How to align your tone of voice with your brand values

A while back, we talked about brand values. Those guiding lights in your business that help steer you in the right direction.

Some companies keep their brand values as an internal document, using them to shape behaviours, culture and teams within the business. Others share their values with the world. For many, it’s enough to just pop them on some dark corner of their website, to be dug up by marketing students and copywriters. Or brand strategists writing blog posts or developing workshops. Others, the companies who are the most explicit with their values, use them as a selling point, explaining in detail how their values benefit the customer. (See our old friends at Patagonia.)

But aside from slapping your values on your website or the side of your packaging, there is another way to demonstrate them. And that’s in the way you act and how you speak as a brand.

Talk the talk

Let’s say you make vegan convenience food, like gobble box. They list just two values on their page: ‘Taste good, do good’ and ‘Convenience, not compromise’. They live their values by making ready meals that taste good and are plant-based. They embody their values in their voice with their short, light, positive copy that doesn’t labour the point.

“Watch out! There’s a new set of meals in town; proper vegan food has landed. We’re talking delicious, hearty meals that most wouldn’t even realise are vegan. At gobble box, we‘re tantalising the vegan curious with damn good food, done in style – setting the new standard for plant-based eating and putting taste first.”

(I’d switch out the indirect references to customers to speak to them directly: “that you won’t even realise are vegan”. But that’s being nitpicky.)

Because if your customers don’t have time to cook their own vegan bang bang noodles, they also don’t have the time to waste on long and laboured copy.

Pragmatic through and through

I worked with a software company recently. Their big thing is pragmatism: solving their customers’ problems and just generally getting shit done. So it made sense to write copy that’s clear, concise and peppered with carefully chosen facts and data. Because you can tell someone you’re pragmatic until you’re blue in the face, but if they can see it in the way you communicate, they’re more likely to believe you.

There’s one final example I want to share. Our lady and saint, Nigella Lawson. Nigella doesn’t have public brand values (I’m guessing because she doesn’t want us to think of her as a brand but as our friend down the road who’s a great cook) but we can guess from what we know about her that they might be something along the lines of:

Indulgence: Never say no to double cream.

Practicality: We love a time-saving hack because it means the eating part comes quicker.

Fun: An evening without friends sipping cocktails round the kitchen table is an evening misspent.

Inclusivity (sorry, this one’s a bit buzzwordy): Everyone and anyone can cook, with no ludicrous ingredients, confusing instructions or expensive equipment to stand in their way.  

And where do we see this last one come to life in the smallest but most thoughtful way? At the bottom of every single Instagram caption. She (or the social media bod who handles her account) doesn’t just chuck #LinkinBio down there, she writes: “To get the recipe, click on link in bio. Most of you may know what I mean by ‘click on link in bio’, so just skip this bit, but for those who don’t, let me explain:” And she goes on to explain. It shows such awareness of her audience, of who she is and of her brand values, and it makes me smile every time.

So, thanks Nigella, for all that you do.

Align your brand values, behaviours and voice

• Grab your notepad and draw a table with four columns. In the first column, list the benefits of your product or service. Is it convenient? Affordable? How does it make your customers’ lives better?

• In the next column, list your values. It doesn’t matter if they’re not perfectly polished, just jot down the things that really matter to you.

• In the third column, link those values to the way you act as a business. What are the behaviours that make you who you are? For example, if you value creativity, you could write about the way you package up your deliveries with ribbon and dried flowers. Or if you value flexibility, you could explain how you help your clients adapt to changing business needs.

• The final column is for your tone of voice. Think of ways you could write or speak that would become an extension of your values and behaviours. Maybe it’s about the words you use, how formal or informal you are, the way you describe things.

Want to chat tone of voice for your business? I offer a range of different packages for different business sizes and needs. Get in touch and let’s have a chat.