What Is Brand Voice and Why Is a Voice Guide Important?

How a brand looks is just as important as how it sounds. When developing a brand, many business owners focus on creating a specific look for brand assets. This includes defining typography, a logo, a color palette, and other visual elements. However, developing a unique and consistent tone of voice is often overlooked.

A strong voice compliments a brand’s visual elements to convey the brand’s identity. This acts as a consistent guide to show how the brand communicates. Think of this in terms of your personal voice. Could your family tell if they got a text for someone pretending to be you? They probably could because your personality and voice are unique. When it comes to a brand’s voice, it should also be a unique identifier that consumers can associate with the brand. The slogans, taglines, and messaging associated with your brand are super important because it shapes brand perception. Without defining your brand’s tone of voice, the unique messaging of your brand can get lost in translation.

A brand with a strong voice, personality and storytelling ability is preferred by consumers. In a Sprout Social survey on what makes brands stand out online, 40% of consumers voted for memorable content, 33% for distinct personality, and 32% for compelling storytelling. Therefore, defining your brand’s voice is crucial to attracting a large dedicated audience. Below, we will look at strong examples of brand voices that have been able to captivate the world.

Analyzing brand voice examples from some of the most well-known brands worldwide makes it easy to see why it’s such an essential element to consider.

When it comes to coffee, no company has a more significant cult following than Starbucks. Their brand messaging helps people find what they need at Starbucks while telling a passionate story behind their products. Starbucks has defined two tone-of-voice terms: functional and expressive.

The functional element of Starbucks’ brand voice ensures messaging is clear, so customers have an easy and enjoyable purchasing experience. The expressive element of their brand voice is where their brand’s unique personality tells a passionate coffee story. Their goal is to use expressive copy when introducing products to present them in a fresh and relevant way.

With these two expertly defined tone-of-voice words, Starbucks messaging does two key things. The first help you navigate the ordering process seamlessly. The second is to make you smile when thinking about trying their latest drink!

Although this brand is notorious for its signature shade of blue, Tiffany & Co’s unique tone of voice is also recognizable. This jewelry store has woven itself into pop culture to become a global phenomenon with their witty, elegant, and classic brand messaging is strategy.

Tiffany & Co’s tone of voice has elegant yet witty humor to resonate with consumers. This signature style allures customers while the brand personality shines on social media. For example, Tiffany has almost 2 million followers on Twitter, making them one of the top luxury brands on the platform. With clever tweets like “the only thing blue about Monday should be a Tiffany box, ” Tiffany & Co captivates their audience and shows off its brand’s unique personality online.

These two examples showcase just how impactful a strong brand voice can be when captivating user attention. Next, we will dive into why developing a brand voice guideline creates consistent and cohesive messaging company-wide.

Developing your Brand’s Voice Guidelines is essential for identifying and building your brand personality. This helps writers craft meaningful messaging that accurately reflects your brand voice and tone.

When it’s time to develop a brand voice guideline, there are specific elements to include. First, you will curate a brand summary and identify its Unique Selling Proposition (USP). You will also need to pinpoint your brand audience, define core values, document consistent messaging, and identify your brand’s writing personality so everyone in your organization is on the same page.

Developing voice guidelines is time-consuming. Luckily, it can be done by a professional! If you’d like to have a voice guideline developed by one of the highly trained copywriting experts, contact LaLa Projects!