When tone of voice is consistent it allows the consumer another means of recognizing the brand and being reassured of expectations. Unfortunately, many brands don't have a consistent tone of voice, or their tone is not considered when aligning the communication aspects of the brand. Even brands that have crafted a tone of voice for external communications or advertising have done shockingly little to promote or encourage usage of that tone internally.

Professional services firms are likely the worst offenders for jargon usage. Even brand consultants, a group that should be advising their own clients against hot air, are guilty of using jargon and stock phrases. There's a surprising amount of brand propositions and tone of voice guidelines with "simple," "dynamic," and "fresh" principles; most are not distinctive at all.

These tried and tested principles have a dulling effect on brands and our capacity to differentiate them from each other. In George Orwell's 1984, one of the book's many quotable ideas is "Newspeak." Newspeak, according to the book, is the official state language; all individuality is stripped from words, and some words are removed altogether. The hazards of Newspeak are illustrated in the unimaginative language of brands. If your vocabulary is limited, so is your range of thought.

One way of invigorating language is simply to avoid falling back on hackneyed phrases. Language can be brought to life through the use of stories. A brand's story can be about how a business first started, who the people are that run it, or the idea behind a product. Stories and words feed off each other. When the language comes alive, the brand is better defined and more robust.

Not everyone is a wordsmith, of course, and tone of voice guidelines sometimes fall short in large businesses because of the number of people who need to apply them. Any group of people will have degrees of competence within it, from barely literate to aspiring novelist.

"It's formidably difficult," Simmons admits. "And I don't think you get around it by saying this is our tone of voice and we're going to make sure that absolutely everyone follows it, as that's doomed to failure. If you try to regiment a brand's language you're stultifying its development."

Lambert agrees, "We don't want anyone to come to us and say, ‘Gee, I loved your tone of voice.' That misses the point."

The best way to tackle this is by training staff to be able to recognize when a piece of writing is in line with the brand's values. This will encourage sensitivity in staff's own writing. The instruction has a number of useful knock-on effects. Principally, it means that a company can rid itself of the need for external copywriters. Another unexpected by-product of the process is staff engagement and practice. Any time that an employee spends thinking about how to correctly implement the tone of voice is time well spent toward understanding and living the overall brand.

A good place to start might be the internal newsletter. This is usually a one-way process originating with marketing. If other staff members write it, they are actively participating in the brand, while gaining practice on their own colleagues.

The good news about establishing a tone of voice and training staff on it, says Lambert, is that the clearer direction can be freeing. "This isn't about a straitjacket. When I look at the things that other people have done […], they go ‘Yippee! Finally! I don't have to spend decades mastering a set of language that isn't me and that I don't understand but feel a pressure to use because it equals professionalism.' It frees you to think bigger thoughts and have bigger ideas. Especially internally; some of the emails that have gone around following our tone of voice would have never happened before."

Simmons likens his brand language teachings to a "subversive activity." Being better with words certainly makes staff more confident and empowers them to shun the self-imposed Newspeak of management jargon. But this approach is also encouraging staff to put their personality into their writing and the organizations they write for. This not only gives writing a renewed status in brands, it unleashes a voice for staff too.     

[19-Sep-2005]