I find myself on a mission to strip the fluff from the brand strategy process. If you missed my thoughts on brand promise, you might enjoy this twitter thread summarizing them.
Today I take on brand tone.
I believe finding the right words to shape your brand’s voice is a worthwhile exercise. It helps you be thoughtful and consistent with your experience and messaging. Typically you drop these words in your brand guide and refer back to them as a litmus test for whether your creative is hitting its target.
However, I often see attributes that are so vague as to be borderline meaningless. Here’s 5 words I suggest you avoid:
- Authentic. Authenticity isn’t really something that can be prescribed, it’s something that just is or isn’t. Consider instead what you actually mean: do you want the brand to have a conversational or human quality? Do you want it to be a little rough around the edges? To be vinyl in a digital world? Say that.
- Accessible. This one is just too broad and open to interpretation. Does it mean simplistic? Does it mean conservative? Does it mean empathetic? Dig a little deeper.
- Distinct. Well yeah, that’s the goal of this exercise. You should be defining how to be distinct. Again, it’s not something that can be prescribed, it just is.
- Confident. You are selling stuff, of course you’re going to be confident. Now if you wanted to be insecure that would be noteworthy: “maybe buy our products…or no, you probably wouldn’t want to...did I do something to upset you?” In this post-post-irony world that might actually work.
- Helpful. All brands engage in some sort of value-exchange with their audience. You wouldn’t have a customer if you weren’t helpful. One person’s idea of helpful could mean simple, succinct and factual while another might like a friendly and conversational tone. The word helpful doesn’t define its intention.
To create even more useful rules around brand tone, I suggest employing with / without statements. Such as:
Be witty without being snarky.
Be smart without being pretentious.
Be conversational but not long-winded.
Be fearless but never mean-spirited.
Just remember the goal of defining these types of things is to empower your organization to find a unique voice that sticks with people. The more specific you are the better.