Introduction
We’ve defined a brand voice and outlined strategies you might use to refine yours. On the surface, these strategies seem straightforward. It’s a great place to start, but this well runs deep. For instance, you might benefit from taking after other established brands. Still, finding brands that exemplify the best practice for building a brand voice can be an uphill task. All you see is the proverbial tip of that iceberg.
Having a brand voice represents how your business approaches its operations. In many ways, it foreshadows the customer experiences your target audience expects from you. The success of your voice depends on many different factors. In this article, we look at a few examples of well-defined brand voices, dive into the strategies you can use to measure your brand voice effectiveness, and discuss how analyzing your competitors’ voices can inform yours.
Examples of Brand Voice
Leadership and learning are indispensable to each other. As such, taking time to see how other brands have curated, developed, and stepped into their respective brand voices is a great place to start.
Old Spice: Power, Absurdity, and Wit
This brand is a male grooming company that specializes in deodorants, shampoos, and body washes, among other products. The company’s brand voice embodies the philosophy,
“It’s not what you said; it’s how you said it.”
Television commercials from the company exaggerate the concept of hypermasculinity. Whether it is the Terry Crews series, where Power is the defining attribute that Old Spice products offer their consumers, or the older Isaiah Mustafa commercials where he talks to ladies but only to highlight how much better he is as a man than their spouses, the company’s brand voice is consistent: You will be a better man after using Old Spice products.
From a marketing perspective, it is the brand your brand wishes it could be. Unafraid to stir the political correctness pot, but skilled enough to winnow out all the controversy. The message is clear, humorous, and memorable.
Tiffany & Co.: Class, Elegance
High-end Jewelry organizations like Tiffany & Co. have curated a brand voice that communicates the expected consumer experience for prospective customers. A look at any one of its official social media pages highlights the company’s tagline,
‘Expertly crafting jewelry for the world’s greatest love stories since 1837.’
This statement further communicates the regal stature of Tiffany & Co. Such approaches to creating one’s voice cement a picture in the audience’s minds. Although the company’s Tiffany Blue is its most recognizable brand asset, its Blue Book series is a more accurate display of its brand voice. Every summer, Tiffany & Co. releases a catalog of its latest flagship products, often in line with a predetermined theme.
#The Blue Book has been a company staple since 1845 and is an invaluable part of the company’s legacy and brand voice. The 2023 edition opens, ‘Legendary Tiffany & Co. designer Jean Schlumberger looked to the sea for inspiration, choreographing unparalleled manifestations of its majesty and mystery.’ An homage to one of the greats and a pledge of excellence.
Nike: Confidence, Action, & Ambition
The phrase,
‘Just Do It!’
best captures what Nike stands for: the motivation to do something worthwhile, the audacity to pursue one’s ambitions, and the importance of discipline when pursuing your dreams. These are ideals that resonate with the company’s target market - athletes.
Unsurprisingly, notions of discipline, assertiveness, and confidence also resonate with non-athletes. While Nike’s apparel products have traditionally been designed for athletes, the public has co-opted the brand, making its products highly sought after in the open market. What’s more, Nike knows this.
This tweet clearly indicates how the company leverages its brand voice to target athletes and non-athletes. Nostalgia, culture, and passion in 82 seconds. It’s the type of commercial that will make you want more.
How to Use Analytics to Measure the Effectiveness of Your Brand Voice
Now that we know what leaders are doing, how do we gauge our brand voice effectiveness? The effectiveness of one’s brand voice is an important metric that should inform how to improve or which elements to focus on within a marketing campaign. Companies must look at the attribution their brand gains every time they post on social media, send a newsletter, or publish an article on their blog. Information gained from these avenues indicates how well your brand voice is being received in the market and its influence in converting impressions, views, and interactions to subscriptions or sales. While these KPIs indicate your copy's overall performance, they do not accurately display the effectiveness of your brand voice.
For that, you might want to consider the following brand voice elements:
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Brand Voice Alignment
This is the primary KPI all brands should focus on, especially when developing their brand voice. Brand voice alignment ensures the company’s core values permeate throughout the company’s copy, social media channels, and brand identity. Most organizations have mission and vision statements and core values that underlie their brand voice and alignment.
Each copy or content the company produces displays its values, a restatement of its mission, and a nod to its vision. Successful brands know this and ensure their voice does not falter across all platforms. The game is consistency; how you present yourself across multiple platforms should restate what your brand stands for across all channels. - 📌
Share of Voice
Your share of voice (SOV) is a marker of how dominant your brand voice is within your industry compared to other brands. Your brand visibility compared to others within the same space, its influence and authority, and campaign effectiveness are all measures that speak to your share of voice. A brand’s SOV indicates the sway it holds among its target audience and, by extension, the effectiveness of your communication.
Marketers can calculate their SOVs based on their media impressions or spending. Of these two methods, using media impressions is probably the more prevalent approach to figuring out one’s SOV. Looking at the percentage of your total impressions over the impressions of your industry paints a clear picture of how much authority and thought leadership you garner in the open market.
The ubiquity of the internet has made this approach relatively accessible and timely. However, smaller brands may use media spending as the preferred approach. The media spending approach calculates your brand's advertising spending for your target audience as a percentage of the total marketing spending. - 📌
Time to Publish
How frequently you publish content via various platforms is a great indicator of the internal efficiency of your branding. The procedures your content team follows when researching, curating, drafting, editing, and publishing content via any platform should match the pace of today’s changing market. How quick you are to turn research and actionable insights into content directly affects the relevance and authority of your brand in the market. As such, it is better to shorten the time to publish without compromising the quality of your content. - 📌
Cost of Publishing
Publishing content should invite your target consumers to subscribe to your social media pages or platforms and motivate them to subscribe to your product or service. The point of having a brand is being able to monetize your expertise. This means the value for money spent must be apparent.
Having a clear understanding of how much it costs to build your brand voice versus the complimentary benefits of growing an audience,having a clear brand voice, and cementing your brand’s authority in your industry highlights the effectiveness of your brand voice.
Analyzing Your Competitor’s Voice to Stand Out from the Crowd. It's crucial to establishing brand awareness and benchmarking how other players within your industry move. You must consider several metrics to analyze your competitor’s brand voice. At the top of this list are:
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Reviewing Brand Messaging
Messaging is key when looking at your competitors’ brand voice. How are they publishing? Where are they publishing? What is the tone of their posts? What points are they emphasizing? You want to answer these questions as you look at your competitor’s content. Be thorough when you are analyzing their messaging. Make it a point to gloss over their social media, websites, marketing campaigns, and any complimentary communications they relay. - 📌
Understanding the Target Audience
Once you understand their messaging, you must research to whom it is directed. Any brand's target audience directly influences how it curates their brand voice. Ideally, dominant brands will have lots of interactions on their blogs and social media posts. These interactions tell how your competitor’s messaging resonates with their target audience. You learn what works and what does not. You might also learn which pitfalls to avoid or how to rebuild relationships with your target audience by watching how some competitors navigate setbacks or branding blunders. - 📌
Observing Social Media Presence
Today’s marketing heavily relies on social media. Billions of people log on to various social media platforms every day to consume content, and your competitors are among the content creators. Brands today do more than market their products or services; some chime in on social issues, while others employ influencers to endorse their products as they entertain. The ground is consistently shifting, and keeping a close eye on which strategies your competitors employ on social media gives you insight into how they manage consumer interactions. Content optimization techniques and areas to avoid. - 📌
Analyzing Brand Personality
Two brands within the same industry may choose to take on completely different personalities and dominate regardless. Personality traits like authority, wit, and satire will improve audiences' reactions to your brand. However, nailing your intent is necessary when curating your brand’s personality. Ensuring your intentions are both pure and apparent to your audience will go a long way to ensure your brand voice blooms without a hint of controversy.
Clarity and consistency should be your mantra as you build your brand voice. The idea is to make what you say recognizable and memorable to your audience. It takes some time and experimenting, but the reward lasts forever.