Brand Tone of Voice: How to Define Yours & Stay Consistent
More of an auditory learner? Listen to this post instead in less than 10 minutes ⬇️
What is a brand tone of voice, and how is it different from a brand voice? If you’re reading this, chances are you own a small business. Or you struggle to write how you sound and are stuck in the writing style you learned in school. Or you need guidelines to help you — and anyone you hire in the future — sound on-brand and consistent every time you communicate.
Maybe you’re dealing with all three!
If so, then you’re in the same boat that a lot of small business owners are in — not knowing your brand tone of voice, or how to stick to it.
Well prepare to jump ship, because those days are about to end.
In this post, I’m going to walk you through:
- The difference between your brand voice and brand tone of voice
- Why having one matters
- 9 brand voice types
- Examples of some of the most distinct and iconic brand voices of today
- How to define your brand voice + a free guide to help you do just that
Grab your highlighter, because you’re going to want annotate the SH*T out of this ⬇️
What is a brand voice?
Your brand voice is how you verbally represent your brand’s personality and imagery, and should always be constant. For example, a yoga brand like Lululemon would have a light and playful brand voice to match its personality, values, and imagery. Similarly, activewear brand Set Active has a playful, effortless, and aspirational brand voice.
Brand voice vs. tone
Your brand tone of voice is the emotions and mood you verbally communicate, which can change depending on what you’re talking about and where — but still keeping the brand voice clear. For example, the yoga brand would be more serious in a sponsorship deck than in an Instagram post. Or, if you looked at Set Active’s Instagram, you’d see they lean into the aspirational and effortless tone of voice whereas their TikTok page is a lot more playful, personable, and unguarded.
Why does having a brand voice matter?
A distinct and consistent brand voice can:
- Make you more recognizable and help you stand out
- Allow you to attract more of the right target audience, and create strong authentic relationships with them
- Make you more money in the long run
You want it to be true to your brand personality, but also resonate with your target audience. Depending on the life they lead, they’ll respond to voices in different ways, so keep this in mind as you define your brand voice! Even if you’re more serious and formal, you don’t want to be too off-putting if you find your target audience is primarily Gen Z, who prefer a more informal and casual tone of voice.
If you don’t know what would resonate with your audience, you can ask them in a quick poll on social media, or a dedicated consumer survey!
9 brand voice examples
The great thing about a brand voice is that you can create a new one that’s entirely unique to you, as long as it is an accurate verbal depiction of your visual identity.
Some brand voice examples you can use as a starting point are:
- Eternal Optimist: optimistic tone, short cadence, advanced vocabulary
- Anti-Establishment: snarky tone, short-medium cadence, advanced vocabulary
- Translator: empathetic tone, short cadence, basic vocabulary
- Parent: cautionary/empathetic tone, average vocabulary, short-medium cadence
- Friend at the Bar: casual tone, basic vocabulary, medium cadence
- Underdog: humble tone, medium-long cadence, medium vocabulary
- Learning as we Go: tentative/curious tone, basic vocabulary, long cadence
- Voice of God: serious tone, long cadence, advanced vocabulary
- Yogi: introspective tone, long cadence, medium vocabulary
But don’t be afraid to get creative!
For a lot of my clients I tend to create unique brand voices like a Sage Guide, a Translating Underdog, an Optimistic Trailblazer… you get the gist.
So have fun molding these identifiers like Playdoh until you land on your brand voice that’s unique and iconic.
3 popular brands, and their brand voices
Set Active
As mentioned ⬆️ up there ⬆️, Set Active’s brand voice is like they’re your Friend at the Bar. Their top tones of voice are casual, playful, and aspirational.
How do we know this? Their cadence is often always short, their vocabulary is basic, they lean into emojis and short-hand speak on social media, they always address the reader as “you” to make it more personable, and they use creative techniques like alliteration to make their copy cooler.
Beyond just their copy, their brand tone of voice is a reflection of their brand personality that you can feel in their content, the influencers they collaborate with, and their visual identity!
Source: Set Active TikTok, Set Active Instagram, Set Active Website
Poppi
This prebiotic soda brand is a mix of two brand voices — a Friend at the Bar and an Underdog — because while they have a casual tone, they’re also humble. They’re always thanking their audience, and sharing how grateful they are for their continued support. They have a medium cadence and use basic-to-medium vocabulary, and their top tones of voice are animated, appreciative, conversational, and enthusiastic.
This is totally in line with their visuals — just look at their website, it’s giving Y2k-girly pop-nostalgic-fun-vibes ALL THE WAY.
Source: Poppi Instagram, Poppi Website
Tonic Site Shop
If you’ve never heard of this website + content marketing template provider, you are IN FOR A TREAT! Not only are their products aMAHzing, but their brand voice is clearly defined: they’re a Translator, with a little bit of Anti-Establishment mixed in! They’re GREAT at putting design industry terms, information, and news into our own words so that we understand it.
They empathize with what their target audience (entrepreneurs) are going through — easy to customize templates that look great and make THEM look great. But they’re not overly emotional about it — they tell it like it is, and add some sass when it’s necessary (read: fun as HECK).
They have a short-medium cadence, use basic vocabulary, and their top tones of voice are candid, conversational, informational, and witty.
Source: Tonic Site Shop Instagram
Source: Tonic Site Shop Website
How do you define your brand voice (and stay consistent)?
Too long, don’t wanna read?
1) Identify your tones of voice.
2) Identify your cadence
3) Identify your vocabulary level
4) Develop a brand dictionary
5) Define your brand voice
6) Create brand voice guidelines
Okay, this is the part you’re going to want to highlight. You ready?
1) Identify your tones of voice
Go through all the copy you’ve ever written — I’m talking social captions, emails, web copy, all that jazz — and see if you can identify any commonalities in the tone. You should also ask the people close in your life (friends, family, business besties) what they think you sound like!
Are you optimistic? Snarky? Empathetic? Casual? Curious? Serious?
This will change depending on where you’re speaking, and what you’re talking about, but finding repeating tones of voice are a good first start to determining your brand voice.
2) Identify your cadence
Do you tend to speak succinctly, drone on for a while, or are you somewhere in the middle? The cadence of your communications will help determine your brand voice, and will also rely on who you’re talking to. You could use a longer cadence with an audience of professors, but you’d keep it short for an audience of college students.
3) Identify your vocabulary level
Again, depending on who you’re talking to, you don’t want to be speaking too eloquently that it goes right over their head or, vice versa, they feel like you’re babying them.
Go through some of that post copy and put it into a tool like Hemingway Editor. Is at 6th grade reading level (which is basic vocabulary), 7th grade, 8th grade (both medium vocabulary), or 9th grade and higher (advanced vocabulary)?
4) Develop a brand dictionary
There’s a lot of noise in the world, and a lot of competing brands vying for your target audience’s attention just like you. But having a collection of words and phrases that are unique to your brand will help you stand out, establish consistency, and even spark brand recognition in the long run.
Some words & phrases in my brand dictionary are:
- Big up yuhself
- Energy
- PERIODT
But for my client who was about to launch an online program, and uses a lot of grounded language compared to her competitors, her brand dictionary reflected that:
(These are just a few pulled from her brand dictionary)
5) Define your brand voice
Refer to the 9 brand voice types above and pick the one (or two) that best suits your brand based on the tones of voice you’ve identified.
6) Create brand voice guidelines
This is the key to staying consistent. Having a defined brand voice means nothing if you keep going off the rails. So, once you identify your tones of voice, write down the dos and don’ts for that tone of voice.
That could be:
- Speak in active voice, not passive voice
- Use basic vocabulary people use everyday
- Have a short-medium cadence
- Use the You Rule always
- Address [brand name] as “us” or “we” to personalize communciations
- Capitalize on voice of customer, testimonials, case studies, and success stories
Whatever will help you sound the same, make sure to establish hand-to-bible guidelines.
About that freebie I mentioned…
If you made it all the way down here, I know that you give a damn about how your brand communicates and making sure you stay consistent. But the how? That might be a little tricky — don’t worry, I gotchu.
My Brand Voice Guidelines Workbook comes with:
- 48 tones of voice to choose from
- Scratchpad space to identify your cadence, vocabulary level, and the words & phrases that should be in your brand dictionary
- Writing style guidelines for every tone of voice in this resource
- 9 brand voice types to choose from
- A concise Canva brand voice guide deck template you can customize for your business
This freebie will help you identify your brand voice and stick to it — BONUS: you’ll be too legit to quit with that deck of guidelines holding you down.
I used this very freebie for my client to have hand-to-bible guidelines when talking about her program ⬇️
Other small business owners are saying it’s “too good to be free”, that they “love, love, love it”, and “DAMN.”
If they invoked Kendrick Lamar, you KNOW it’s good.
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