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How to Find Your Exclusive Brand Voice and Tone

Content constitutes a big part of any marketing strategy and its role is rising constantly.

The turn towards personal communications and the recent enthronement of useful content by Google force store owners to establish their own brand voice within the tremendous commercial polyphony. Today this mission is not just the way to improve branding, but the matter of survival.

Brand Voice and Tone


Usually marketers differentiate two aspects of the corporate sounding – brand voice and brand tone. The definition of brand voice given by Larsen Branding Agency is the following:

Brand voice is the purposeful, consistent expression of a brand through words and prose styles that engage and motivate.


Brand voice is a general concept, which includes brand tone as the way of brand expression exploiting the order of words, their rhythm, and pace.

Actually, both brand voice and tone are equally important since they deliver the values of your brand to customers in an understandable and familiar manner.

The customer audience and products largely shape the sound of your brand, but the exclusive features of the brand voice are the merit of your marketing strategy.

Identify Yourself


The first step toward a successful brand strategy and recognizable brand voice is to find out the main characteristics of your core customer audience. They do not only include their age and education, but perhaps, a specific language, human values, traditional behavior, etc.

Your brand voice should express their feelings and be so mentally close to customers.

The easiest way to find out the most suitable type of your brand voice is to imagine the portrait of a person or character, which embodies all values of your brand.

Having a detailed representation of this person you will easily determine the proper language, tone and, content.

Offer Human Values


Regardless of their income or position, people always appreciate basic human values: friendly advice, sympathy, relations, and humor. This way, human values are the basic elements of any effective brand voice.

But, in order to succeed you should be absolutely honest, authentic and consistent.






IMPORTANT Always tell people about the current state of your brand, not about what it will be in a few years or about how great it was before.


Exploit Storytelling


Once you have something to tell about and know the way how to tell it, you can determine the most advantageous form of your communication with customers.

Storytelling is usually the most inspiring and engaging format to deliver your corporate ideas and values. A good story is built according to all canonical rules and should be about a distinct person, who faces some obstacles and life circumstances, struggles for his own happiness, defeats the evil, and finally achieves his goals.

This humanization of your brand is very beneficial and makes customers perceive it as a real person and equate it to themselves.

Use Prominent Examples


An exclusive voice and tone differentiate you from competitors and let customers recognize and remember your brand easily due to emotional perception. All great companies have their own unique sounding, which is not similar to anything else.

Below we compared some pretty different still successful global brands on real examples. We collected several tweets of famous food, cosmetics and motor oils brands and noticed obvious differences in the positioning and sounding.

Food










Danone: “Bring #health through food. It's been our mission since 1942 & today our progress continues. Adjectives: Traditional, Stable, Useful, Healthy
Heinz:“Finally, two delicious worlds collide. Check out our Pizza Dogs recipe. Adjectives: Innovative, Delicious, Funny, Experimental


Positioning
Danone positions itself as a traditional company, which delivers proven values and is confident about its leading position and future perspectives. Meanwhile, Heinz presents itself as a brand open to experiments and new tastes. It tries to find a perfect combination of products, which is able to bring incredible pleasure.Brand Voice and Tone
The Danone’s style of posting is unhurried and confident without exclamations or invocatory words. The Heinz’s phrase is emotional, contains exclamations and appeals, and in general is more intermittent.

Cosmetics









Nivea: “Just close your eyes, relax and breathe. It’s that easy to get beautiful skin. Adjectives: Emotional, Sensitive, Calm
Avon: “Tie-up your accessories style with some chiffon chic! We're #LFW ready, are you? Adjectives: Stylish, Active, Open-minded

Positioning
Nivea mostly concentrates on perfect health and calm mood. Its customers seem to be self-sufficient women able to relax and enjoy their lives. Avon is oriented towards stylish and active millennials open to new experiments and eclecticism.

Brand Voice and Tone
Nivea talks quietly and steadily. We hardly notice that the phrase consists of two sentences. Meanwhile, the Avon’s post is emotional and advertising. It appeals to the basic need of Avon’s audience – action.

Motor Oils









Castrol: “#Castrol's pioneering spirit has helped achieve the impossible for nearly a century. Our next goal: to reach 1,000mph. Adjectives: Winning, First, Experienced, Innovative
Mobil 1: “Mobil 1 keeps your engine running like new…from sunrise to sunset. #carlove Adjectives: Right, Effective, Convincing

Positioning
Castrol’s spirit is all about strength and power. It looks like a superhero, who sets impossible goals and always successfully accomplishes them. Mobil 1 is oriented towards reliability and perfect result. Its quality is consistent and does not presume any doubts.

Brand Voice and Tone
The Castrol’s deep voice sounds seriously and confidently presenting just facts that is greatly persuasive. The Mobile 1 post is plain and flat, just for the male audience. It also describes the advantages of the product in a simple way, but is more oriented towards current values rather than a glorious history.

Conclusion


In some cases brands exploit several brand tones for different situations and messages. The synchronization and proper reasoning of these tones is rather difficult.

For example, it may be a usually calm daddy, who is currently out of temper or good and bad cops in one man. However, if accepted by customers, it can become your distinctive brand’s shtick.

Most of the brands above may be associated with particular persons or movie characters, which is the emotional brand perception as it is.

Creating great images is difficult and involves all available tools and methods, where the branded content and the way of telling are greatly important. But, the result is also terrific as soon as your products become brands.

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