Brand voice refers to a company’s distinctive personality when communicating with consumers. It’s an essential aspect of branding that helps an organization stand out in the crowded business industry.
Your consumer can recognize your brand voice by the point of view, language, words, and feelings that your message provokes. Thus, the brand voice helps consumers understand your company’s core values.
As a business owner, you have many options for picking a brand voice that suits your brand personality. Let’s examine the various types of brand voice to better understand them.
6 Leading Types of Brand Voice
As more innovative products are rising to the top in the industry, the type of brand voice tends to be more advanced than ever. However, most renowned brands apply some essential types of brand voice to distinguish themselves. We explore the different types of brand voices in marketing that most well-known brands implement to cut through the noise. Let’s unwrap.
1-Formal
The formal brand voice tracks a serious and traditional language to communicate with an audience. At the same time, a formal brand voice expresses professionalism, trustworthiness, and expertise. Most of the time, government agencies, law, and finance firms set this professional brand voice to be valued as authority.
2-Conversational
Conversational brand voice is a more direct form of communication with consumers that throws away formality. Generally, a conversational voice tends to have relaxed grammar, contraction, and flexible language—like your daily talk with friends and family. The same is the case with conversational brand voice; the audience feels like they have been called out directly.
3-Humorous
Humorous brand voice is funny, quirky, confident, and unapologetic to captivate the audience. Humor is a complex concept. It’s not easy to make everyone laugh, and what may seem funny to one person may not be hilarious to another. That’s what makes humor’s voice unique and fascinating. Meanwhile, this versatile voice breaks the ice and helps brands connect with consumers. In fact, 90% of people were more likely to recall a brand’s ad often if it sounds funny. There is no doubt left that brands that make customers laugh and build connections sell more.
4-Empathetic
Businesses paint the sympathy of an audience in this type of brand voice. They show their care. At the same time, an empathetic brand voice grasps the thoughts and emotions of the target audience on a deeper level. It requires crafting an intense understanding with an audience on emotional, rational, and transactional levels to build a meaningful relationship. Hence, an empathetic brand voice defines a mutual journey between your brand and consumer.
5-Inspirational
An inspirational brand voice is created to motivate and uplift its audience. It evokes a sense of empowerment in consumers to overcome obstacles and reach new heights. At the same time, the brand inspires its target audience to pursue goals passionately. By all means, this brand voice aligns with genuine and relatable stories while providing authenticity.
6-Bold
A bold brand voice is a unique and confident way to communicate with the audience. This brand voice is distinguished by assertive language and a distinct, memorable tone. Bold brand voices are often associated with innovation and a willingness to question the status quo. Meanwhile, this different brand voice presents new ideas with products or services and makes a bold statement that sets the brand apart from its competitors.
Types of Brand Voice Examples
By analyzing the success stories of real-life companies, you can learn how to craft different types of brand voice that truly captures the essence of your brand. The brand voice examples we discuss below will help you understand it from well-known companies.
1-Nike- inspirational brand voice
Nike is at the top of our minds whenever we think about inspiring and motivating brand voice. Their iconic buzzword, “Just Do It,” is a gem in inspiring brand voice while capturing the company mission to uplift every athlete. Nike is not selling shoes. Instead, they pour belief and inspire consumers to take action.
Meanwhile, Nike consistently implements its inspirational brand voice across all touchpoints. Through this voice, Nike has successfully generated a powerful emotional connection with its audience. It’s clear that Nike genuinely cares about inspiring people to be the best versions of themselves, which is why it has become a household name worldwide.
2-Wendy-humorous brand voice
Wendy is a perfect example of a humorous brand voice. They embraced brand voice through their witty sarcasm and offbeat humor on social media. Their approach has been highly effective in entertaining and engaging customers. Fast food restaurant Wendy’s brand voice connects effortlessly with its vibrant audience, setting it apart from competitors. Wendy’s has a knack for clever jokes and humorous exchanges that have strengthened its brand reputation.
No brand ever roasted a McDonald’s like a Wendy’s, either it’s on McDonald’s broken ice cream machine or questioning them with the catchphrase “Where is the beef? Well, their unique humorous brand voice set them apart from big brands.
3-Dove-empathetic brand voice
The brand voice is empathetic, optimistic, confident, sincere, and supportive toward its target audience. Through its campaign, it reflects and empowers women to accept the way they look. Their brand voice encourages women to enhance their self-esteem and reach their full potential.
Their Real Beauty campaign attracts attention by promoting women’s empowerment and glorifying self-love. The Dove brand’s voice is unique because it supports women of all shapes, ethnicities, and abilities and rejects society’s fake beauty standards. Even Dove doesn’t use professional models to picture real women.
It’s been 20 years since Dove launched its Real Beauty Campaign, and it has remained strong. In its recent advertising ad, Dove said out loud that it would never use AI(Artificial Intelligence) images to represent women in its marketing. Since images created by AI have false beauty standards, they contrast with Dove’s real beauty commitment.
Why Does Brand Voice Matter?
Let’s jump straight to the importance of brand without any ado.
- A brand voice defines your brand’s unique personality and sets you apart from competitors.
- A clear-cut brand voice shapes the brand’s credibility and manifests brand expertise.
- It builds an emotional connection with consumers that they relate to a brand.
- Customers can easily recognize a brand if the voice stays consistent throughout all communication channels.
- Moreover, It creates authenticity that fosters trust and loyalty with customers.
Brand Voice vs Brand Tone
Brand voice reflects your brand personality, aligning with company values and the holy grail. It remains consistent.
On the other hand, brand tone is the way a brand expresses its personality to resonate with the audience. It changes according to the situation when and how you want your brand to speak while addressing your stance.
How to Find Your Brand Voice
1-Identify your potential buyer.
Your brand will dust away if its voice is not aligned with potential buyers. So, to stay on top of the game, first, you must research your consumer to the greatest degree. Drill down your target audience’s personalities, demographics, and needs—to create your brand voice that connects with them.
2-Create your brand voice sample.
Next, carefully evaluate your collected data and pinpoint brand voice examples your competitors may have created. Once you’ve identified them, focus on the data samples that are truly unique to your brand.
Group these examples and print them out to understand your brand voice clearly. This will help you feel confident about representing your brand voice in the best light.
3-Describe your brand voice.
To define your brand voice, follow these steps:
- Discuss common themes and group examples with your team.
- Visualize your brand as a person and describe its traits.
- Analyze your competitor’s brand voice.
- Define your brand’s unique traits in detail, like how passionate, quirky, and authentic your brand is.
- Consider how the voice turns up when you communicate with the audience through your content.
4-Create the brand voice chart.
A brand voice chart is a reference tool that can help illustrate how your brand voice appears in your content. The chart should include primary characteristics with three columns for a brief description, do’s and don’t
You can also add a row for secondary characteristics that require further explanation. This chart can help ensure that your content consistently embodies the same brand voice.
5-Ensure that your team puts the brand voice into action.
To ensure consistency in your content and communications with consumers:
- Create an easy-to-understand chart that defines your voice and tone.
- Walk your team through the chart and provide content examples that align with the defined voice.
- Show them how to revise existing content that doesn’t fit the voice.
- Provide each team member with a copy of the chart for easy reference, and have an electronic version available.
6-Review the brand voice chart.
Don’t forget to update your brand voice chart as your messaging evolves or new competitors enter the market. Meet with your content creators quarterly to identify and remove voice attributes that don’t work well or are too challenging to use. This will help keep your brand voice fresh and effective.
Wrapping Up
Having a bird’s-eye view of the types of brand voice that fit your business and an audience’s needs is crucial. Crafting a clear brand voice tailored to your brand personality can elevate you above and beyond the industry.
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