Danae Moksnes
Your brand’s voice and tone are your audience’s first impression of your company. Your brand voice is what sticks in your reader’s minds after they see an ad or leave your social media page, brand voices can catch your audience’s eye, entice them to read more, and encourage a strong customer connection. Do you have a brand voice that does the same? It can be hard to find a voice that really works for your brand.
To know how to develop a brand voice, first, explore the different types of brand voices. Take a look at popular voices, so that you know what people are used to seeing. We will show you some examples of popular brand voices, and how specific brands are succeeding with their voice! Once you know what’s out there, you can describe your own brand voice, and distinguish yourself from the competition.
What is a Brand Voice?
Everyone has their unique voice, their own cadence, and way of speaking. Each brand also has its own voice that shows its personality. You will use your brand voice on social media, your website, emails, newsletters, and more. Any time your audience sees your content, they get a hint of your brand voice.
While our own voice and cadences often come naturally to us, it is not always the case for brands. Your brand voice has to appeal to your audience and relate to what you can offer them. While you may have started to create content with an idea of your brand voice, having a specific definition is key.
Nailing down your brand voice helps you stay consistent in every piece of media you create! A consistent brand voice helps readers know what to expect from your company and encourages customer connection. This will bring a larger audience and loyal customers. In fact, 62% of customers see a sense of emotional connection with a brand contributes to their brand loyalty. Gain some inspiration from current brand voices to help define your own.
Types of Brand Voices
Take a look at these common brand voices, examine examples of brand voice and tone, and analyze where your own brand stands.
1. Friendly and Helpful
Brands that use a friendly and helpful tone aim to emotionally connect with the customer. A friendly and helpful tone can be professional while adding some whimsy and humor to their copy. A common example of a friendly and helpful tone is Slack. Slack is a workplace messaging app (that Content Cucumber actually uses).
Slack makes use of multiple platforms to share resources, inform their audience, and add a few puns to brighten the reader’s day. A friendly and helpful tone leaves room for companies like Slack to use emojis, exclamation marks! And dad jokes if you see fit.
2. Confident and Empowering
A brand with a confident and empowering voice seeks to inspire its audience. A brand’s product may be able to encourage confidence, and/or, the brand’s market responds well to empowerment. A few examples of confident and empowering brands are Dove and Playtex. Both of these brands aim to empower women of all ages.
Dove uses uplifting and body-positive language to boost its audience’s confidence. Playtex even had a “Be Uniquely You” campaign, encouraging individuality. Brands that use a confident and uplifting tone aim for authenticity, and a strong emotional connection with their audience.
3. Absurd and Humorous
An absurd and humorous brand voice may seem unconventional, but it is very effective. Brands that effectively use an absurd brand voice aim to catch the audience’s eye, possibly add a bit of confusion, and inevitably give them a chuckle. Brands like Moonpie used twitter to share quick, random jokes or statements to their audience. While being absurd, Moonpie was relatable to their audience, and even interacted with their followers with more random quips.
Cards Against Humanity has not only made a name for itself as a classic NSFW card game but as an absurd brand. Cards Against Humanity’s website is full of simple yet random explanations of its products and content. They even own their absurdity, as they offer an “absurd” expansion pack to their original game.
While this voice may lead to a reader scratching their head a bit, it also makes the brand memorable to their audience.
4. Strong and Rebellious
Strong and rebellious brands are rugged, confident, strong and encourage their audience to be the same. The iconic motorcycle company Harley Davidson is a prime example of the strong and rebellious brand voice. Scrolling through their social media, one could call their tone adventurous and masculine. Their brand voice stays in the reader’s mind as they inspire them to hit the road for an adventure.
How to Keep a Consistent Brand Voice
Once you identify a brand voice that fits with your company, you can ensure it stays consistent. If your brand voice already fits well in your company’s goals and values, it will be that much easier to keep it consistent. Create a written style guide to communicate expectations across your team!
A written style guide is your space to write down the specifics of your brand voice. Identify your desired adjectives, and then explain what it means to adhere to those adjectives. In this guide, provide “do’s” and “don’ts” when it comes to using your brand voice. This can provide clarity of brand expectations.
Your brand voice may have slight variations across platforms simply because you are speaking to slightly different demographics. Your style guide can outline these differences. Once you create your style guide, make it easy to access for every team member. This way, no matter the team member using your brand voice, they can reference the brand guide, and keep it consistent.
Wrapping Up
Developing your brand tone and voice is one of the first steps to connecting with your audience. There are hundreds of brand voices developing today, as it is crucial to have a brand voice on social media. As you look at the most popular types of brand voices and take inspiration from popular brands, you will be able to develop your own tone.
Consistency in brand voice and tone throughout platforms are extremely effective. You can count on your Content Cucumber writer to not only save you time and energy but keep your brand voice consistent no matter the content. Provide your Content Cucumber writer with your style guide, and they can create all the friendly, empowering, or absurd content you need! Schedule a demo with us today to learn more!
