A brand’s voice is at least as important as its identity and design look and feel. By speaking in a consistent voice with a distinct personality and point of view, your audiences will recognize you more quickly and relate to you more fully.
But first, a caveat. Creating a brand voice is not the same thing as following a style guide. Style guides like the AP manual are rule books that illustrate correct usage and proper punctuation — the kinds of things we learned in grammar class.
A brand voice includes but goes beyond all that, by making the content more engaging. It’s a form of writing that feels and sounds more human.
Easier said than done. Apple is great at it. Here’s an example from the last place you’d expect to see a brand voice: their legal copy. (http://www.apple.com/legal/sales-support/sales-policies/retail_us.html)
Thanks for shopping at Apple. We appreciate the fact that you like to buy the cool stuff we build.
It’s warm, personal and human. It begins with the customer. It draws on the parlance of everyday language with words like “cool.” And most notably, it never wanders into that Armageddon of death known as “corporate speak,” even though we’re talking legalese. Brilliant.
Imagine what you can do when there’s something really interesting to talk about.
Developing Your Brand Voice
Whether we’re talking about a consumer, retail or business voice, most really good brands offer a “how-to” style guide to help their marketers and content creators — internal or external — consistently write in the brand’s voice.
When developing a brand voice guide for clients, I like to begin with a word cloud that capture
s the brand’s personality. Below is an example that expresses one client’s brand personality:
Here are four “big-picture” principles to keep in mind when developing a brand voice:
- Be an amazing storyteller. Make the customer the hero of your story. In the example from Apple, it’s all about the customer. Structure your story with a beginning, middle and end. Build the action to some kind of ultimate payoff.
- Be a writer who gets it. Communicate with the customer in mind. Customers are busy. They want to know right off the bat that you empathize with the unique challenges they face every day. So strike up a conversation. Provide a vivid, first-person view into a specific business situation they can relate to. Write with a warm, personal tone to demonstrate you “get” them and are ready to help.
- Simplify complexity. Simplify your story and it gains strength, clarity and memorability. But simple is never dull. Fewer words demand more insight from you, the writer. Choose them carefully to paint a vivid picture. Share what’s important and innovative about your brand’s story. Focus your writing to keep your audience engaged.
- Be dynamic and compelling. Does your voice have energy and power? Think of a musical score — how the pace varies to create emphasis, excitement or calm. Try to speak with different levels of intensity throughout the copy. Integrate sentences of different lengths to add energy and rhythm. Your finished composition will be spirited. Compelling. And thoroughly dynamic.