In the latest Brand For Success podcast episode, join Rick and Julia as they unravel the crucial role of brand voice in shaping a brand's personality and fostering authentic connections with its audience. We discuss the importance of brand voice by looking at examples from popular brands that use their unique voices to leave lasting impressions. Plus, we'll guide you through an activity to help kickstart your brand voice journey. Tune in and learn how you can craft a voice that resonates authentically with your audience.
In the latest Brand For Success podcast episode, join Rick and Julia as they unravel the crucial role of brand voice in shaping a brand's personality and fostering authentic connections with its audience. We discuss the importance of brand voice by looking at examples from popular brands that use their unique voices to leave lasting impressions. Plus, we'll guide you through an activity to help kickstart your brand voice journey. Tune in and learn how you can craft a voice that resonates authentically with your audience.
Hello and welcome to Branding for Success, where we discuss all things brand strategy, marketing and design. I'm Rick Kelly and the founder and CEO of Creative.
Speaker 2:And I'm Julia LaCourcy, the brand strategist at Creative. Whether you're well versed in branding or just getting started, we've got the roadmap for your brand success.
Speaker 1:Today's episode is what is Brand Voice and how do you define yours? So, julia, let's dive in.
Speaker 2:What is Brand Voice? So Brand Voice is essentially the unique way that your brand communicates to your audience. So that's, you know, through the language you use, your word choice, the tone of voice that you convey. So are you, you know, super funny and lighthearted? Are you a bit more serious and straightforward, professional, wherever? You fall kind of in those ranges, and there are so many different descriptors we can dive into in different ways that you can define your voice, but you know your tone, your word choice, your messaging, overall, all those components really define your brand voice and establish your brand personality.
Speaker 1:So then, why would this be important to know for your branding overall? What does this affect? Why is this important?
Speaker 2:It affects a lot. Honestly, it's a very major component of branding overall. I read something recently that said strong brands have a really well-defined understanding of who they are and, more importantly, who they are not, and that, you know, is very much a reflection of the importance of brand voice overall, I love that.
Speaker 2:I think it is an overlooked thing. Your brand voice is a very strong reflection of what kind of brand you are, what kind of essence you're putting out there, what is your purpose, who are you targeting, and it really builds that connection, a very personal and direct connection with your audience because you are speaking to them. Your audience nowadays, like Target Markets, whoever your client or customer is, they don't want to feel like a transaction. Maybe it was a little bit different, you know, 20, 30 years ago, with more traditional advertising methods, but now it's not about kind of like making that quick sale or making any transaction of sorts. It's really about building a connection. That really is what the main importance of brand voice is.
Speaker 1:So it sounds like a good brand voice is going to help you be consistent with the words you choose, how you express certain emotions or the value of whatever it is you're portraying. What does it look like when you have a bad brand voice? You're not cognizant of your brand voice.
Speaker 2:A poor, you know, embodiment of brand voice is when there's some sort of disalignment between your brand's essence and how you're communicating. So take, for example, if you're an energy drink company. It's all going to be energetic, maybe like loud and high octane. It's very like high energy If you're messaging and communication is coming off very dry or lax like that.
Speaker 1:We are a sports company.
Speaker 2:Yeah, just like you know, all the content on your website or your social media marketing is just very dull. It's not a reflection of what your brand embodies or what you're trying to sell or how you're trying to connect with your audience. So that's.
Speaker 1:So are you telling me that we shouldn't use AI to write our messaging?
Speaker 2:I'm glad you brought that up, yeah, so AI is definitely all the craze right now. I think I get asked about how companies can use AI by our clients on a daily basis and it's awesome, it's a great tool, we love it, it's super cool and it's definitely going to be a big part of our future, for sure. But I think a very common mistake is people are saying oh, I can just create all my content on chat, gpt and type in you know, create this section for my website. But you have to be careful, because you might, over time, be able to kind of adapt that language, but if it's just giving you generic content, generic language, it doesn't know your voice. It doesn't know the type of messaging that you want to convey. It doesn't know your audience, how they speak, what kind of language they use, what's going to resonate with them. So don't use AI, don't do it without you know editing it maybe.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I would just jump in and say AI generative AI is really what we're talking about. All it's doing is it's just predicting what seems like the next best word choice after the word that was just provided. So it's not even thinking about what it's saying. It's literally just spitting out words that it sees out on the web and all the data that's been fed into it. So it's really literally just a robot going.
Speaker 1:Here's a word that I think you might want. Here's a word I think you might want. So it has no idea about tone of voice or effectiveness of speaking to certain audiences, unless you train it. So this is the caveat with AI. If you're going to use generative AI to create content or messaging or anything like that for your advertising and marketing, you're going to need to do way more than just one or two prompts to get it to spit out some stuff that you can plagiarize. You need to use it as an ideation tool, something to create and generate and brainstorm concepts for you, and then take that as something that you massage and turn into your voice or your brand's voice, which is really what we're talking about today.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely. And in order to do that, you do need to first know how to figure out what your brand voice is, and a lot of times, brands won't know where to start with that. But the answer, honestly, is you do know what your brand voice is, because if it's your brand and you know that, you know what you want to be conveying and who you want to be reaching.
Speaker 2:The answer is right there it's just kind of about fine tuning it and really uncovering a deeper understanding of figuring that out. So that's exactly what you're going to take you through today.
Speaker 1:So, before we talk about how we get to our brand voice, how we find our brand voice, why don't we share a few examples of some extra brand voices that we've seen in the real world?
Speaker 2:One that I always think of is with Dove. They sell personal care products, but they're all about those stories. They're all about making those personal connections with their audience. The majority of that is not just through visuals or real life stories, but it's through their messaging, which very closely ties with that. Their brand voice is all about authenticity and self-acceptance and real beauty. Hence their very popular campaign, the real beauty campaign. Their brand voice is a reflection of that. It's very nurturing and calm and all about that kind of authenticity and togetherness and fostering that empowerment. That's extremely evident. All of their ads, any commercial you see, any social media posts it's everywhere.
Speaker 1:So if you know the campaigns that Julia is talking about, you'll get this the words, the adjectives that Julia just used to describe their campaigns, their marketing, the communication. That's really a good tool or a method to find your voice when you talk about those. What are the words you were just saying Self-acceptance, nurturing, and that's reflected in.
Speaker 2:Those aren't necessarily words that they were using, it's more so. Okay, when you think of that brand, what do you think of me personally? When I think of that brand, I think of authenticity, self-acceptance, this nurturing feeling. Like I said, not because those are words they use, but it's really the feeling that they evoke they evoke. Yeah, if you are familiar with any Dove ad, you see it's all always white and soft. So it's a big part of it too is aligning your brand voice with visuals.
Speaker 1:Now they sell similar commoditized products to someone as the Deodorant company there, old Spice.
Speaker 2:Old.
Speaker 1:Spice. Now look at their brand voice. Let's talk about some adjectives for what they're doing. All the time there's a lot of different. I would call it chaos, random, edgy, confidence, masculine. This is very different than what Dove's doing on the gentle side, this nurturing side, but they technically sell the same types of products. But that brand voice, that essence of their brand, they convey it very, very differently.
Speaker 2:But it's also about just the kind of personality they want to embody. Not every company that sells deodorant wants to be super out there and quirky like Old Spice, or super soft and gentle like Dove. So that's why I said at the beginning your brand voice is the unique way you communicate. Because it is unique to your brand, it doesn't necessarily have to fit in with whatever the status quo is in your industry.
Speaker 1:In fact, a lot of times we encourage our clients to find their unique voice with how they place themselves in the market space.
Speaker 2:Yeah, there's a reason why we know examples like Old Spice and Dove. They stick out in our head for a reason. Yes, they're major companies, but their voice sticks out for a reason because they did kind of break away from what was expected in a way. Dove started their journey of empowerment and self-acceptance in a time where that wasn't really embraced yeah, it wasn't very mainstream. And Old Spice is definitely very out there. They use messaging that nobody thinks of it's so bizarre half the time, so it leaves an impression. So, yeah, definitely shaping that unique voice incredibly important.
Speaker 1:So it sounds like and you touched upon this a little bit earlier the brand voice really does overlap a lot with other aspects of your brand.
Speaker 2:One thing I mentioned before was in visuals. You can reflect your brand voice in a lot of ways, whether it's directly through messaging or through visuals. Actually, apple is a decent example of that, because often in their marketing and advertising they don't use a lot of words all the time. Sometimes their commercials are just straight visuals and it's more experiential.
Speaker 1:Which, by the way, is the deep driving philosophy that Steve Jobs had with the company, was to make a certain technology becomes invisible and that it's experiential rather than about the process of using text.
Speaker 2:You're not getting stuck in those details, it's very much about the innovation Simplicity.
Speaker 2:And that's a reflection of that brand, like you said, the brand's essence at its core, and that is closely tied to its brand voice and then also the visuals. So there are definitely a ton of components that are involved and so making sure that those are consistent. So you have going back to Dove as the example. Their brand voice is very tied to what you see visually and that makes sense. That's why, when you think of Dove, you think of those very similar phrases that come to mind. It's because it's consistent, and then also consistent across all platforms. We probably talk about consistency, in fact every episode.
Speaker 1:You don't have a brand if you're not consistent. It's really what it comes down to. If you don't know who you are, you don't know how to express yourself and you don't know who you're talking to. You don't have a brand. So those elements coming together really helps you to find your voice and when you have your voice, people that want to hear it will listen.
Speaker 2:And that goes back to what I said right at the beginning of this episode. Strong brands have a really strong understanding of who they are and who they are not. With that understanding, you are presenting who you are authentically, consistently, and that is what builds your brand over time and allows for you to build trust with your target markets and really have a successful brand.
Speaker 1:So that's all great. Why don't we take a little break and do a little exercise? So how can we get the viewers and listeners to actually go into this process themselves and actually start out figuring out their brand voice?
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely so. One thing that we definitely do when working with clients, and one thing I would 100% encourage every company to do whether you feel like you have a good understanding of your brand or not is start with a word dump. Just start writing down any word or phrase that you really feel like is a strong reflection of what your brand is, who you are, what your purpose is, what your value is, why you're different, all those kinds of words that come to mind. Just jot them down, create a huge list.
Speaker 1:If you're if you're struggling to figure out what those words might be, we have some prompts that you can probably ask yourself to help generate some words. Do you want to talk about some of those?
Speaker 2:Yeah, definitely so, especially with regards to brand voice. Think about if your brand was a person. What kind of personality traits would they have? And, just as important, what kind of personality traits would they avoid? Definitely just as important, because when creating your brand voice, you do want to be very aware of the opposite. What do I not want to come off? As it's very easy to slip into that, especially when you're first navigating.
Speaker 1:So another question or prompt I would put in there as well is how are we different than, or how is our brand different than, our closest competitors? So there might be some adjectives or words that come up. Just write them down, write them down. Write them down. What other things can we ask to generate some more adjectives and words?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so how do you want your target market, your client, your customer, how do you want them to perceive you? What do you want them to think about when they think of your brand? That's another thing to definitely consider.
Speaker 1:And if you're not sure of what you want them to think, what do they already think? So, when your customer's clients, whoever comes to you and says, oh my goodness, you guys are so great or what you're doing is so good, what reasons do they give you? What adjectives do they use? Pick those words out and put those into your big list that you're generating as well.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely. If you're already an established brand and you have that kind of feedback, definitely resort to the actual people that you know are receptive to your brand. If you're new and just getting started and you don't really know who your target markets are, what they think about you, then, like I said before, go with. What do you want them to think? Why do you exist at the end of the day? What is your purpose? What value are you providing? All those kinds of things, throw it in a word, dump, just jot it down. Jot it all down, whatever comes to mind.
Speaker 1:And so when you have that giant list of words, what should they do at that point?
Speaker 2:So then, whenever we work with clients also, we typically do this in a different sort of way, with like a core values exercise. We always have a whole group of words and one thing we always say is there might be a lot of things that describe your brand and a lot of things. With those prompts we were kind of asking earlier, a lot might come to mind. That doesn't necessarily mean everything needs to be at the forefront of your messaging, because that also might get a little confusing and then it might dilute your messaging overall. If you try and be everything you possibly want to be or convey everything you possibly can, so narrow it down to maybe like five to eight or so words or phrases that are really sticking out as being a very strong reflection of who you are and what your brand stands for.
Speaker 1:Right, and what I'll recommend, too, is, if you have these mix of words and you can't get it down to that number that Julia just said, you can also start just clumping them together, categorize them thematically. If you find that you thought of some words that are relating to high value or low price, affordable, accessible, things like that, these all go together.
Speaker 2:If you're talking about quality.
Speaker 1:What the heck does that really mean? Because it's such a cliche now, but what does that mean in your neck of the woods, in your industry, in your side of the business, right? So what do you bring to it that makes that a quality experience or quality product or service? What about it is quality Thematically, find those words and put those together, and what you should end up with is several groupings of these themes or these concepts that really are essential to how you can express and evoke certain aspects of your brand voice.
Speaker 2:Yeah, definitely, and that'll also help you get a bit more specific, because we encourage just dumping whatever words or phrases come to mind, just to kind of let that creativity flow. But oftentimes that'll also lead to some generic terms that can mean a lot to different companies.
Speaker 1:Quality service yeah.
Speaker 2:So, and it might be very true for your brand, but you want to dig a bit deeper. You know, if integrity is a big word that comes to mind, which we often hear a lot, but what does that mean to you? What does integrity mean to your brand?
Speaker 1:And when I poke on that particular example of integrity with certain clients. It's very obvious which people have that integrity, because they almost get offended when you question their integrity, not actually, you know, putting them down or anything, but just more like, well, what does that mean? What does integrity mean to you? They'll be like well, why would I ever lie to my customer? Why would I ever do this? That's what everyone else in the industry does. I don't do that. And that's showing us how direct, how honest, how transparent and how much integrity is so important to them that everything they do is conveying that integrity.
Speaker 2:A lot of people also, you know, might identify with certain terms that they think they should be, which you know, obviously, like integrity or authenticity is another big buzzword. They're great things and, you know you hopeful. A lot of companies do embody that. But it might not be, you know, if you start asking yourselves those questions like, okay, but what does authenticity mean to me? It might not be the biggest, you know, element of your brand that you really want to be putting out there. Because if it's not authentic to you, like if you know a certain phrase or kind of theme isn't really a good reflection of who you are and what you stand for, which it might not. You know, not every brand has to embody the same buzzwords. Honestly, they probably shouldn't but it should be very much specific to you.
Speaker 2:So when creating those themes, definitely definitely be asking yourselves the hard questions. If you have a hard time answering it, then it probably shouldn't be there.
Speaker 1:Right. And last thing on this that I want to say is, if you're really unsure, it's just like a definite yes part of my list. Make a couple piles that are like these are definite yeses. These are my maybe yeses and come back to those later when you know you've taken a little break.
Speaker 2:Yeah, definitely Cool, alrighty, so you have your words, you have your, you know, maybe five to eight, maybe 10 words or phrases that feel, you know, really emblematic of who you are as a brand. Now we got to bring in your target markets, because your audience is everything. How many times have we said it? What?
Speaker 1:do we always say in every episode.
Speaker 2:Your brand is not for you, yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, your brand is for your target markets. So, you know, create those personas, start really developing. Okay, who am I trying to reach? Who are my ideal target markets? So, you know, start jotting down whatever's important to include in their kind of background, so, whether it's demographics, psychographics, their behaviors, their interests, their needs, and that'll start to help you understand how they speak, how they communicate and how you can communicate to them. So there's that connection there.
Speaker 2:Like I said earlier, people aren't really receptive to like, feeling, like a transaction these days. They want to feel like, you know, wow, this brand is really speaking to me. Going back to our Dove example, their goal is to empower women. When you, you know, see their marketing campaigns, it's supposed to evoke feelings and create a personal connection, not, oh, I need to buy deodorant today, like, that's not, you know, kind of the intention there. So, think of your target markets, you know, really do outline of who they are, and then from there we take those you know, top descriptors, those words, phrases that you narrowed your list down to what's best aligning with those target markets, what are they going to be most receptive to. So that's definitely the next very important step.
Speaker 1:Yeah, do not forget who you serve. Yeah, right, it's not. It's not for yourself and even though we're saying your tone of voice, you know if you're the brand ambassador and you're generating, you're creating this brand. It's going to probably evoke some things from your personal core values and beliefs for tone of voice, but it's not about your preferences, it's about who you serve. So make sure that you know your audiences and the tone of voice the brand voice is speaking to them.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So you might, from there, have to narrow down that list even further and really get down to, I would say, three to four key descriptors, themes and again, like Rick said, the themes might embody these bigger ideas. So you don't have to worry too much about picking specific words that really define your voice, but pick the three to four that you think are really going to align with those target markets that you outlined.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and what should ultimately happen is it's not about what words you say exactly or precisely, but more about why you choose the words. You do. So if you thematically and conceptually know that you want to talk about these concepts, these groupings of ideas that we talked about, that's almost going to make it easier than if you said, oh, I'm going to use the word authentic, I'm going to use the word strong, I'm going to use the word edgy, whatever. Right, it's not about the exact words, those phrases. Those are little shortcuts to get there and you'll find them, I'm sure. But it's really about knowing why you're saying the words you say.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. It's exactly what we said earlier not to go back to Dove for like the eighth time.
Speaker 1:but this is. We need to get some sponsorship money here, I know.
Speaker 2:But, like we said earlier, with certain words that come to mind when we think of that brand, those aren't the words that they're necessarily using. It's just the words that we think of. That's the same thing here. So it doesn't mean that you know, if, to your example, one of your words is authenticity, that doesn't mean you need to. Actually, you shouldn't Say, like the word authentic or authenticity in like all the content that you're putting out there, it's more so. Okay, what does that mean and how can you evoke that through your communication?
Speaker 1:And that's why the consistency is key. Yeah, Because it's about doing it regularly, consistently, so people see this pattern and they can trust that pattern is going to stay there and they can trust that you mean what you say, the intention, and that they resonate with it.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. And one tip I would give you know, because, clearly, especially if you're an established brand and you know you have all this content out there and maybe you're reevaluating your brand voice once you get down to that stage where you're narrowing it down to some key descriptors, take you know, I always do this honestly when working with our clients just to sort of give them a better understanding of how you can use brand voice to really elevate your communication. Take a random paragraph on your website or a social media caption that you put out there. Take a look at it and see how you would change it to be a to you know more. So embody those descriptors that you defined. Is there anything you would change? Are there any words you would use? Any kind of modifications you would make? Write that down and you'll see it how that shift kind of happens and how the updated version, hopefully you see, is a better way to resonate with those target markets that you defined.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and that's something that's so essential and pivotal to do regularly, consistently, consistently. We do it ourselves. We're a branding and marketing agency and we do that ourselves. We'll look. We actually internally look at all things that go out on, like our social, and we will help each other go. Oh you know what? Maybe we should word it this way to really mean what we mean, rather than just sounding like a typical anybody social media post or something like that. You know.
Speaker 2:And it can seem really overwhelming at first to do like a complete overhaul of your messaging. That's why I say start out with you know, a couple of examples to see how you can now elevate it, and then, over time, you know, you'll get to the point where, okay, I'm putting a social media post out there. I know exactly how I want to come off. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yep. So now that we've learned how to develop our tone of voice and how to find our voice and we talked about consistency being key what do we do about adaptability? Or, if you have to, you know, change your voice a little bit?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so, like you said, we did talk a lot about consistency, which is so important. You know every brand touch point should convey a very consistent voice, a consistent way you communicate. But adaptability is important too, because not every communication channel you're utilizing is going to be, you know, appropriate for the same kind of tone of voice. You might speak very differently in a press announcement than you would in a social media post.
Speaker 1:And then the audience. Hopefully.
Speaker 2:Yeah. And then on the flip side of that is also your target markets. Especially with some bigger brands, they're targeting a few different kinds of groups. An example would be a non-profit the actual people they're serving versus the funders, their donors. So, depending on the target audience, you might want to shift your tone of voice slightly, but still maintaining the essence of your brand.
Speaker 1:Well, it sounds great, perfect, so I know how to do my brand voice now, so I think we're good to go. I'm going to go practice that and we'll see you guys next time. All right, awesome. If you enjoyed this episode, don't forget to hit that subscribe button and leave a review. Also, make sure to share this with any friends and colleagues that you think might be helpful as well.
Speaker 2:And if there are any other topics you want us to talk about or questions you have, definitely let us know by sending us a message on social media and follow us too.
Speaker 1:And definitely make sure you hit the website creativecom. Tons of resources out there. Until next time, have a good one.