Tone it Up — we can’t hear you

Clayton Davis
Sep 6, 2018 · 6 min read

A friendly but informative blog to help you improve your tone of voice guidance.

As an agency content creator, most of the tone of voice documents sent to me were of very little use.

That’s not to criticise any brand that has them. Far from it in fact; simply for a brand to recognise the value of having a tone of voice document in the first place is music to the ears of any copywriter.

It’s not that they’re necessarily bad, either. Most are done with care and clarity, and fairly represent the collective thinking of those who have built that brand. It’s just that, ironically, so many different tone of voice documents for all these various brands turn out to be so very similar.

If a tone of voice document is indistinguishable from everyone else’s, your content will be indistinguishable from everyone else’s.

So this article isn’t about picking on any brand tone of voice, or shaming anyone who’s made an effort. These are just some tips from an experienced copywriter on how to tone your voice up, and get the best out of your content creators.

Who is this for?

So many tone of voice documents seem to be written for senior stakeholders. This is understandable, as it’s trying to identify the brand messages they want to pass on to customers. It results in broad strokes, inspirational messaging and an all-encompassing brand identity.

But this is only half the job. The sadly neglected part in the middle, between brand and consumer, is how you want your content creators to express this information, how it should be represented in a practical sense across multiple channels.

Tone of voice documents are not customer-facing. They’re not for brand owners, either. They should be written for your copywriters and content creators. You don’t have to use it to sell the brand messaging. It’s there to instruct people how to sell the brand messaging. And that’s different.

You may expect senior copywriters to be able to interpret this themselves. But tone of voice guidance should be clear enough that any member of staff would be able to use when they need to, or it’s not fulfilling its brief.

Moving beyond the obvious

When asked about the brand’s tone of voice, it’s eerie how frequently the response is “we want it to be friendly, but informative”. To a brand this is very important, but to a copywriter it doesn’t mean a great deal, and it’s the most common example of generic brand thinking that doesn’t actually offer any practical instruction.

Pretty much all brand copy wants to be friendly but informative. Why would it want to do any different? (As a general rule of thumb, if the opposite of a statement is not something you’d ever consider, it doesn’t really need to be said.)

There are many ways in which to be friendly and informative, while copywriters are trained and experienced in the art of having 20 different ways to convey the same message.

It’s in the differentiation that copywriters really find the best way to speak as your brand. Show how you are different to others — either in what you do or don’t do.

So outline the obvious if you want, but focus your specific instructions on what differentiates you from everyone else.

Your brand is not a person

The word ‘human’ comes up a lot when trying to establish brand identity. It’s a way to try and ensure that a company seems approachable and — again — friendly, rather than a faceless corporation.

But it’s worth remembering that your company is not a person. Consequently, applying desired human qualities to a brand tone of voice is quite restrictive.

The most frequent example of this I have seen is around the word ‘best’. The great thing about ‘best’ is, unless you work in a highly regulated sector, it’s completely subjective. Anyone can say they’re the best at anything. It’s an opinion, not measurable.

The trouble is, when a person says they’re the best, we often consider them to be arrogant. So brands frequently look to pull back from any language that might appear arrogant. Then to be safe they pull back from anything that even appears over-confident, or boastful, terrified of turning off their customers.

But let me pose a question: as a consumer, how many times have you decided not to shop with a retailer, even though the price and product was right, solely because you thought their brand messaging was overly boastful? How many times have you decided not to use a service provider simply because they say they are the best practitioner in the area? Ever walked out of a restaurant after seeing “best burger in town” on the menu?

Customers want the best stuff, done by the best people, for the best prices. They don’t see your brand as a person — it’s a company trying to sell them something. Give them what they want.

If you think you’re brilliant at something, tell people about it. Explore the bolder limits of what you’re prepared to say, and you’ll be astounded at what good copywriters can do.

One size does not fit all

Brands also need to step away from the idea of executing this tone of voice in the same way in every piece of communication they do. Your website, your social media, your email marketing campaigns, your PR activities — they all look to communicate to different people, about different things, in different ways, at different times in their engagement arc.

Which is more important: matching your voice to the circumstances, or sounding like a generic ‘you’ that the customer might not even be familiar with and probably can’t differentiate from other brands anyway?

We live this every day. We may share details of one specific experience with many different people, but the language we use, the tone we use, the details we emphasise or omit, all of this we automatically filter, so that the communication is appropriate to our partner, our mother, work colleagues, our best friends.

All of them get a bespoke communication of the same thing. But all of those communications remain fundamentally ‘you’.

This is how tone of voice guidance should allow brands to communicate with their customers. Even a straight-laced financial services provider may be giving information to people with money worries, showcasing its latest loan rates or running a social engagement campaign to find out what you would do if you won a million pounds. These are very different ways for the same brand to communicate.

A brand will want to present its core values, it will want to give off a particular impression or feeling. It will want to prioritise certain language and avoid some. But by specifying, content type by content type, which elements to dial up or dial down, and how to tailor the brand tone of voice to that medium, the outcomes will be much more effective.

Not least because the content creators tasked with developing that messaging will have clear guidance they can use, delivered in a friendly and informative way.

Keep it fresh

These are just some of the views of a copywriter, who has seen both the good and bad, and knows what is going to help you get more from the content your copywriters produce. Even if you disagree with every point, at least in disagreeing with me you’ll have a better idea as to how you want to evaluate your tone of voice guidelines.

Because tone of voice guidelines should be constantly reviewed — not just every five years when it’s time for a re-brand.

If your tone of voice guidance is really pushing boundaries across all areas of a business that is constantly evolving, moving into new areas and pursuing new engagement channels, it needs to itself be constantly evolving, dropping the bad and developing the good.

Listen to your content creators and make sure they’re able to do the best they can to make your business heard above all the rest.

Clayton Davis

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Content marketer and copywriter. Knows some great words.