Creating a tone of voice for your brand

A company’s tone of voice (ToV) can be a hugely importantaspect of its overall brand personality. When working in a competitive market,the ability to differentiate through tone is especially vital.

Many of the world’s most memorable brands have cementedtheir tone of voice in our minds – think McDonalds, Three, or IKEA. Nobodywould ever confuse an IKEA message with that of Oak Furniture Land, or aMcDonald’s coffee advert with Starbucks or Costa. So much of this distinctioncomes down to the tone of voice being used – something that brands in anysector can emulate within their own marketing.

With this in mind, here’s a quick five-point guide forbrands looking to craft their own unique and memorable tone of voice:

How tocreate a memorable tone of voice

Step 1: Start at the start

When thinking about your brand’s tone of voice, it’s all tooeasy to jump straight in at the end, drafting brand guidelines or preparing abrand personality document. In reality, deciding your tone of voice should beone of the last things you think about – after your objectives, messaging andbrand values are all already in place.

These higher-level considerations will help to shape yourtone of voice and give it meaning. Even more importantly, they will give yourtone authenticity, ensuring that it reflects the genuine culture and values ofyour brand.

Step 2: Find examples you like

With your objectives and messaging still front of mind, thenext step is to seek out other tones of voice that could work for your brand.

While the obvious place to start may be your competitors,it’s worth remembering that the whole point of setting a consistent tone is tostand out from the crowd. Simply copying the biggest player in the market won’tdo anything to differentiate your brand.

Once you have a sense of your own market (and what’s beendone to death), next it’s time to look further afield. Think about your ownfavourite brands and how their voices help them stand out in your mind. Mostbig brands publish their tone of voice guidelines as PDFs online. It can take abit of digging, but finding these will provide a great source of inspirationfor your tone, as well as the structure and layout of your own brand guidelines.

Step 3: Start mapping your tone of voice

There are plenty of tools out there for developing a uniquetone of voice, but one of my personal favourites is the NN/Gframework.

This framework asks you to plot your company – both as it currentlystands and as you would like it to be perceived – across four sliders. Thesesliders are: Funny vs Serious, Formal vs Casual, Respectful vsIrreverent and Enthusiastic vs Matter of Fact. Typically, you shouldask several members of staff (at varying levels of seniority) to do the sameand then compare results.

Once you’re happy with where your brand sits on these fourlevels, the NN/G provides a series of tonal wordsand phrases that you can use to plot your brand personality and use as thebasis for your tone of voice guidelines.

Step 4: Write your tone of voice guidelines

Once you have a good idea of which words best reflect yourbrand, you can start drafting up useful guidelines for employees.

To be effective, these guidelines should be as short andclear as possible. Typically, a good ToV document will contain just fourelements of your tone, explained through a short paragraph of text. This textshould make it clear when and where to ramp up this particular tone (e.g. in acustomer mailout) and where to tone it down (e.g. when responding to a customercomplaint).

A good ToV document will also provide clear examples of thetone in action, typically broken down into: what you should say, what youshouldn’t say, and a brief explanation of why one is better thanthe other. And remember, every element of your tone of voice document should beclear, concise, and of course, written in your approved tone of voice!

Step 5: Live it

The unfortunate truth is that no matter how brilliantlycrafted your tone of voice guidelines are, most people aren’t going to look atthem. When drafting email copy or making a customer call, very few people thinkto check their language against the brand guidelines.

Instead, making a brand’s tone of voice stick is all aboutpersistence. Deciding on the voice itself is only step one. After that you needall of the tools and processes in place to help staff live and breathe thattone in their daily interactions.

That could mean implementing new training procedures andregular workshops. It could also mean setting up voice-proofing processes andbrand ‘checkpoints’ before marketing collateral goes live. The exact processesfor this aren’t set in stone, but it’s worth remembering that the benefits of atone of voice can only come through consistency and regular use. Anything less,and they simply won’t stick.

To find out more about how Wildfire can help build yourbrand, contact our team.