What’s Your Company’s “Tone of Voice”?
“What should be our tone of voice?”
If you’ve ever been involved in your company’s marketing or branding, you’ve probably heard (or asked) this question before.
What should our company sound like? Should we be more serious or more fun? Should we come across like an average person or more quirky, or even edgy?
These are important questions because most companies are trying to connect with real people (That is, until robots demand their own exotic vacations and fashion items), and when people talk to each other, the “tone of voice” plays a big part in how they feel about an interaction.
But how exactly does “tone of voice” show itself?
As our communication experts Nick Howard and Sherry Fang put it — it’s about the “personality” that comes through your words.
So let’s look at a few companies and their “personalities”, and specifically on their websites — the most common way we “meet” companies these days.
For comparison’s sake, I’ll take companies from the SaaS and productivity space —Evernote, Notion, and Roam — and look at their “About US” pages.
While reading these examples, ask yourself this: If I imagine someone speaking these words, who would be that person?
Evernote: The company
Evernote’s tone of voice is typical of SaaS companies these days.
The language is friendly and casual, using simple words that everyone understands (“Evernote helps people find focus now, in the moment, to make progress on what matters most.”).
And it uses these words to talk about big problems that a lot of people have (“How to succeed in a world where the volume and velocity of information are constantly increasing”).
But it’s still clearly a “company” — or a few inter-changeable staff members of their marketing team — that’s talking to us, because for one, it speaks sometimes in the third person (“Evernote was founded…”) and sometimes in the second person (“We believe that different perspectives lead to better ideas”).
It also frequently resorts to corporate-speak (“We’re continually working to create a more trusting and collaborative environment”).
So Evernote’s tone is “the company”.
And this isn’t surprising—Evernote is the oldest of the three we’re comparing today, with over 200 million users that include both individuals and organizations in many geographies and industries.
Its tone of voice is designed to appeal very broadly.
Notion: The smart friend
Unlike Evernote, Notion had ~4 million users as of mid-2020, and many Notion fans I know are individual developers or entrepreneurs who loved how the company had a very distinctive style.
Let’s take a look:
Like Evernote, Notion uses very simple language, but it gets conversational with the reader:
The very first words— “Hi there! If you’re reading this…” — make this sound like a letter from a friend, or at least someone who wants to be your friend.
Then it adds a “you’re probably like me”, to tell us that it’s really one person who is talking to us — and to us only.
It also tries to relate to our daily reality (“You probably have fifteen tabs open…”) rather than describe a general problem like Evernote does. They even ask you a (rhetorical) question (“Have you ever thought about where these ‘work tools’ came from?”).
Add the cute illustration, and you can easily imagine this to be a smart but down-to-earth friend who’s talking to you over coffee.
The clues are in the enthusiastic greetings, the ubiquitous use of “you”, the lack of words like “ubiquitous” (everywhere would be better), and the questions to make it feel like a conversation.
And this definitely made sense for their core of loyal, individual users.
Roam: the brilliant researcher
Roam Research doesn’t even have an About page. The first thing people sent me to introduce Roam was always their White Paper, and the Abstract is pretty much their About:
Right from the start, the language is totally different from that of both Evernote and Notion. Gone are the conversational elements and the single syllable words, replaced by the likes of:
- Multiple overlapping hierarchies, with each unit of information becoming a node in a dynamic network
- Any given node can occupy multiple positions simultaneously
- A tool for Bayesian Inference and decision-making
It’s not conversational, and it’s not easy to follow. It’s a brilliant researcher delivering a treatise on a subject of their expertise.
Some people may not like this, but it works. Because if you go and watch their founders speak, the way they write is exactly how they speak. They like to think (and write) deeply about their subject matter.
This is really different from most of the startups out there, and gives them a unique appeal not just in writing, but (I suspect) also in person.
Imagine if they’d tried to simplify their language and act like a best pal to everyone… they’d simply lose their charm!
Setting the Tone
We’ve seen that a company’s “tone of voice” is shaped by at least the following factors:
- Word choice (“ubiquitous” vs. “everywhere”)
- Sentence patterns (“Hey wassup! We’re a pretty diverse team” vs. “Our team is composed of members from diverse backgrounds”)
- Perspective (first, second, or third person)
But how do you set the tone of your company’s writing? To start, I wouldn’t think about any of those factors above.
Instead, the first question I’d answer is: When my target audience reads our company’s writing, WHO should they imagine is speaking?
Should it be a good friend? An expert consultant? A mission-driven idealist? A master engineer?
First decide the who — then you’ll know how you should sound. And you can take any words or sentences you’ve written, and ask yourself: As a ______________, would I say this?
If you’re a medical expert and want to come across as one, your company’s writing shouldn’t sound like a 22 year-old gamer, and vice-versa.
And here’s the biggest advantage of this approach: If you’re perfectly clear WHO you should be, you’re also less likely to fall for the allure of “Hmmmm, maybe we should sound funnier!”
Bonus — Samsung: The faceless machine
Just out of curiosity, I checked out Samsung’s North American corporate website, and was stunned by the contrast:
It’s difficult to even find complete sentences on the page. It’s just a bunch of stock image-like visuals and slogans.
There’s no human here.
Even when you go to “Who We Are”, where you’re supposedly getting to know the people, you get bullet-pointed resumes:
And if you go to their “Vision” page, here’s the first sentence:
Samsung is committed to complying with local laws and regulations as well as applying a strict global code of conduct to all employees.
They’re one of the most monolithic companies in the world, and that’s exactly what they sound like.
