Finding the right tones of voice
In marketing, we often hear the phrase “Tone of Voice” used to describe how a brand communicates with its audience. It’s usually used as a way of defining the character of a brand in written or spoken language, and expressed as a combination of simple adjectives like “authoritative”, “approachable” and “informal”, and there is often only a single tone of voice dominating the entire space. But in these days of sophisticated customer experience, we need to be a little smarter about how we define our Tones of Voice (yes, plural) to communicate a more targeted message.
Take the digital SLR market — mainly because it’s an area I understand very well as an amateur photographer, but also because it’s a particularly valid example — and imagine for a moment that you’ve created a new lightweight DSLR camera and a range of lenses that knock the socks off Canon and Nikon’s current offering. You decide, as all good camera manufacturers do, that you’ll create three distinct product lines to satisfy different levels of competence; Novice, Prosumer and Professional.
In the olden days, you might have decided that ultimately, you were “The Choice of Professionals”, and therefore your brand would have to be brutalist and untouchable. Your language and tone of voice would be authoritative, knowledgable and maybe even a little elitist, to make the customer feel part of an exclusive club. You might have used a lot of technical jargon — after all, long complicated words are worth more money than simpler ones, right?
Trouble is, this only addresses one, maybe two of your core audiences. In the meantime, it completely alienates what could be your most valuable customers — your Novice users, who don’t know the jargon, don’t have a physics degree and probably don’t care about the subtle nuances of deft performance. Photographers at the Prosumer level will most likely aspire to be in the “Professional” club, and may even enjoy the challenge of learning some new jargon to make them feel a part of it, but your Novices aren’t that sophisticated yet. They just want a decent starter camera without having to remortgage their house.
And this is where multiple tones of voice really start to make a lot of sense, from a marketing point of view. We already spend a great deal of time, effort and money driving targeted traffic to the relevant parts of our online estate, so why don’t we personalise our tone of voice when they arrive there?
We do this all the time in real life; moderating our tone of voice to suit the person we’re talking to, often without even realising we’re doing it. It’s the reason we babble like idiots at babies, or turn on the charm when someone attractive walks into the room. We can’t help it; it’s part of our programming.
Getting the right tone of voice for the right customer can make all the difference. For our Novice photographers, a no-nonsense, approachable tone of voice that homes in on their barriers to entry and answers questions clearly and simply without condescension would make them feel comfortable asking ‘silly’ questions that they might otherwise be too afraid to ask. And it is the answers to these ‘silly’ questions that will empower our customer to make the right decision for them, giving them an experience they will be satisfied with and will want to repeat in a few years time when they transition to the Prosumer level.
My first DSLR was a Canon — based entirely on personal recommendation, since no camera brand at that time spoke fluent n00b — and slowly expanded my collection of accessories and lenses over a period of years, cumulatively spending many thousands of pounds. Much later, as I began to understand the limitations of my equipment, I upgraded to a more serious model, and I was so imbued in the Canon brand at that point, it simply didn’t make any sense to switch to another, and I will likely remain with them until my fingers are too crippled with arthritis to push the shutter button.
This is just one simple example to illustrate how using multiple tones of voice within your brand could pay dividends in terms of loyalty. As customer experience gains more traction as a valid design discipline, brands will need to evolve and start making themselves more accessible to the different levels of consumer with which they want to engage, and employing multiple, targeted tones of voice will play a big part in their success.
