New York / The Big Apple.
TV remote / Zapper.
Gluteus Maximus / Arse.
Stuff that matters often has more than one name. Brand voice is the same.
Some call it ‘Verbal Identity’; others call it ‘Tone of Voice’.
But, for the sake of this post, let’s stick with ‘Brand Voice’, ‘cos that’s what we call it at dollop HQ (aka the shed at the bottom of Tom’s garden).
Small businesses still need big voices
No matter the size, your brand needs to stand out. If it doesn’t, it’ll probably die a slow and painful death. Sorry, but that’s the cold, hard-boiled, chopped up and stuffed into a bread roll, truth of it.
So let’s get real. Stick your marketing copy into a lineup with your top three competitors. Now, be honest. Does it stand out? Does it undeniably feel like you and your brand? Does it put the others to shame?
If the answer’s ‘no’, ‘hmmm… maybe’, or ‘I wish’, you might want to have a word with yourself (or us).
Because if you don’t do something about it, your brand will soon be as memorable as a thingy, a… damn, what’s it called again, you know what I mean.
Watch your tone
Brands that really cut the mustard and squirt the ketchup, have a distinct, consistent voice. Big blousy advertising headline or no-nonsense, socks-up, internal announcement; they’re never off-script.
Just look at The Economist, Innocent Drinks, or Ben & Jerry’s; they all have voices tighter than a snare drum’s accountant. They’re so familiar and believable, you’d trust ‘em with a sack of puppies on a canal boat holiday.
In fact, some brands are so religiously consistent with how they sound, you could stick your thumb over the logo, and you’d still know who was talking.
That’s the power of brand voice. It gets you recognised and remembered in all the right places.
Every brand voice needs guidelines
Brand voice guidelines are a set of rules and regs that keep your brand in check whenever it opens its mouth. To stop you putting your foot in yours, dollop will make sure you’re armed with:
• A brand positioning statement. Who you are, what you do, and how you do it better than anyone else. All wrapped up in a paragraph or three.
• A bunch of pillars or principles that make up the DNA of your brands voice.
• A description you can use anywhere. A paragraph, a couple of sentences, and a one-liner, that get right into the marrow of who you are and what you do.
• A snappy roundup of what your brand voice is, and why it works for your business.
• A messaging framework that drills down into what you need to say to your different audiences.
• A manifesto that unpacks everything you believe in and what you stand for.
And depending on how deep you need to go, we might also give you a goodie bag of messaging examples, hard-and-fast language rules, and other handy brand-y voice bits ‘n’ bobs.
Want to see an example? Here’s some brand voice guidelines we put together for Plunge, a commercial model-makers based in Brighton.
Yeah, but do we really need our brand voice sorting out?
We bet our last Fizzy Cola Bottle your marketplace is so crowded; you can barely squeeze a pre-pubescent pigmy shrew into it. And while we’re in a gambling mood, we bet most of your competitors sound and smell the same as each other. Boring, predictable, samey-samey – not brands, but instantly forgettable commodities.
If you want proof, do a Google search for a local plumber, solicitor or vets. You’ll get a conveyor belt of slapped-together logos, and dry-as-a-nuked-naan-bread brand voices.
Why?
Because most business owners are so busy doing the day job, they don’t realise there’s a problem. And even if they do, it takes zero effort to follow the crowd, but quite a bit of nous, guts and energy to stand out from it.
But that’s not where you’ll find the gold. And that’s why you’re still reading – ‘cos you’re a smart cookie with something worth shouting about.
So give dollop a bell, and we’ll have your brand whistling like a canary who’s just had the all clear after a nasty case of tonsillitis.
dollop. creativity with splattitude.
