Remember the brands you loved as a kid? They likely had a personality that leapt off the packaging or TV screen. Tony the Tiger's infectious enthusiasm for Frosties. The Jolly Green Giant, towering over sweet peas but feeling like your best friend. Brand characters that drew you in not just through taste or price but emotional connection.
As leaders driving modern brands, when's the last time you channelled that lively character creation? In today's crowded marketplace, products and services are easily replicated. From features to functions, what one company offers, another can swiftly match or outpace. But there lies one powerful, yet often overlooked differentiator that cannot be copied: a company's unique brand voice and personality.
More than a stylish logo or catchy slogan, a brand's voice and personality set the tone for every customer interaction. It establishes the human essence of a company in a distinct way that fosters affinity and loyalty. For C-suite leaders shaping high-level strategy, understanding the untapped potential of crafting and scaling a resonant brand voice is essential.
Brand voice refers to the style and tone a brand uses to communicate across channels. It encompasses word choice, language patterns, humour, emotion, and dialogue style - essentially the written expression of a brand identity. Complementing voice is brand personality: the human traits and values associated with a brand. Combining voice and personality creates a holistic experience that allows customers to form meaningful connections with a company.
In today's sea of sameness, it's tough to stand out--unless you flaunt what makes you fabulously different. I'm talking about your brand character! See, your competition can copy features and functions all day long. But your brand's soul - its personality - now that makes you one-of-a-kind.
When you develop a distinctive brand voice and nurture those quirks, baby, you shine. Customers take serious notice and come to stan your brand hard. This is about achieving crazy devotion, not just moving units! But here's the tea: so many brands half-ass their character work. They see it as a marketing thing, all surface-level fluff. Grizzly bear yawns. How basic.
To truly unlock the power of character, you've got to weave it through your culture and make it part of your brand's innermost DNA. When done right, your brand character becomes your north star, guiding everything you do.
And that leads to,
Logos and taglines alone don't form relationships with people. But your brand's personality does! When you express it through an authentic voice, you forge a soul connection. Look at beloved brands out there - MailChimp and their hilarious weirdness or Apple's badass visionary voice. People flock to brands that radiate a character they identify with.
But most leadership teams don't utilize this jackpot enough to connect with customers. Sure, they'll optimize tech and data and channels out the wazoo. But they ignore the power of brand character as the glue binding it all together. Such a missed opportunity! Character and voice should be as essential in your strategy as any metrics dashboard.
To elevate voice as a C-level priority requires reframing it as an organizational asset essential for growth, on par with financial or technological capital. Consider these perspectives for achieving voice integration:
1. Voice Raises Brand Equity
A brand's equity encompasses impressions, perceptions, and emotional connections shaped cumulatively over time. The dominant C-suite metric - ROI - fails to capture this expansive definition. Refreshingly, brand voice offers a conduit for driving equity by speaking to customers' hearts as much as wallets.
2. Voice as a Feedback Mechanism
While C-suites relish real-time sales data, they rarely leverage voice as an equally potent feedback mechanism. How customers engage with messaging offers a rich behavioural data stream. Do they mimic your wit on social media? Share video taglines? Voice analysis reveals resonance.
3. Voice Drives Culture and Cohesion
Typically viewed as a marketing tool, voice profoundly shapes internal culture, too. When employees across functions align around shared voice principles, it builds camaraderie and sparks creativity.
Southwest Airlines attributes much of its resilient culture to its voice guiding behaviors. From onboard humour to empathy during service failures, Southwest's teams internalize brand voice as a north star for navigating decisions. This facilitates agility while strengthening cultural bonds.
4. Voice as Recruitment Magnetism
For recruiters, conveying the company voice fast-tracks hiring by revealing culture fit. By headlining job ads with authentic brand voice, companies immediately resonate with candidates sharing their values.
Too few leadership teams recognize the talent acquisition power of voice - particularly alluring for in-demand Millennials and Gen Z. But authentic, well-articulated voice attracts top candidates more effectively than generic descriptions of roles or perks.
Transitioning from voice trivialization to voice integration requires planning. Successful execution involves structured guidance around objectives, guidelines, processes, and audits.
Below is a blueprint C-suite executives can adopt when aiming to elevate voice within their organizations:
Establish a Voice Vision Statement: Justify the strategic role of voice through a formal vision statement endorsed by leadership. This document should center voice as pivotal for differentiation and growth.
Create a Voice Guidelines Charter: This comprehensive document codifies all elements of your brand voice - personality attributes, tone, language style, expression methods, and visual identity - into definitive guidance. It becomes the reference bible for your organization when applying voice cohesively.
Conduct a Voice Audit: Methodically audit current brand communications against the desired voice outlined in the guidelines charter. Audit all external and internal touchpoints across websites, ad campaigns, product packaging, and social media. Plan regular re-audits to address deviations.
Implement Voice Analytics: Adopt sophisticated tools to capture customer verbal cues - vocabulary mimicked, word associations, and tone interpretations. Linguistic analysis reveals how audiences cognitively and emotionally respond to brand voice, highlighting needed adaptations.
Build a Voice Committee: Establish an interdisciplinary team supporting company-wide voice integration, from audit fixes to training. Consider naming C-suite sponsors to reinforce senior stakeholder investment.
Make Voice Part of Everyone's Role: Empower all staff to be voice stewards by incorporating expectations into job frameworks. Adjust hiring practices to assess for voice fit. Offer ongoing voice skills coaching to nurture adoption. Soon, voice principles will intuitively guide decision-making company wide.
Brand voice and personality form the core of how a company expresses its humanity. By following the blueprint above to integrate voice strategically, rather than treat it merely as a slogan, leaders can unlock voice's formidable potential to attract customers, spark employee innovation and propel growth.
Beyond the logo, a brand's distinct voice—conveyed across all channels through emotion and vulnerability—ultimately creates indelible connections in people's hearts and minds over commodity competitors. Voice differentiation and resonance drive today's economy. Global C-suites that tap into this force will future-proof their relevance and secure their leadership.
