Tone of voice (TOV) refers to the consistent style and manner in which a brand communicates with its audience.
It is essentially the personality of the brand, encompassing the words, language, and overall feel of its messaging.
A well-defined tone of voice helps create a unique brand identity, builds consistency across all marketing efforts, and grows a connection with the target audience.
Some aspects of Tone of Voice in marketing include:
Brand personality
The TOV embodies the brand’s personality, always projecting its values, goals, and overall style.
Consistency
A consistent TOV means that all marketing materials, be it website copy, press releases and social media, all follow the same brand identity.
Audience connection
By choosing and sticking with a particular TOV, marketers can have a personalised language and style that connects with their target audience, building trust and credentials.
Standing out from competitors
A well-thought out TOV helps a brand to stand out from the crowd, which can in turn create a memorable and engaging experience for the audience.
A good guide for content creation
A clear TOV shows individuality for the brand – which in turn creates a clear roadmap for the business to create loads of different types of content, ensuring that all comms are in line with the brand’s personality!
The Way With Words (who we love) has mentioned their favourite brands for TOV:
This is what they say about some of their favourites:
The RNLI
The Royal National Lifeboat Institution is a British charity that saves lives at sea. They have a great set of tone of voice guidelines specifically aimes at reaching younger audiences.
Monzo
Monzo is a neobank based in the UK. In the past few years they’ve done an incredible job at building a passionate userbase with the aim of shaking up the traditional banking industry.
Audi
German car manufacturer Audi has a comprehensive set of tone of voice guidelines as part of their much bigger brand identity hub. It includes several samples for how to write and NOT write like Audi!
Skype
The worldwide communications tool has one of the best brand books we’ve seen with all things tone of voice, starting on Page 26…
Learn about Tone of Voice and more at marketingSHOWCASE. Our next event is on 20th May in Edinburgh. Get your FREE tickets here
