As you’re reading this, I hope you’re getting a good idea of who I am.
An image of me is building in your head.
What I look like, what I sound like, what my interests are, what I find funny, etc.
Some of you will want to be my friend. Others will think I’m a total knob (I’m okay with this… I won’t cry in the shower about it every time).
Some people who will read this and hear my voice and my “way of saying things”, as they already know me.
It’s amazing what just reading an article written by a person with likes/dislikes, experiences and a personality can do.
It doesn’t just work for journalists like Marina Hyde, Lindy West, Giles Coren, Mehdi Hasan, Louis Theroux and Stewart Lee, it works for brands too.
However, the art of language has once again lost out to the shapes and colours of our design counterparts.
Tone of Voice (TOV) was relegated to a page among 40 in the brand guidelines.
A logo was strictly governed by measurements and Pantone references, treatment for every channel, different iconography and imagery, fonts and sizes, while tone of voice was subjectively (and traditionally) defined by three pillars: clear, empathetic, and friendly. Or some variant of that.
It was up to people like me to defend what those very woolly “pillars” meant and how they translated the brand values and positioning, which again had a lot of thought poured into them.
The copywriter’s poor cousin, the one thing that customers interact with, the one thing that changes a scroll to a sale, is lost in a sea of web-optimised graphics.
Now, that ungoverned, content mill landfill is being used by AI to generate even more slop. Dan Shipper, CEO of Every, published an essay titled After Automation, the takeaway line is, “AI commoditizes the residue of human expertise—whatever can be made explicit enough to train on. That collapses the value of default model output and creates demand for what’s different.”
What does that mean? It means storytelling, writing and experience are a premium. And your tone of voice has suddenly become the best tool a brand has to communicate who they are and why to choose them.
Here’s why a tone of voice is more than plain English guidelines:
- It helps pattern interruption. Remember when everything sounded like the Demon Headmaster wrote it, the Innocent Drinks came along and spoke to us like we’re mates. Suddenly, every brand and marketing manager was scrambling to copy what Innocent was doing, once again making themselves forgettable. Your tone of voice should be unique to you, like Liquid Death telling us to “Murder your thirst”, you get exactly who they are and why you should like them with that one line. Sure, the typography and logo help, but they spent millions “just to make people smile”, a logo doesn’t do that… Unless it looks like this
- It’s ubiquitous. Every team in your organisation deals in the written word. From your PR team to the (human) agents in the call centre. They won’t be using the logo when dealing with irate people because your product is subpar (there’s another Substack on that). It’s the rope that keeps your whole brand and operation together, making sure that customers know who they’re dealing with at every touchpoint.
- It maintains trust built at every click. SEO experts will tell you about E-E-A-T (Experience, Expertise, Authority, Trust), Google loves it and proving you have all these things brings people to your website and ultimately buys your product. All that value you built up in articles and intrigue created by ads is lost in the first click if you don’t keep those turn of phrases and personality, because switching to “please click here” is the sort of pattern interrupt you don’t want.
- It tickles your System 1 brain. This part of the brain is unconscious, fast and emotional. It doesn’t matter how much you know you shouldn’t buy something because you don’t have any money, don’t need it and have plenty anyway, when your emotional centre kicks in, you’ll find a way to override it. It’s not just in items that help you self-actualise, it’s also in the company (pun intended) you keep. If someone likes you, they’ll spend money with you. Just ask Innocent Drinks, whose groundbreaking TOV gave them a 75% market share
If all this doesn’t do enough to prove to the bigwigs and bean counters of your organisation why they should invest in your TOV, try these stats:
- A well-defined and consistent tone of voice can boost your company's revenue by 23% to 33%
- 81% of consumers cite authenticity in a brand's communication style as a key purchasing factor, often taking precedence over price and specific product features.
- Ads that trigger an above-average emotional response (driven by tone) boost sales by 23%, and 82% of emotionally connected customers will stick to a brand despite competitive pressure.
- A distinct, consistent tone improves information recall and retention by 27%.
- Consistent messaging drops website bounce rates by 33% and makes people more willing to recommend your brand.
- Clear brand guidelines improve team content clarity, engagement, and correctness by up to 66%
So send this to your CFO, as just simply giving copy to experts to craft and investing in developing and delivering TOV means marketing and UX design have suddenly shot up in efficiency and efficacy.
Who can argue with improved ROI?
