What Does Your Brand Voice Sound Like?
What does your brand sound like to customers and prospects?
Every marketer who works on a brand must understand and share the brand’s voice and personality with the team. Words, tone, and personality communicate a brand voice and personality.
Brand voice helps a marketer consistently tell a story with a consistent attitude and personality.
Whether you are speaking on a conference call, writing a blog post, sending an email, or creating a presentation, brand voice standards help aligns the representation of the brand’s personality
You wouldn’t want to scream when your brand is all about gentleness.
But you might want to scream if your brand is about an aggressive, potent hot sauce off the Scoval heat index charts. (Scoval is the scale for measuring how hot a portion of food tastes)
Brand Voice and Personality are Present at Every Customer Touch Point
- How do you answer the phone?
- The words you use to describe your product offerings.
- The tone and sentiment are communicated in a video you share.
- The graphics on the packaging you use.
- The visuals on your website.
- What you say on social media.
- The tone of a blog post.
- The music you use in a podcast.
Coke’s brand voice is about happiness and joy, Disney is family-friendly, and Nike’s is about inspiration.
Understanding Your Audience
Do customers expect a robust and commanding presence or something more universal daily? Does your brand’s voice speak to senior citizens? Their needs will differ from young African American women in their teens. Start with the audience and understand your communication’s correct language, tone, and tenor.
You can use the We Are/We Are Not exercise to help you jump-start your understanding.
- We are funny but not silly.
- We are old school but not out of touch.
- We are fancy but not snobby.
- We are agile and not static.
- We are quiet and not aggressive.
A Simple Approach to Brand Voice and Personality
When I work with clients who are new to marketing, I like to ask three simple questions.
- If your brand’s voice were an animal, what would it be?
- If your brand’s voice were a vehicle, what kind of vehicle would it be?
- If your brand’s voice were a well-known celebrity, what person would it be?
The answers to these questions help you build a brand voice.
For example, if the answers were a dog, a Volvo, and Tom Hanks, you’d see that this brand is about loyalty, safety, and an everyman personality. Your voice wouldn’t be eccentric or quirky. Your brand voice would be reliable and consistent, without shock or surprise.
If your answers to these questions were a lion, Mustang, and The Rock, there would be common elements about strength, speed, and power. The personality of this brand would be different from the first example. Your vocabulary and emphasis would bring out the essence of what you represent. From the font you use to the voice-over in the video, each would bring out the personality traits from these three questions.
If your answers were a Collie, a Ford pickup truck, and Kelly Clarkson, you’d have a traditional, accessible voice with an active element of reliability and helpfulness.
A brand voice and personality help everyone in the organization understand small and big things.
- Can I use emojis in my social media post?
- Is my font bold and robust or more unusual and out of the ordinary?
- Are photographs staged or casual?
- Are the voices in our video powerful men or women or more approachable men or women?
- Do we write in a severe or light-hearted style?
- Can we use slang, or should our writing be more formal?
- Are we pushy or easy-going?
- Do we sign off emails in a severe tone (sincerely yours) or more casual (talk soon).
Great brands are consistent, and we are never surprised by how they communicate to the world. A clear brand voice helps you tell your story so you don’t break with character. Here is a helpful post on the brand voice topic.
Wouldn’t expect Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz to start singing as if she were a rap artist?
Does your brand have one consistent voice and personality?
You can set up a time to chat with me about your marketing challenges using my calendar. Email me jeffslater@themarketingsage.com Call me. 919 720 0995. The conversation is free, and we can explore if working together makes sense. Watch a short video about working with me.
How Does Your Brand Sound? The Role of Voice and Personality for a Brand.
