If your voice guidelines are just six adjectives in the brand book you're not alone, but you’re missing a big opportunity. Your voice has a huge role to play in conveying what you stand for and communicating with your audience. It isn’t just about brand, marketing, or the emotional side of things. It’s also about the rational: if you’re trying to create a great product or service, voice has an impact on your user experience too. It’s time to give your voice more consideration and your writers better guidance. In this webinar you’ll learn about what makes a good voice, and how to create guidelines your colleagues will actually use. You’ll also hear a case study from Samaritans on how they created and rolled out a refreshed brand voice.

1. GatherContent
August 2019
How to build
a brilliant
brand voice
La Pope

2. I’m Lauren Pope
I’m a freelance content strategist.
You can find me at @la_pope or lapope.com
Hello!

3. Three adjectives
in the brand
book?
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4. Human
Dynamic
Innovative
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5. Human
Dynamic
Innovative
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6. That’s a missed
opportunity.
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7. “
Which brands do you think
have a brilliant voice?
?
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8. What makes
them brilliant?
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9. What makes a brilliant brand voice?
A brilliant brand voice needs to be:
1. Differentiated: distinct from
anyone else, especially
competitors/comparators
2. Authentic: feels natural and
sounds like your brand
3. Appropriate: reflects your
audience and how they want
to be spoken to
4. Readable: anyone can read
and understand it
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10. Readability and
creativity aren’t
mutually exclusive.
Image credit: DDB

11. How do you get
there?
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12. A case study

13. The facets of a brilliant brand voice
1. Personality: characteristics
and qualities embodied
2. Tone: feelings or moods
conveyed
3. Rhythm: pace and pattern
4. Vocabulary: words used
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14. 1. Personality
Personality draws on the values,
mission or purpose, and translates
them into matching characteristics.
It’s the overall impression that
people should take away when they
read or hear your voice.
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15. BrewDog:
Passionate
Independent
Punk
GOV.UK
Open
Neutral
Fair
1. Personality
GOV.uk: open, fair
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16. How to find your
personality

17. How we did it
To draw out the
Samaritans personality
we ran a workshop with
stakeholders from across
the charity, including:
● a mass card sorting
exercise
● discussion of the
personality of the
brand

18. ● A character description: ‘Think of that person you
liked right away...’
● A perfect acronym:
○ Confident
○ Approachable
○ Real
○ Empowering
● Explanation and examples to go with the adjectives
What we came up with

19. What we came up with
Confident
From the way we speak, you can
tell we know who we are and
that we’re comfortable with it.
That gives our voice a quiet
confidence and strength. We
have a lot of expertise, and we
speak about those topics in a
practical way that helps others.
Example: Instagram’s changes
are good progress, but we need
to do more
We welcome Instagram’s
commitment to remove graphic
self-harm content – it’s a great
step forward. But it’s not
enough. We need to do much
more if we want to keep
vulnerable people safe online.

20. 2. Tone
There’s a spectrum of strength,
flavour, and texture but it’s all still
coffee.
Tone is how you achieve a similar
spectrum, while still preserving your
overall brand voice.
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21. 2. Tone
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22. How to find your
tones

23. In the same workshop we got our stakeholders to:
● work on empathy maps for different personas
- from callers to politicians
● imagine a scenario involving that persona and
write an email to them
● note their tone and how they achieved it
How we did it

24. ● Four main tones that could cover all audiences:
○ Collaborating
○ Motivating
○ Supporting
○ Thanking
● Tips on what tone to use and when
● Examples showing how to achieve that tone
What we came up with

25. What we came up with
Collaborating
Who is this tone for? Policy makers, politicians, researchers, press, major
donors and corporate/strategic partners.
When do we use it? When we need to make a connection and work together
toward a common good.
How does our voice shift?
● More expert - because we’re dealing with people who value our experience, and
we need to show how valuable and innovative our work is.
● More bold - because we’re confident and at ease with our expertise we can be
brave in what we say.
● More practical - we’ll make recommendations and suggestions, but it’s still rooted
in empathy for both our callers and the people we’re connecting with.

26. What we came up with
How you can work with us
Everyone has moments in their life when they struggle to cope. We get a call for
help every six seconds – and we want to be there for every single one, 24 hours
a day. But we can’t do it alone.
It’s only thanks to our local, regional and national partnerships that our services
can reach the right people, in the right places, at the right time.
Take our award-winning partnership with Network Rail, which has seen
thousands of frontline train staff receive life-changing training and support.
From transport operators to building societies, universities to high street stores,
we’ve built mutually beneficial partnership programmes that are making a huge
difference to people when they need us most.
Get in touch to see what we can do together.
Provide
evidence
Show expertise
Don’t be
modest
Remember
what matters

27. 3. Rhythm
The pace and pattern of your voice.
Your rhythm enhances your
personality and your tone
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28. Oatly:
Offbeat
Jarring
Penhaligons:
Lilting
Melodic
3. Rhythm
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29. Sentence pattern
Oatly
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Penhaligons
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30. 4. Vocabulary
The words you use (or don’t use).
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31. Hendricks:
Eccentric
Unusual
Monzo:
Simple
Colloquial
4. Vocabulary
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32. How do you
make it stick?
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33. How do you make it stick?
● Don’t let guidelines die in a PDF on a shared drive
● Find a way to make them spread that works for
your organisation…
○ a printed book
○ a wiki
○ a Slackbot
○ stickers
○ Posters
● ...above all training and champions.

34. ● Creating the guidelines in a collaborative
workshop gave everyone a sense of ownership
and helped create champions
● We ran training sessions with lots of writing
practice and feedback
● Voice training will be part of the induction for
new staff
How we did it

35. In conclusion
◉ If you’ve just got a list of three adjectives in the brand
book, you’re missing a big opportunity.
◉ A great band voice should be authentic, differentiated
and appropriate your audience but, above all, it should
be readable.
◉ To create your voice, make sure you think about the
personality, tone, rhythm and vocabulary.
◉ Personality is a constant but tone shifts for different
audiences and situations
◉ Run training sessions and create champions
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36. Any questions ?
You can find me at
◉ lauren@lapope.com
◉ lapope.com
◉ medium.com/@la_pope
Thanks!