Your logo, brand colors, packaging, and so on are all important components of brand strategy, but this isn’t where it ends. Brand tone and voice are how all of these mentioned elements are presented to your audience. Maintaining a tone of voice that is appropriate for the industry along with capturing the essence of your brand makes all the difference for your brand. Let’s take a closer look at how you can navigate the best tone of voice for your brand that can be the key to getting your branding on track with your competition.
Types of Brand Voices
In your brand strategy creation process, it’s important to coordinate with the team of designers and marketers about the specific tone of voice of your brand. This will dictate a lot of elements starting from social media captions to text on visuals. Here is a narrowed-down list of some of the most prominent brand voices you’ve certainly come across.
Professional and Restrained
A professional tone of voice is prominent in many industries across the world, but it also doesn’t mean that this is the only choice. Times are changing and consumers are valuing more customer-centric, personal, and informal approaches, especially in the age of social media. However, there are instances where the reputation, experience, professionalism, and quality of the business require a relatively restrained tone of voice. In this case, you also need to maintain being informative as well and adding value to your tone, or else you will run the risk of being mundane and uninteresting.
Industries where this brand voice is most commonly used:
- Accounting and finances
- Law and justice
- Insurance
- Consulting
- Real Estate
Witty and Whimsical
A playful tone of voice is exciting and eye-catching, especially for newer generations who are already the target audience for the majority of industries. It adds a personality to the brand that can relate to many consumers, especially paired with a similarly fun service or product. This tone of voice also comes with the risk of being considered inappropriate or insensitive if not executed correctly. For this reason, avoid the use of jargon, controversial topics and biases within your branding and marketing.
Industries where this brand voice is most commonly used:
- Manufacturing
- Entertainment and Arts
- Publishing
- Food and Hospitality
Confident and Aggressive
This tone of voice is somewhat a hybrid of the two above — it provides professionalism and with a unique edge. With this tone of voice, there is significant emphasis on why members of the target audience are missing out on not using the product or service. For example, a fitness company may have a campaign that has a main message like “are you still sitting at home? Get a membership today.” This brand voice is effective at being short, concise, and to the point. In terms of persuasion, it is highly effective!
Industries where this brand voice is most commonly used:
- Sport and Fitness
- Cosmetics (perfume, lipstick..etc)
- IT and Technology
- Automotive
Consistency is Key
Fixing a tone of voice and sticking to it is an important part of the brand strategy creation process. Unless you are rebranding, stay true to your choice of brand voice over time and across all of your marketing channels. For this reason, make sure that decisions regarding brand voice reach the rest of your team, especially newcomers. There are cases where you may consider rebranding and changing your brand voice along with it, but this can potentially have a negative impact on your business. If audiences knew your brand as a witty and playful company for decades and you decide to swap to a restrained and professional approach, understand that you run the risk of losing your existing audience. Don’t swap tone of voice often and be certain that your new direction is in line with what your brand needs and not what competitors are doing. It goes without saying that the brand voice you choose should also reflect your visual branding. Whether you are opting for a custom design or making your logo through an online logo maker keep the color theme and typography in sync with your brand tone of voice.
Considerations for Appropriateness
No matter what tone of voice you choose for your branding, it’s important that you are considerate of your audience and the tone you use on special occasions. For example, if you are posting an awareness post for a recent tragedy but typically have a more playful brand voice, this case is an exception to change your approach across your marketing channels. Similarly, being mindful of jargon, biases, and viewpoints to ensure they do cause more harm than good is necessary.
To Summarize
We only covered a few of the main branding tones of voice that commonly appear in the market and that shouldn’t stop you from finding your brand’s unique voice. Don’t think that you can’t have a finance business and not pair it with a whimsical brand voice. All that matters is that your tone of voice matches with your brand values, goals, and is executed with consistency and consideration for the needs of your target audience.
