step. Establishing your brand’s relationship to its audience is the next. Is your brand a professional colleague or a trusted neighbor? A gossipy friend or an admired mentor? Identifying the context of your customer communications and relationships will help you find the right language.

Just as you might adjust your tone based on where you are and who you’re talking to, so should tone change based on the context of the communication. For example, Helio, a telecommunications and mobile device company, has a distinct, edgy, almost flip brand voice that is intended to resonate with a younger, connected, device-oriented audience. Those characteristics are expressed throughout the Helio website, but the tone of the voice varies based on what it’s trying to communicate. Take a look at this sample copy explaining Helio’s value proposition:

We started Helio because we were fed up, just like you. We were tired of disappointing devices. Frustrated by sub-standard service. And totally over being surprised by our bills every month. So we decided to fix it...and do mobile differently.

The point of this messaging is to differentiate Helio from other phone companies (which they claim not to be). It’s all about striking an emotional chord with the audience. No holds barred—it takes an aggressive stance and uses the same language that its audience uses.

Now compare the above to this copy from a section of the site explaining device features:

Don’t get tied to your desk. Or laptop, for that matter. Bring your email with you, and you’ll never miss a message. Helio gives you out-of-the-box email access to all the major webmail providers, or use your @helio.com account. And with full support for Microsoft® Exchange, you can get your work email too, without the stigma of a corporate crackberry.

The use of slang and the informal sentence construction still carry the brand voice, but the tone is notably softer, less edgy. This messaging prioritizes the information it’s providing over igniting an emotional response. Always keep context in mind when working with tone.

Developing brand voice and tone are tricky, but having a clear vision of your audience and your brand’s relationship to that audience is the key to getting it right.

About the author:

Selena Welz is associate managing editor at Tendo and will never be a karaoke queen. But she’d love to help develop your brand voice. Email her.