You’ve sold it to people who love the razzle dazzle of shapes and colours, but think anyone can write, so why does a tone of voice need more than one page, right?
Before you get started
You need to know the difference between TOV and other writing governance tools. It’s not one or the other; you need all of these to speed up production and approvals:
- Tone of voice: This is the brand’s personality. It’s who they are at a party if it were a person.
- Style guide: This is a glossary of terms, what to capitalise, how to write dates, times and addresses, a list of standard words and phrases to make sure they’re written the same everywhere they appear. This is made easier with headless content systems, but it’s not fail-proof.
It’s also essential, this will be difficult but don’t skip this step, to involve everyone who will be ultimately feeding back on copy. That means product owners, legal eagles and marketing managers.
Involve them from the start. Make them key stakeholders or part of the project team, so they have a say in every stage. This will help you in the long run, operationally and at launch.
Getting started
Here’s how I became the architect of the tone of voice for several organisations I worked for, but my magnum opus was the one I led for Aviva UK.
I started with a really clear brief:
- To be distinctive from other [your industry] brands.
- Must be flexible for different products, accessibility needs, and messages.
- Must have behavioural science principles throughout (more of that later).
Research phase
Once you’re clear on what it is you want to achieve, you’re in a really good place to start to audit all the communications that are already out there, being seen by your audiences, wherever they are in the journey.
Then start to think about your brand. If it were a person at a party, who would it be?
I tried to think of a celebrity. In the case of Aviva, it was Judy Dench.
This helps anthropomorphise the brand, making it easier to think about how it would sound.
Do some research. It’s easy to do some desk research on your competitors to see what they do. You can also use sites like Mobbin, where you can see what companies do in terms of design without having to create accounts. Also, don’t be afraid to do a bit of a hackathon job on it, create a prototype and test it with real customers or using usertesting.com
You get lots of valuable feedback and soundbites you can use in training and when you’re feeding back to stakeholders.
Also, get familiar with DEI and WCAG guidelines. Sometimes it’s important to know what not to say, especially if you want to be inclusive. And why wouldn’t that be part of your brief.
Note: WCAG guidelines and DEI training should be an intrinsic part of your governance structure.
The creative bit
Think about your brand values, your target segment and what your competitors aren’t doing that you could. In that Venn Diagram, you’ve got your pillars.
For Aviva, it was:
- Show honest optimism
- Cut to the chase
- Do it, don’t describe it
- Navigate with answers, not questions
Make life vivid
- Show real life
- Use sensory language
- Use the vivid scale
Use meaningful metaphors
The science bit
We say around 60 metaphors a day, you probably don’t think you’re that cliché, but it’s part of our everyday speech. And in insurance, metaphors are relied on to soften difficult messages and communicate trite ideas, like “passed away” and “peace of mind”. Not only are these phrases not very accessible for people whose first language is not English, or if you’re neurodiverse, but they don’t mean anything.
NHS research showed that bereaved people actually preferred more blunt phrases like “died” as it cut the cognitive load at a stressful and depressed time.
But by switching up metaphors, you’re not slapping all your ciabattas on your breadboard when it comes to writing similar messages across products. And by writing something unfamiliar familiarly, you’re pattern interrupting, so making yourself more memorable for people who are still in the discovery phase.
Popping images in people’s minds is also a good way of bringing boring, complex and uncomfortable messages to life. Using sensory language literally shows people the benefit of using your product.
The Aviva example is:
The launch
Make sure you’ve already got the buy-in from key people the TOV will involve, like legal and compliance, marketing, digital, public relations, etc.
You need to have really robust guidelines, especially if it needs explaining.
And, even better, if you can make a mandatory e-learning module for the business to enforce as part of the compliance training we all have to do every year, you’ve already won the words war.
Also, your agency is relying on your support with internal conversations. If you’re pushing back in front of key stakeholders or you’re not hands-on in the discovery and prototyping phases, you’ll lose credibility.
Download your tone of voice project plan, breaking down each step, time needed and who needs to be involved, for just £25. It’s yours to recreate, edit and use time and time again.
If you need help with your pitch deck, get in touch to book a complimentary 30-minute online consultation
