Find Your Brand Voice: Personality for Business Success
Andrea Goulet, Co-Founder & CEO, Corgibytes
Watch this class and thousands more
Watch this class and thousands more
Lessons in This Class
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1. Welcome to Class!
2:44 -
2. What is a brand voice?
8:30 -
3. Borg vs. Borzoi Brands
5:33 -
4. Find Your Brand Voice Sweet Spot
2:29 -
5. Foundational Content: Organization
7:50 -
6. Foundational Content: Audience
9:55 -
7. Foundational Content: Products/Services
6:07 -
8. Facilitating a Group Discussion
7:18 -
9. Complete Your Brand Character Profile
8:26 -
10. Character Traits
10:24 -
11. Writing Techniques
4:23 -
12. Understanding Tone Changes
1:51 -
13. Tone Wheel
5:55 -
14. Write Example Tone Copy
2:05 -
15. Understand the Purpose of a Style Guide
3:15 -
16. Completing Your Style Guide
5:12 -
17. Creating Copies of Your Style Guide
1:00 -
18. Training Your Team
2:59 -
19. Conduct Brand Audits
1:17
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About This Class
Looking to create a brand that stands out in today's noisy market? You've come to the right place. In this hands-on course, Andrea Goulet Ford will walk you through the same process she's used to engineer the personalities of some of the world's largest brands. Through the videos and a detailed 53-page ebook, you'll create a comprehensive Brand Voice Style Guide for your organization. Here's a peek at what you'll learn:
Brand Voice Benefits
In this section, you'll learn what a brand is and why it's important. You'll see brain research that shows how falling in love with a brand is a lot like falling in love with a human, and how personality matters when it comes to the bottom line. You'll also learn how to find your brand voice sweet spot with the same model Andrea uses for her Fortune 100 clients.
Create Foundational Content
If you want to build a house that stands up to the elements, you need a good foundation. The same is true for your brand. A good foundation will help you weather the storms of a changing marketplace. In this section, you'll build your foundation with a step-by-step process. First, you'll focus on your organizational content: your mission statement, vision statement and core values. Next, you'll learn how to step into the shoes of your audience and create compelling content that makes them fall in love. Finally, you'll learn how to position your product or service in the best light to spark a conversation and spur word of mouth.
Discover Your Personality
Once your foundation is laid, you'll start developing a distinct and engaging personality. Andrea will share her favorite tips, tools, and techniques for facilitating a group discussion. You'll also get access to her popular Brand Character Profile™ to help you find your top six distinguishing brand traits.
Use Your Brand Voice Across an Organization
The best brands give a consistent experience in any department. In this section, we'll look at how your brand voice will change in different situations. Using Andrea's Tone Wheel™, you'll walk through your entire business to ensure everyone is able to use your new brand voice consistently and confidently.
Training Your Team
You'll wrap up the course by learning the best way to roll out your new team. You'll get access to a Brand Voice Style Guide template that you can easily modify and share with your team.
Meet Your Teacher
Hi. I'm, Andrea Goulet Ford -- the human voice behind some of the world's largest brands.
I'm the person brands turn to when they want to cut the corporate babble. For the past decade, I've helped engineer the personalities of the businesses, non-profits, and government agencies you interact with every day -- the products you buy, the airlines you fly, and the services you use to communicate with your loved ones... just to name a few.
In May of 2013, I launched BrandVox to help brands scale their communications without sacrificing personality or authenticity. Style Guides are just one of the systems in my toolkit, and I hope you find them as useful as I have.
You can also find me writing my upcoming book, Culture of Content: How to Win in Business Through Prose... See full profile
Hands-on Class Project
Create a Brand Voice Style Guide for Your Organization
Welcome to Class!
Familiarize Yourself with the Project Plan.
Come on in!
Take some time to look through the class Project Plan and familiarize yourself with the class.
SECTION 1: Brand Voice Benefits
1. What is a brand voice?
Before we can dig into what a brand voice is, we first have to agree on what a brand is.
It's easy to think that a brand is something that is just exists in the marketing department, but it really goes much deeper than that.
A brand is the collective experience and perception that customers have from interacting with your organization.
A brand is not just your logo and company name.
Take for example a happy customer who has a bad experience with your customer service. This interaction is taking place well outside of the marketing department, however it will impact brand perception. Your brand exists in all communications and interactions with customers – internal and external.
Why does Brand Voice matter?
Take a minute and think about your favorite brands. The ones that you have a long lasting relationship with, that you refer to your friends, and that you care about.
What do they have in common?
Chances are they feel human. And that's not by chance.
Research suggests that we relate to brands the same way we relate to other humans. Brands act like a modern day tribe. They help us find and associate with people who hold similar values and lifestyles to our own.[1]
For this reason, when we're creating a brand, we need to be intentional about the personality we're crafting, and mindful of how that personality is executed by every person on our team.
Interbrand, a company whose business is brand analysis, creates a list of the “Best Global Brands” each year. They do this by evaluating and putting dollar value on how much a brand is worth by measuring a company’s brand strength, which is compiled based on the following factors:
- Clarity – How clear are your vision, mission, and values?
- Commitment – Are you training your organization on how to use your brand?
- Protection – Are you taking legal precautions to protect your brand?
- Responsiveness – Is your brand adaptive and able to change with the market?
- Authenticity – Are you truly delivering against your brand promise?
- Relevance – Does your brand fit your customers’ needs?
- Differentiation – How much does your brand stand out from its competitors?
- Consistency – Does every department deliver a similar experience?
- Presence – Is your brand talked about positively and seen as the leader of the tribe?
- Understanding – Do your consumers understand the brand?
The bottom line is that the brands that hit these marks are worth more money. They consistently attract investment dollars and sell for a higher amount of money, a great example of why having a brand voice matters.
TO DO:
- Set a timer for 5 minutes and write down a list of brands that you think have a good personality and you really enjoy.
- Look at your list. Are there any attributes that they all have in common? What do you like? What do you not like?
- Research the founders or CEOs of some of the brands you outlined. How do you think their personality is reflected in the brand?
[1] Journal of Business Research 62 (2009) 1299–1310
2. Borg vs. Borzoi Brands
Great job! Now let’s take a look at the two different types of brand voices out there, and how they are heavily influenced by a company’s leadership team.
Borg
If you ever watched Star Trek: The Next Generation, there was a race of aliens called “Borg”. These aliens would conquer by assimilation by taking others technologies. There are companies that build their brand in a very similar way, through acquisition. Borg brands find it difficult to maintain a cohesive brand voice. There often isn’t very good communication and they use a lot of jargon and legalese. Not a lot of human connection.
Borzoi
This is a type of dog. And we know that sometimes dogs look like their owners. Brands sometimes look like their owners too. A great example of this type of brand is Virgin. You can see Sir Richard Branson’s mark on every brand he has created. Even though there are a lot of organizations under his umbrella, they all have a cohesive look and feel.
So which do you want to be – a Borg or a Borzoi?
Remember, the leadership team has a huge impact. But, if you are someone who is executing the brand, you can help make change as well.
Think about how these two types of brands are created very differently. Borg brands tend to have lots of cooks in the kitchen! Too many people defining the brand voice can make it very watered-down. In Borzoi brands, decisions are made by a small group. It’s my recommendation that you limit your key stakeholder group to no more than three. When these leaders give solid training, everyone else can emulate the brand. Small groups tend to be more effective.
3. Review the Brand Voice Model
As we've learned, defining a brand voice is a complex task. So, as we go through the process, it's helpful to keep this model in mind. When I'm working with a client, I find this to be an incredibly useful tool to help us stay focused.
Organization
- What is your mission and vision?
- What are your core values?
- What do you stand for? What are you known for?
- What do you want to cultivate?
- What will you not tolerate?
- How clear are you in your organization’s purpose?
Audience
- Who buys from you?
- What are their hopes? Fears? Dreams? Beliefs?
- What makes them frustrated?
- What makes them giddy?
- The more you understand your audience, the easier it is to align your brand voice.
Product/Service
- How is your product different from your competitors?
- What problem does it solve?
- What value does it add to the market place?
- Where all three of these are aligned is your brand voice sweet spot and is where you should focus your brand voice.
TO DO:
Look at the brand Quirky – a company that helps inventors bring products to market – and answer the following questions:
- How does Quirky as the organization stand out from the individual products it creates?
- Who is Quirky's audience? How do they use language to actively engage them?
SECTION 2: Create Foundational Content
1. Write Your Mission Statement and Core Values
Now that you understand the model to create an effective brand voice, let’s dive into each element and focus on specific pieces of content you can develop to make your brand shine.
The first step to getting to your brand voice sweet spot is understanding your organization.
Mission Statements
Your mission statement is why you are in business.
Here are some tips to creating a mission statement. Your mission statement should:
- Be short, memorable, and easy to repeat. They should be no longer than one sentence. A great example of a short, concise mission statement is the American Lung Association’s statement: “To save lives by improving lung health and preventing lung disease.”
- Be specific about what you do and who you serve.
- Use concrete, plain language. Don’t try to sound overly smart. They goal is clarity, not creativity. Opt for words like “use” instead of “utilize”. Use everyday language that everyone understands.
- Put a stake in the ground and be affirmative. Avoid works like: help, try, assist, seek, encourage, influence, or aim.
- Be goal oriented and aspirational. Your mission is something you want to eventually achieve. The March of Dimes’ original mission was “to cure polio”, which they achieved and went on to create a new mission.
- Start with an action verb. This gets the person who is learning about the organization right in the middle of the action!
Vision Statements
What does the world look like when you've accomplished your mission?
Your vision statement is more aspirational and broad. Here is a template you can use to create it:
To _______________________________________(main thing you do)
by __________________________________________ (core services or products)
so that ___________________________________________.
Core Values
What does your organization stand for?
Your core values are the attributes that you hold dear. They give your mission statement more context.
Core values:
- Help your employees to understand your culture.
- Core values are the litmus test for making decisions.
- Let your customers know that can expect from you and helps them self identify as a member of your tribe.
- Help you to recruit and retain quality staff that can fulfill your mission.
- Critical for building culture. They give you an indication of what your customers and employees really care about.
Take a peek at Zappos. They've done a great job codifying their famous culture.
TO DO:
- Poll the people in your office. How many people know the organization's mission?
- Compare your existing mission statements and core values to the examples above. What's different?
2. Create an Audience Persona
Now we’re going to look at ways that we can really understand our audience.
The next step to creating our brand voice is answering the question:
"Who will be interacting with my brand?"
1. To do this, we want to look at a number of different factors, both about the external environment our audience interacts with, and the internal feelings they have.
Demographics (quantitative traits)
- Gender
- Age
- Job title
- Years of experience
- Location
- Devices used to access content
Psychographics (qualitative traits)
- Personality
- Values
- Attitudes
- Interests
- Lifestyle
2. Once we've identified the traits, the next step is creating a short story that describes a persona, or ideal representative. Think of your brand persona as an outline of a character.
But first, we need to figure out what is going to move our audience into the action we want them to take. For example: making a purchase, becoming a volunteer, attending a civic meeting, etc.
We know that people are moved into action for two reasons:
- To pursue pleasure
- To avoid pain
If we want people to interact with our brand we need to understand what gives them pleasure and pain as well as their deep hopes, fears, aspirations, desires, and dreams. To access these deep emotions, we can use one of two things:
Market Research
Conduct in depth interviews with people who interact with our brand. This is a great method, but its time consuming and expensive.
Archetypes
These are storytelling patterns that have been used since the classical Greek era. Carl Jung first made them popular, but comparative mythologist, Joseph Campbell expanded upon them and identified story-telling patterns that correspond to different archetypes. Here’s an example:
A hero is called out on an adventure, but he has to refuse the call. Then with the help of some supernatural aid he leaves his home and he sets out on his mission. During his adventure he encounters many trials including a temptress, his father, and understanding his true identity. After grappling with a really intense inner dilemma, he draws on a power from deep within and is able to overcome his obstacles, and return to his original land, take his rightful place, and fulfill his destiny.
Sound familiar? This story-telling pattern for the hero is outlined in Campbell’s book called The Hero with a Thousand Faces. The hero was incredibly influential to many, including film maker George Lucas who wrote Star Wars.
So what does this mean for brands? Since a brand is a collection of experiences, we as brand builders can use this to create opportunities for customers to engage with our brand in a way that appeals to them.
Nike is a great example of a brand that does that understands an archetype and understands its core motivations. Everything from their tagline “Just Do It” to their ads are all about struggle, achieving, and overcoming obstacles.
The Twelve Most Common Archetypes
Caregiver
This archetype is driven by an innate need to serve others. They are compassionate, kind, patient, empathetic, and nurturing. They most fear abandonment, disconnection, and instability. Caregivers also have a hard time saying no and can sometimes forget themselves because they focus on others so much. To engage caregivers, connect your marketing with a cause they care about.
Citizen
The citizen cares deeply about personal integrity, contribution to their community, and moral leadership. Like the caregiver, the citizen tends to put others before their own needs, but instead of focusing on nurturing the individual, the citizen is motivated to act in order to create change on a broader scale. This archetype is turned off by pointless partisanship and selfishness and longs to be a part of something bigger. Luckily, social media provides the tools they need to shout your message from the rooftops.
Creator
Creators are driven by their deep need for self-expression and believe in immortality through their creative work. They fear being misunderstood as well as the wrath of their inner critic, as they tend to be perfectionists. With great imaginations, creators are the inventors and idea people of the world and feel engaged when they can contribute their ideas. Create a platform where their work will be showcased.
Explorer
Think independence, bravery, and self-sufficiency. The explorer dreads stagnation, not making progress, and being held back – their motto is living without limits. They aren’t afraid of nonconformity and feel at home in the unknown or in the face of a challenge. These guys thrive when they have a vast quantity of content to read. Use content marketing to keep them happy and engaged.
Hero
As you might guess from our examples above, the hero archetype is all about self-sacrifice, courage, transformation, and faith. All of this effort is worth it because of the transformation they will achieve. Digging deep and overcoming a challenge drives the hero. To them, life is an adventure filled with the opportunity for conquest and glory. They dislike selfishness, stagnation, and the status quo. Honor a hero as “customer of the month” and you may just have a lifetime shopper or client.
Innocent
The innocent may come across as naive or ignorant, but that’s because they have no hidden agenda and live with a sense of endless possibility. They have an almost childlike nature and value purity, trust, honesty, wholesomeness. Their worst fear is doing something wrong or bad, and they are easily hurt by cynicism or sarcasm. They find joy in life’s simple pleasures and are optimistic, almost to a fault. Innocents need more trust than most archetypes. Use case stories and testimonials to build your credibility.
Jester
Jesters are notorious for their wicked humor, originality, irreverence, and social skills. Finding the fun in all things, whether appropriate or not, the jester has a sharp sense of humor and can light up a room. Often seen as exuberant and filled with antics, the jester employs satire, parody, wit, and sarcasm with masterful skill. Don’t fence them in – they hate the idea of being stifled or caged and detest the status quo. Use wit and irreverence in your marketing tactics and you’ve got the jester’s attention.
Lover
Using the senses is of the utmost importance to the lover and they appreciate beauty in all forms. Lovers are all about faithfulness, vitality, expansiveness, and appreciation. The lover is passionate and deeply committed. Favoring intuition and emotion over reason, the lover is prone to mood swings and jealousy, and can be fickle. They fear disconnection, betrayal, and being alone. To connect with a lover, use marketing tactics with a strong visual appeal that speak to the heart.
Magician
Magicians are dreamers, knowing that the universe, both within and without, is limitless. They appreciate intuition, charisma, and mysterious perception. This deep thinker taps into the fundamental laws of nature to understand the world. The magician looks at the world through many lenses, feeling there are many paths to the truth. Shamanic and charismatic, the magician is a leader and attracts large fan bases. To get the attention of a magician, use marketing tactics that pique their curiosity.
Rebel
It’s no surprise that rebels are leaders and risk takes. This archetype is progressive, provocative, and thrives on personal power. Not wanting to conform is the rebel’s main cause. They also love experimenting and are not afraid of a challenge. They’re irritated by laziness and don’t like boundaries. One of their biggest fears is being victimized. Appeal to the rebel by clearly setting up a problem and cultivate your community of rebels around how you're different.
Sage
The sage is wise, intelligent, analytical, and rational. While sages seek the same truth as the magician, they go about it in a fundamentally different way. Sages soak up knowledge and achieve transcendence through non-attachment. They rely on thought instead of feelings and can come across as distant or stoic, especially to those who rely on intuition over intellect. You will scare them off if they think they’re being duped or viewed as ignorant. Sages respond well to clear and authoritative reports around a specific topic.
Sovereign
Tradition is a value that runs deep with the sovereign because it creates a legacy that will stand the test of time. They focus on proper behavior and emphasize thinking before one speaks. Concerned with nobility, the sovereign, whether implied or explicitly, believes they have a higher status than the average person and often uses their rank to purposefully exclude those outside of their perceived rank. Losing their importance and power scares them. Want to reach a sovereign? Reward them for their loyalty.
Recommended reading: Archetypes in Branding by Margaret Hartwell & Joshua Chen.
TO DO:
- Create a bulleted list of the demographics and psychographics of your primary audience.
- Search a stock photo site such as Bigstock,iStockPhoto, or ShutterStock to find a picture of a person who could represent the audience.
- Use the traits, picture, and archetype descriptions to create a 2-3 paragraph description of your persona. Give them a name and use detail to help the character come to life.
3. Create a Value Proposition
Now that we understand our organization and audience, we're going to take a look at our products and describe them using a value proposition.
Value propositions are useful because it helps others clearly understand the value that we bring to the market.
What is value?
Here is a common definition: “The relative worth, utility, or importance of something.” [2] Relativity is important because each person has their own internal scale of defining what is valuable to them. Some people are very price sensitive, and others are more sensitive to quality more than price. Others care more about quality. This ratio between them is value.
There are many different ways to structure a value proposition. Let’s look at 3 different value proposition templates:
Valuing Propositioning Statement by Geoff Moore
This is probably the most popular one. This template has helped thousands of brands communicate their relative value to their audiences and is used most frequently in Fortune 500 firms. The template goes like this:
For______________________________________________(target customer)
who_____________________________________________(opportunity)
is a _____________________________________________(company name)
that ______________________________________________(benefit statement).
Here’s an example:
For busy moms (target customer) who don’t want to cook (statement of need) Yummy Yummy Num Nums (company name) is a on-demand, in-home chef service that provides healthy meals without the hassle (benefits statement).
One of the challenges of Moore’s template is that it isn’t very conversational. While it works well for internal conversations about your product, you’ll probably need to tweak it for your marketing communications. This can be done by revising the shifting into the second person, or the “you” voice and addressing your ideal customer directly. Here’s an example:
Busy mom? Don’t want to cook? Then you need Yummy Yummy Num Nums. Just use our convenient application to call a chef whenever you need one. We’ll come to your house and prepare a healthy and delicious meal while you can spend time with your family.
See the difference? Start with Moore’s template and then tweak it to match a brand voice that aligns with your organization and your audience.
The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development by Brant Cooper and Patrick Vlaskovits
This model suggests describing things is a specific order:
- Customer – describe the customer
- Problem – state the problem
- Solution – talk about the solution
Here’s another example using the same product and company as above:
Busy moms who don’t want to spend time in the kitchen (customer) have to choose between feeling their family healthy meals and spending quality time (problem). Yummy Yummy Num Nums is an on-demand, in-home chef service that comes to your house so you never have to choose between family and food. (solution).
As you can see, it’s critical that you understand your audience before you can create language that motivates them into action.
Value Positioning by Eric Sink
One easy way to think of this structure is to remember the 3Ws: Why, What, Who.
- Superlative – why choose this product? (ex. Easiest, best, number one)
- Label – what is the product? (ex. Snack food, operating system)
- Qualifiers – who is the audience? Who should use your product? (ex. Busy moms)
Example:
The easiest (superlative) on-demand, in-home chef service (label) for busy moms (qualifier).
No matter which template you use, the objective in defining a value proposition is to communicate what your product is, who the producing is aimed at, and the benefit it offers. The most important thing is that you create a statement that truly connects with your audience.
TO DO:
Find or create your Value Proposition. How do they hold up to the examples?
[2] "Value." Merriam-Webster.com. Merriam-Webster, n.d. Web. 5 May 2014.
Facilitation Tools
Whenever I'm facilitating a group, I use these facilitation tools to help the team learn how to work together. They're not critical (I have had successful outcomes without them) but I find they can be incredibly valuable for new teams or groups that are highly analytical by nature.
Creating a brand by yourself? No problem. You can adapt these exercises to work for your situation, too.
Exercise 1: Play the Logo Game
The Logo Game is a fun way to look at which brands have carved a place in our memory. It helps people who don't work in marketing all day to get into the mindset of thinking about competition and how to apply successful strategies to their own brand. Sometimes people have a hard time developing their distinct brand voice and it’s because they lack objectivity – the ability to think and talk about the brand in the third person. This game helps with that.
To do this exercise, I have participants pick a card with a brand name on it. Participants can then throw out what comes to mind when they think about a specific brand.
Exercise 2: Read Tina Fey's Four Rules of Improv
In her book, Bossypants, Tina Fey outlines her Four Rules of Improv that she developed while she was a member of the comedy group Second City:
1. Agree
Instead of immediately dismissing an idea, agree with other’s ideas. This helps keep people from being overly critical, which kills collaboration.
2. Say "Yes, And"
This encourages people to agree with others, but also to contribute and idea with their agreement.
3. Make Statements
Questions can sometimes feel like criticism, so it’s best to make statements only.
4. There Are No Mistakes, Only Opportunities
Rather than criticizing ideas, look at the merits of all ideas. This works especially well in groups of people from varying levels of an organization.
Outlining these rules is helpful for folks who aren't used to collaborating. It also helps establish ground rules to make sure everyone has the opportunity to feel heard and respected.
Exercise 3: Group Storytelling with Rory's Story Cubes
These dice are fantastic as quick prompts to help you get used to thinking associatively and collaborating. They’re also a great way to start practicing the rules of Improv!
I hand out three dice to each participant. Then, we go around the table and each person rolls one of their dice and contributes a sentence that is prompted by the image on their die. Together, the group creates a story. The first round is the setup of the story, the second round is the story arc, and the last round is the conclusion.
Complete Your Brand Character Profile
Now that our brains are nice and nimble, we're ready to start developing our brand character profile.
Research shows that as humans, we have the same emotional reaction to brands as we do to people.
Our brains light up and hormones are released when we enter a positive brand relationship in the same way as if we were falling in love with another human being. All of this occurs in our emotional, subconscious brain. The process of falling in love, with a brand or a human, isn't analytical or rational. [1]
When we create brands, we need to open up and access that emotional part of ourselves. This enables us to create brands that people can truly relate to on their own emotional level.
Fiction authors do a great job of this when they build characters. Using a tool called a "character profile", they dive deep into the back-story of a character. This helps fill in detail and provides an image of the brand as if it were a human. Two authors who do this really well are George RR Martin and JK Rowling. When developing the Harry Potter character, JK Rowling spent years sketching out who the character was, who he interacted with, and what his back story was.
So, we're going to go through the same exercise. But instead of creating a character for a book, we're creating a brand by defining character traits of the brand.
Some general questions to keep in mind:
- Are they a man, woman, or maybe an animal?
- What is their age?
- What is their life experience?
- What’s their living situation?
- What’s the décor in their home?
- What is their lifestyle?
- What is their appearance like?
- What’s their occupation?
- Are they introverted or extraverted?
- What’s their family like? Do they have siblings?
- What kind of music do they like?
- Do they travel?
Vivid details are key here!
Next, we’re going to look at things on a specific scale. In your Brand Character Guide you will see various scales. Look at what you have developed so far and further refine the words you use to define your brand. Consider the patterns.
Examples:
- Trendy vs. Traditional
- Bright vs. Subdued
- Absurd vs. Serious
- Innocent vs., Jaded
- Authoritative vs. Collaborative
- Compliant vs. Destructive
*Facilitation Note: Give yourself plenty of time for this exercise - at least an hour to an hour and a half is suggested. You also may want to record this session so that you don’t have to worry about taking notes.
TO DO:
Download a copy of the Brand Character Profile. Use the document to think about your brand as if it were a character in a novel. If you are working on your own, find a quiet place to go through the exercise. If you are bringing a group through this process, it’s a good idea to use the facilitation exercises above to get everyone in a place of collaboration. Take your time. Go with your gut. And have fun!
[1] Journal of Consumer Psychology Volume 22, Issue 1, January 2012, Pages 128–142
Prepare a Mood Board on Pinterest
You've probably heard the cliché that a "picture is worth a thousand words." Well -- it's true. Now we’re going to turn our words in our brand character profile into a mood board. In a 2010 study about Visual Narrative Art, Carol Megehee and Arch Woodside identified several reasons why using images and storytelling techniques together work so well to develop brand characteristics:
- Images help us make sense of complex themes. They give us context to help us relate to experiences.
- Thinking in images helps us get beyond rational thought to that emotional place where great characters are born.
- Using images and looking for patterns is personally gratifying for the artist (that's you!) In short -- it's fun!
We're going to use Visual Narrative Art as a way to help us develop our brand and visualize the characteristics we just came up with. The best tool I've found to browse and store a variety of images (a mood board) is Pinterest.
Here are the steps to create a secret board:
- Create a Pinterest account and log in.
- Add a board for your project.
- Mark it as "secret" and only you and the people you invite will be able to see it.
Need help? Here's a link to Pinterest's support – they have lots of tips about secret boards: https://help.pinterest.com/entries/22277603-Secret-boards-basics
Don't want to use Pinterest? Evernote might be a good alternative for you to capture ideas and notes. Or you can go old-school with a corkboard, magazines, and some glue. Whichever method you want to use, go ahead and get everything set up and ready to go. The idea is to create a visual representation so we can go back and look at patterns later.
TO DO:
Go back through your brand character profile and find images that match each question. Store your images on Pinterest or Evernote.
Look for Patterns
Now that we have a visual representation and a language version of our brand character profile, it's time to start finding the right words to describe it. We're going to start by looking for patterns.
Look at your Pinterest board and your brand character profile and ask yourself what common themes you see.
Use the document below to help you find the precise words that fit the personality you've developed. Don’t feel limited by this. Feel free to use resources like a thesaurus to give you ideas.
TO DO:
Complete the brand spectrum section in the Brand Character Profile to help you find the right words to describe broad themes of your brand.
Define Personality Traits
Now that we've found our themes, it's time to hone in and make our personality traits even more precise.
Word Pairings
I've found that using a two-word personality description can really help other people understand the nuance of something that I'm trying to convey. It can be helpful to think about pairings.
For example, if only use the word "intelligent" to describe my brand, other people may have a different idea of what that means than I intended. By modifying this slightly to "accessible intelligence" it's less likely to be misinterpreted.
Here are some pairings you may find helpful:
- Realistic Hope
- Accessible Intelligence
- Change Pioneers
- Objective Explorers
- Refreshingly Honest
- Boldly Creative
- Quiet Confidence
“This but not That”
You can also use the “This but not that method”. For example, “smart but not inaccessible” or “smart but grounded”. This technique helps you use language to be really precise about what you are trying to discuss.
TO DO:
Using the words you circled in the last exercise as a starting point, create four to six different distinct personality traits that accurately describe your brand.
Write Foundational Content
Now that we have our personality traits defined, it's time to go one step further and write out some foundational copy. This is copy that can be used in any channel.
Foundational copy serves a couple of different purposes:
- Provides even more context and detail for our personality traits.
- Reduces the risk that our personality traits will be misinterpreted.
- Provides inspiration for writing in many different places across your brand.
Remember, foundational copy is channel agnostic. You can use it in a variety of channels. Instead of thinking whether the copy you write will be on your website, your annual report, or a brochure -- remember that it could live on any or all of them.
Here's an example:
Boldly Creative
We are dot connectors, finding continuity between even the most disparate concepts. We uncover correlations and from this creative ore, build a sturdy nexus of strategy, design, and communication. We are not afraid to try new things. Mistakes? We applaud them, dissect them, and transform them. We do marvelous things because we honor the unconventional -- this is where magic and miracles happen.
You’ll notice that this is very aspirational, and that is ok. What’s important is to stay authentic to your brand and honor what comes up in the language.
TO DO:
Write 3-4 sentences of foundational copy for each one of your personality traits.
**Note: You may want to contract this piece out to a writer if you aren’t as skilled of a writer or if you feel too close to the content.
Connect Personalities to Writing Techniques
This is where your brand starts to come to life, and this is a step that many brands skip out on.
When we're documenting a brand personality, it's important that we outline our thought process completely. Too many brands assume that writers know how to connect the personality traits into tactical advice.
For example, let's say one of your personality traits is "deliberate eclecticism," which you define as the following:
Variety is more than a spice to us, it's the main ingredient. We intentionally seek out a wide range of inspiration and thoughtfully arrange concepts of many origins into our work. We are precise. We carefully examine each piece of a solution to see how it impacts the whole.
This personality trait really speaks about taking the time to find the best fit. That includes words, too. So you might describe the writing technique as "word precision" with the following description to help support your idea:
- Treat words and ideas just like things. Since we're deliberately eclectic, spend time to look around and find the perfect fit.
- Instead of using general descriptors, like "good" or "great", take the time to find a word that precisely describes your idea.
Taking this extra step will really help you communicate your vision to your writers.
Here is a list of common writing techniques that you might want to consider:
- Active Voice
- Benefit Focused
- Brand Journalism – if objectivity is important to you this can be a good one to use
- Conversational Style – more casual
- Direct Address – talking about how you use “you” language rather than “we” language
- Easy-to-Scan Structure
- Empathy Statements – using empathy statements rather than hard-core sales techniques
- Open-Ended Language
- Plain Language
- Sensory Language
- Short Sentences
- Word Precision
Don’t feel limited to only these techniques. Feel free to develop your own, using this as a template.
Voice vs. Tone: Understanding the Difference
When I was a kid, one of the things my mother said often was, "Andrea! Use your inside voice." Maybe your mother did, too.
Now, when she said this, she wasn't telling me to change who I was. She was telling me to adapt my voice to the situation.
Just like my voice needed to change if I was indoors, your brand voice will shift depending on what area of your organization is speaking.
TO DO:
Take a few minutes and write down how your brand voice and tone would be different for each situation:
- Posting on social media
- Writing a legal contract
- Explaining how to use your product
- Calling someone to action on your website
Develop Your Tone Wheel
As you can probably see from the last exercise, the tone you use for a legal contract is very different for what you use for social media. That's normal and perfectly appropriate.
The next step is to identify the different areas of your business. I have attached several different models to the project guide. I’ve given you three different versions: for products, services, and non-profits or government agencies. I also included a blank version too. Feel free to use one of these or start from scratch -- whichever works for your business.
Once you've developed your tone wheel, start listing out specific pieces of content that would apply to this section. Here are some examples
Operations
- Training Guides
- Documentation
- Process Maps
Legal/Finance - This piece is often overlooked by organizations!
- Invoices
- Estimates
- Paycheck memos
- Terms & Conditions
Sales/Marketing
- Brochures
- Sign up forms
- Call to action buttons
Website/Social Media
- Blogs
- Tweets and posts
- Descriptions
- Metatags and keywords
Product
- Product descriptions
- Names
Customer Service
- Common questions
- Self-help portals
Internal/HR
- Company memos
- Job descriptions
TO DO:
Use the attachments in the download section to develop a tone wheel for your business and supply examples of the types of content that you'd create for each department.
Write Example Tone Copy
Now, it's time to bring your ideas to life with some real world examples. For the best results, make sure your examples are:
- Relevant and specific to your industry.
- Follow a "good, better, best" format - avoid “bad” versions.
- Obvious and clear – use similar sentences where only one thing changes.
- Modified from actual use – if you are using actual examples, modify them so that they can’t be identified to avoid any hurt feelings.
TO DO:
Write at least one example for each section of your tone wheel.
Understand the Purpose of a Style Guide
We’re almost there! Now we’re going to talk about some best practices for training your team so that everyone can speak cohesively in the new brand voice.
Just like how a football team has a playbook designed to help them work together, your organization needs a style guide to help you flawlessly execute your brand's voice. It enables you to react quickly to shifting markets and take advantage of opportunities in real-time. I call mine the “Message Playbook”.
Recently, Rebecca Lieb of the Altimeter Group published a research report on organizations that are nimble enough to create relevant content on demand. These leaders of "Real-Time Marketing" have spent time documenting their plays in style guides that are an active part of their team's daily workflow.
One notable case study in this research is Oreo, who published a relevant tweet that went viral when the lights went out at the 2013 Superbowl. Their tweet “you can still dunk in the dark” was re-tweeted millions of times. As Rebecca noted in a blog post about her research,
"If Oreos, for example, hadn't nailed down its voice, point of view, brand values, tone, imagery, graphics, font, target audience, channel strategy, and all those other brand book and style guide elements, not to mention secured approvals (or the ability to get them – fast), they never would have hit it out of the park (to mix sport metaphors) at the Big Game."
This is why documenting your brand voice matters. Oreo also has a good process for approvals. If you are on the leadership team in your organization, it’s important to remember that your team will look to you to be able to respond fast and take advantage of opportunities.
A successful brand voice is both relevant AND documented.
In this course, we'll look at how to do both.
TO DO:
- Research to see if some of the brands you outlined have a publicly available style guide. You might be surprised how many do.
- Look through some of the style guides that David Airey has compiled.
- Why do you think these organizations have taken the time to document their brand voice and corporate style? What are the benefits? What would happen if they didn't have this document?
Create a Style Guide for Your Brand Voice
Now, it's time to take all of the fantastic information you've developed and put it into one cohesive document. Use this template to get started. (Note that this is Word document and when you click on the link it will automatically prompt you to save it.)
Be sure to update the fonts and colors to match your branding and include images where it helps you to make your point more clear.
Here is the format the template follows:
Purpose and Overview
Why are you using this? Why is it important to your organization?
Brand Story
Think of this like an “about us” section, but a little more intimate.
Mission & Vision
Be sure they are very clear and keep them front and center.
Audience
Why buy from your brand? Include your personas and images here, as well as demographic, psychographic, and archetype information.
Brand Personalities
The 6 character traits you outlined including the foundational content. Use photos here too.
Word Springboard
Use the words from your character profile and find additional words in a thesaurus that are similar. This is a one-page document to hang next to each team members’ desk to help them consistently use your brand voice across all communications.
Writing Techniques
Mention the reference guides your writers should use (AP, Chicago style, etc.). Include plain language documentation.
Bringing your Personality to Life
What writing traits are you expecting? Include links to resources - blog articles or books as examples.
Tone Wheel
For each section of the tone wheel include documentation, images, screen shots. Write out examples for each are on your tone wheel using the good, better, best technique.
Brand House Style
Be specific about how writing should appear. For example, making sure that subjects and verbs agree, using a consistent verb tense, specific how to use commas, etc.
TO DO:
- Compile the document into one high quality PDF.
- Print it out and have at least one copy in color.
- Compress it using Small PDF and share the digital version with your team!
Training Your Team
Train Your Staff
Now that you have your style guide ready to go, it's time to share it with your team.
Here are some tips for presenting your new style guide.
- Encourage discussion in your sessions to keep people engaged.
- Break down the style guide into several modules and present the style guide over the course of several weeks. This helps to prevent information overload!
- Avoid using examples that single people out. You don’t want anyone to feel that the style guide was created in response to a mistake they personally made.
- Get peers to give each other feedback in using the new style guide.
Conduct Brand Audits
Well, here we are at the end of the course. You have a style guide ready to go and your team is trained.
Now, it's time to keep the momentum going by conducting ongoing audits of your brand.
TO DO:
Set a recurring monthly meeting on your calendar to review recent communications. Discuss the results with your team and keep your brand personality alive!
Congratulations! You did it! Thanks for participating in this class! If you have any questions or comments, feel free to reach out:
Best of luck!
To your success,
Andrea
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