Most of the time, your tone of voice is hidden away on page 87 of your brand guidelines.
Well, nobody gets to page 87.
Your brand tone of voice isn’t about guidelines; it’s about people. And to do it properly, you need to think of it as a behaviour change programme – which is, conveniently, the other string on our bow.
Make it easy
The status-quo bias means we’re more likely to stick with what we know than do something new. So everyone needs the tools to make it easier to write in the new tone than swerve it: templates, briefing forms, your own readability checker and plenty of examples.
Make a splash
Get the new tone on everyone’s radar: rewrite your high-profile pieces and measure the effect; get the most senior person you can find to say it’s the best thing since sliced bread. (It’s the mere-exposure effect: the more we see something, the more we like it.)
Then make it a habit: training sessions, top-up coaching, creative reviews, awards for good writing: your tone of voice is never ‘done’.
Schwa pinned down our tone of voice in a way that’s memorable, and more importantly, really useful. We’re already seeing results: it doesn’t just make our brand stand out, it has real, measurable business benefits.
Vicki Franks, brand director, Sky