Brand voice is one of the elements that helps brands stand out from their competitors, as it contributes to creating a unique identity. This identity helps the target audience easily recognize and remember the brand, contributing to building overall brand awareness.
In this article, we explain the concept of brand voice and how companies create and develop it.
What is brand voice?
Brand voice refers to the way brands verbally express themselves to their target audience. It can also be said that brand voice is the rhetorical style a brand uses to address its audience.
In other words, a brand's voice is its personality, whether figuratively or literally. Think of the mascot or cartoon character that some brands adopt. For example, you will find that some appear cartoonishly appealing to children, while others appear modern and adult-oriented.
Children's product brands, such as breakfast cereals and candy, use colorful, funny-looking characters. This is part of the brand voice for these products, which strives to be friendly and endearing to children, like cute cartoon characters.
A brand's voice remains with it throughout its lifespan and rarely changes, but it can be developed and improved. This voice also appears in all forms of communication with the public. This means appearing in its logo, written or visual advertisements, and its music.
The appearance of a brand's voice in the above forms occurs in both a public and private sphere. In the public sphere, the brand's voice appears clearly and consistently over the years, while the private sphere is represented by seasonal advertising and marketing campaigns.
Think about the content a major brand writes on its social media pages or in its advertising campaigns. There is public content related to the brand's personality or voice, such as the impact of its products on its target audience.
Let's say there is a drink whose brand voice portrays it as a joy drink. This is the public voice content of the brand. The private content is represented by a new advertising campaign for the brand that is consistent with the overall brand voice.
Let's assume that the beverage brand launches a promotional campaign for a new beverage. This campaign will take the same form as the general brand voice, "Joy," but will be customized to align with the new beverage.
This could involve adopting a slogan for the promotional campaign for this beverage, such as "Joy is greater with gatherings." Here, the brand will link gatherings to the new beverage and joy to the beverage company's brand, making the campaign voice consistent with the overall brand voice.
Steps to Design a Brand Voice
1. Define the Brand Identity
The first step in creating a brand voice is to clearly define the brand identity. This includes defining the following:
a) Values: The values that the brand adheres to and wishes to promote must be defined and identified. These values could be quality, innovation, or sustainability. Therefore, the style used in the brand voice must be consistent with these values and clearly and consistently highlight them.
b) Message: The core message that the brand wishes to communicate to the audience must be defined. In other words, what is the main idea or vision that the brand wishes to convey to the audience when they hear its voice?
Hearing here is a metaphor for being exposed to a form of a brand's voice, such as seeing its logo or watching an advertisement.
c) Personality: Companies determine the personality they want their brand to embody. For example, some brands want to be innovative or futuristic, others prefer to be traditional and reliable, while others strive to embody a friendly and fun personality.
The sounds used in a brand's voice must align with the personality the brand wants to portray to its audience. This is because the personality relates to the target audience and attempts to attract them by appearing in a way and voice that makes them feel known and understood.
For example, if a brand aims to attract young people, using a lively and youthful voice is a suitable choice for this personality.
d) Target Audience: Companies always try to design an attractive and appropriate voice for their brand. This can be achieved by identifying the target audience for these brands and understanding their needs and preferences. This helps these companies design a brand voice that aligns with their audience's expectations.
2. Target Audience Analysis
In this step, companies attempt to fully understand and analyze their brand's target audience. This includes knowing the most minute details about them, such as gender, age, interests, purchasing power, geographic location, and even future plans and aspirations.
In this step, companies also learn about their target audience's audio interests and preferences. This means identifying the voices they respond to and interact with, such as the voices used in:
- Image ads.
- The general tone companies use to communicate with their customers.
- The voices that accompany the user experience in mobile applications or the brand's website.
3. Identify and Design the Sound Elements
In this step, companies identify the sound elements that will form the brand's voice. This step only discusses the sound elements that literally reflect the brand's desired identity and personality, i.e., from an aural perspective. This includes:
- Music.
- Sound effects.
- Speech voices (voices of voice actors in audio or video advertisements).
- The unique vocal styles that the brand relies on (a melodious masculine voice or a cheerful feminine voice, etc.).
This step also begins working with professional sound designers to develop and design the brand's voice. These designers transform and integrate the previously defined sound elements to create a complete and cohesive audio experience.
4. Identify the Brand's Tone of Voice
Identifying the brand's tone of voice refers to choosing the character or personality that companies want to embody to communicate with their audience. This includes choosing the personal qualities that characterize the writing style of the content used to communicate with the target audience.
Identifying the brand's tone of voice has a specific approach and method, which we will explain in detail later in the article.
5. Testing, Evaluation, Review, and Improvement
After completing the design of a brand voice, companies test it on a sample of their target audience. The goal of this testing is to evaluate audience response, measure the impact of the brand voice on them, and how well it aligns with what the company is trying to achieve.
Companies often use opinion polls to measure the effectiveness of the brand voice in conveying the message and enhancing brand engagement.
Brand voice is not static; it can be modified and improved from time to time. Companies continually review and improve their brand voices to ensure they remain consistent with their vision and, more importantly, with the personalities and preferences of their target audience.
The Difference Between Brand Voice and Brand Tone
Brand voice is a set of attributes and methods that govern how a brand interacts and communicates with its audience. In other words, it can be considered the principles and guidelines that define the brand's unique personality and identity.
Brand tone of voice refers to the way a brand speaks when communicating with its audience. In other words, it is the way the brand uses writing, verbal communication, and interaction with its audience.
In general, a brand's tone is an integral part of its voice. Perhaps the best definition that explains the difference between tone and voice is that a brand's voice is what the brand wants to say, while tone is the style it uses to say it.
The Four Dimensions of Brand Tone
Nielsen Norman, a user experience consulting group, has developed a method for determining brand tone. This method relies on four basic dimensions to choose from when writing and defining the brand's tone:
1. Formal or Informal
Will the target audience be addressed in a formal and businesslike manner, or in a casual or informal manner? The style is not related to the nature of the product itself, but rather to the psychology and personality of the target audience.
Some types of audiences prefer to be addressed formally by brands, even if they are individuals. On the other hand, some companies, whose target audience is larger than themselves, prefer to be addressed in a casual or informal tone.
2. Serious or Fun
Does the content writing style related to brand tone attempt to be funny or lean towards seriousness? The goal here isn't to write content that resembles funny entertainment, but rather to try to put a smile on the target audience's face.
Also, serious doesn't mean a formal or sharp style, but rather a style that focuses on the brand's voice and its characteristics.
3. Respectful or Indifferent
Is the brand's tone of voice respectful of its competitors and the topics in its field? Or does it ignore both and tweet alone?
For example, some brands make sure their voice is immersed in trending topics related to their field.
We saw this clearly when most tech companies adopted artificial intelligence applications, and these companies crafted their brand voice around this topic. In contrast, some brand voices are indifferent to their competitors and sometimes even mock them.
Perhaps the most prominent example of brand voices characterized by indifference and mockery is that of Coca-Cola and Pepsi. This is evident in the content that both brands create to sometimes mock each other.
4. Realistic or Enthusiastic
A realistic brand's tone of voice focuses on conveying the facts about its businesses. This includes focusing on highlighting its various successes and advantages compared to competitors or within the industry in general.
This differs from the tone of voice of enthusiastic brands, which focus on encouraging the target audience and clearly demonstrating enthusiasm for the future of their presence and activity in the industry in which they offer their services or products.
Finally, it's important to note that brand tone doesn't treat the two ends of each dimension as opposites, but rather as two sides of a scale. For example, the formal dimension begins with an absolutely formal style and then gradually progresses to an informal style.
The serious dimension begins with absolute seriousness and gradually progresses to fun and excitement, and so on.
Any content written in a brand's tone of voice may fall into any area within the previous scales, depending on its nature. This is because a brand's tone of voice can change due to many factors, but it's a subtle change, not a complete or radical change.
In other words, the brand's tone of voice in specific content will not deviate from the core qualities of the brand's voice itself.
Steps to Develop a Brand Voice
1. Analyze and Evaluate the Current Situation
Companies evaluate their brand voice and measure its alignment with their identity and marketing strategy.
This includes reviewing elements of this voice, such as:
- The logo.
- The audio slogan.
- The musical slogan.
- The language style used in writing or speaking content.
- General trends in communicating with the target audience.
Companies also evaluate their brand voice by conducting research into the nature of the market in which they operate. This is done by studying the target audience and competition, and discovering how competitors speak to their audience and how the audience responds to them.
Finally, companies analyze sonic trends (especially recent ones that have proven successful with their target audience). Through this analysis, companies can discover new opportunities available to them in the competitive market within their industry.
2. Redefining the Voice Identity
In this step, companies redefine the sonic elements their brand uses to express its personality. This includes reviewing the actual sounds, such as music and other sounds that audiences recognize as part of the brand identity.
Redefining also includes reviewing the voice used in the content the brand communicates with its audience, such as the voice used in written or visual marketing content.
Finally, in this step, new attributes of the voice identity are defined. This includes the brand's voice and tone, using the four dimensions mentioned above, and identifying the attributes that reflect the new voice identity.
3. Experimenting and Continuous Improvement
After renewing the brand's voice and tone, companies test elements of both on their target audience. The goal of this experiment is to obtain feedback on the new brand voice and its elements.
Companies broadcast the improved or modified brand voice across all of their communication channels. This may include:
- Their websites and blogs.
- Their social media pages.
- Their television or radio advertisements.
- Its page on video and photo platforms (such as YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram).
- Their customer service communication method (live, via phone calls or written messages).
4. Monitoring and evaluating the performance of the new brand voice and continuously improving it.
Companies regularly monitor and evaluate the performance of their brand voice. This is done using several pre-defined performance metrics to monitor and evaluate the performance of their brand voice, such as the target audience's response to the voice, their engagement with it, and their emotional connection to it.
Companies continue to refine their brand voice based on feedback, market changes, and audience preferences. Finally, companies periodically update the sonic elements of their brand voice to keep it responsive to modern developments.
Conclusion
In this article, we have attempted to provide a simple explanation of brand voice and how it is designed and then improved in the future. The importance of brand voice lies in its great ability to attract the target audience in a way that suits their personality and interests.