How to find your brand’s authentic tone of voice
Here’s how tone of voice guidelines typically get made (and why they so often fail).
Big brand agency runs a workshop with a handpicked group from the Comms team or the C-Suite.
Said brand agency takes away the workshop notes and adapts them to an existing template, typically structured along the lines of “we’re this, but not that”.
We’re confident, but not arrogant. We’re clever, but not elitist.
Just throw in some general advice about sentence length and avoidance of the passive and job done.
Is it any wonder so many of our clients angst about their tone of voice guidelines gaining no traction?
We’re professional writers and even we’d struggle to agree on what non-arrogant confidence actually looks like in words.
We believe there’s a better way for brands to nail their tone of voice: widen the conversation.
Treat tone of voice as something to be discovered, not invented off-site.
Because your brand already has a tone of voice — even if you’ve never documented it in a shiny document you hand to your copywriters.
It’s already out there, being used by your people, in daily conversations with each other and with your customers (like this example from citizenM).
So listen to what they’re saying and how they’re saying it.
Here’s a great example of the power of paying attention to your team’s tone: the employee manifesto we wrote for Mi9, an Australian digital media company.
The manifesto was designed to help employees understand and live the company’s culture and values.
When we presented our first draft back to the client, the CEO couldn’t believe it hadn’t been written by an Australian, so *chef’s kiss* was the tone.
But what was interesting was how we got there. And how the original brief had revealed a big disconnect between the tone of voice at the top — and that used by everyone else.
Here’s a taste of the language the senior execs used to describe what the company did:
We are technological transformers who thrive on disruptive innovation
A values-based, purpose-led high-performance culture
Agile and nimble so that we can shape the ever changing media landscape
Yeah, exactly.
Hyphen-heavy. The epitome of Silicon Valley cliché. And almost entirely made up of words you’d never use outside of the office.
In contrast, this is what the rest of the employees told us when we asked them what they loved about working for Mi9:
The people, the fact that I don't come home from work grumpy because I've had a smile on my face all day!
I love learning new things and research - that's pretty much all we do.
And they gave me a nice soft seat.
The fact it's in Australia.
Australia has koalas.
I f***ing love koalas.
Joyful. Irreverent. Sweary. We had our tone of voice guidelines right there.
See what we did with it in the Mi9 Manifesto.
