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BRAND TONE OF VOICE
How does a brand put its values into a writing style? It defines its own tone of voice. Once you have identified what your brand stands for, and understood its personality, you can use language to represent it. In any one language, we all pick from the same words but we can still sound very different. It’s a bit like composers using the same instruments of the orchestra to create different moods.
The idea One way to tell that an e-mail scam is a fake is to check the language. One claiming to be from the tax office turned up in my inbox recently announcing “You have a tax refund!!!” The UK Revenue Office is unlikely to use one exclamation mark, let alone three. An instant giveaway. In recent years, large companies who write regularly to their customers have realised that their letters were being ignored because they were formed of long, impersonal sentences, industry jargon and pompous language. Instead of treating customers like people, they were just sending out the same old standard letters written for their own convenience not with the reader in mind. Analysing their language to find gaps between the way they want to sound the customers and the way they have been coming across, helps organisations to develop new ways of writing which represents their brand values.
174 • 100 GREAT BRANDING IDEAS
100 Great Branding Ideas 14dec.indd 174
12/14/11 11:14 AM