How we think about brand voice — and what brands can learn from it
More and more brands are trying to find their own voice. The best reap the benefits, while most are stuck in brand language hell. Here, we give you our thoughts about how to find the voice of your brand.
Brands across the globe have now realized the power of a clear brand voice. This has been a success for some, and quite the trainwreck for others. To keep the tracks of the future free from wrecks we think brand people should know a few things about how to make brand voice work.
A great way to mess things up forever
Most people working with their brand voice do it backwards, by starting with rules and guidelines. They sit down, look at the components of the brand and try to invent a voice by being super logical. This is a terrible way of doing it. They create guidelines and translate brand values like “honesty” and “engagement” into a voice.
When you go about it this way you end up with a set of rules that makes people write in a voice that is flat and empty. Most companies are stuck here, in brand voice hell.
A much better way of doing it
So how should you go about it?
Finding the right writing voice for your brand is an explorative process, it’s about looking. This is a job for someone with a million questions, who has a feel for your brand and your audience and is willing to push things in different directions.
Start with the single mind of a good writer with a feel for the brand and a couple of the texts from your brand that customers usually see first. Maybe your start page copy or the text on your packaging or the onboarding of your app. Then let the writer explore: “What happens if I push it this way? That way? How far can I go? How does this feel?”.
The thing is, you need to keep playing around with your writing over and over again until you’ve got something that for some reason works. This is unsatisfactory to a lot of people, using your gut rather than your brain. It was for us too, but if you want to make people feel things, you have to create from the gut (or heart or whatever word you like).
When you’ve got something that sounds good for your brand, that feels right, try creating a guide for others to write just like that. This is super hard, and usually you need to find just the right writers, talk to them a lot about this and create guidelines that make sense together with them.
What’s behind your words?
A good brand voice alone won’t make your brand great, of course. But sometimes a brand language strategy can help the brand understand what it stands for. In some of our projects we end up not only with a clear brand voice, but with a new super clear view on what an entire brand is all about. And if the brand isn’t really about anything, we can’t cover that up with just a brand voice. The words have to come from somewhere.
What’s your point of view?
We like how We all need words talk about brand voice. They introduced us to the concept of “point of view”, a key, we think, to succeed with your brand writing. They explain it like this:
“So when you’re trying to work out different ways to create a brand’s tone of voice, don’t think about style alone: work out a way to give the brand a stance too. What are you for? What are you against? (you don’t have to be vacuously positive all the time, in fact most interesting brands are fighting for or standing against something). What’s your brand’s take on things?”
“Their point of view gives them more to write about, which makes their words more interesting to read.”
What is your brand for? What is it against? When the words come from a strong stance, they mean something different. It’s extremely hard to create a compelling voice just by trying to be positive, funny or caring.
To summarize
- Don’t start with the rules. Start with a single writer who has a feel for the brand. Let this writer explore.
- Make sure your brand isn’t hollow.
- Find a point of view.
- Create the guidelines.
Want to know more? Get in touch here.
