For Sportspark, The Click took the two initial letters ‘SP’ as the starting point both for the client’s new logo and a range of adverts and posters using single words beginning with ‘sp’ (e.g. ‘sparkling’ for swimming, ‘spontaneous’ for ‘pay and play’ facilities and so on). You can the concepts deployed to great effect on Sportspark’s home page.

Exterior signage at Sportspark, based on branding by The Click

Although The Click weren’t engaged to consider Sportspark’s tone of voice (as far as I know), their work still projects a very distinct feel. Using the three-value framework I proposed in my post on defining a brand’s tone of voice, we might sum up Sportspark’s projected character as ‘easy’, ‘healthy’ and ‘fun’.

The new brand and tone are reinforced as you enter the building, with a shiny silver sign outside the entrance (right). Inside, promotional posters (presumably produced by The Click) use the same design style as the outdoor and press advertising. However, things change once you get nearer to the ‘business end’ of the facility.

Visual tone

Consider this noticeboard on the way into the swimming pool – a high-traffic area that has clearly been identified as the best place to communicate in writing with users of the pool.

Customer information posters inside Sportspark. (Click to view full-size)

The contrast with the corporate brand could hardly be greater. Visually, everything is different: print format, image style, typography, colour choice. The Click’s branding is still faintly present in the form of the ‘SP’ logo (highlighted with two light circles in the image), but the general impression is that of a completely different ‘character’. (I’m not saying that one is better or more effective than the other; just that they’re different.)

Verbal tone

Tonally, we’re in a very different place too. Consider this notice:

Lost Property

Due to the overwhelming volume storage and security of lost property all items will only be kept for 7 days

All enquiries are to be made in person at Reception asking for Jane or Christine
Monday – Friday between the hours of 8.30 a.m. and 5.00 p.m.

FOR HYGIENE REASONS SOME ITEMS WILL BE DISPOSED OF IMMEDIATELY

Whereas the marketing collateral is simple, elegant and breezy, the personality projected here is officious, brusque and rather peevish. Rather than aiming to help or serve customers, its main preoccupation is the problems that its authors have to deal with (‘overwhelming volume’). It also uses the passive voice (‘All enquiries are to be made…’), which puts distance between writer, reader and message.

To bring it into line with The Click’s visual style, it might be rewritten as:

Lost something?

To reclaim lost property, just ask at the front desk for Jane or Christine between 8.30am and 5pm, Monday to Friday.

Please note that we get a lot of lost property, so we can only keep things for a week. Some items have to be thrown away immediately, for hygiene reasons.

A solvable problem

In technical terms, inconsistent tone is an eminently solvable problem. Word can use any font and, within its limitations, can do a reasonable imitation of most clean and simple layouts created with QuarkXPress or InDesign. With a good template set up, it should be quicker and easier to produce a nice corporate-looking notice than create a self-designed one from scratch.

In terms of language, it shouldn’t take that much longer to think of a friendly word instead of an ‘official’ one. It’s an effort, admittedly, but one that gets easier with time and practice.

In most cases, however, inconsistent tone isn’t the result of a lack of technical know-how. The real problem is cultural. (And I should emphasise that I’m talking about organisations in general here, not Sportspark in particular, of which I have no inside knowledge.)

Why does it happen?

Inconsistent tone arises when different messages are created independently by different people within an organisation, with no shared policy on tone of voice. Usually this happens because no one is responsible for tone of voice throughout the organisation, and/or because some people don’t see it as an issue.

Two departments that are very likely to be on different pages when it comes to tone are marketing and admin. These two groups are often distant in terms of organisational hierarchy, professional worldview and working culture. Marketing are responsible for getting new customers through advertising and brand-building; admin are responsible for ‘oiling the wheels’ by creating and applying internal processes.

Under pressure, both departments are likely to  lapse into defensive bunker mentalities: a resentful mindset of ‘nobody understands us’. (In smaller organisations, marketing and admin may be handled by the same people, or even the same person, which can actually be a plus.)

Most of the time, this separation isn’t a problem. The marketers get on with winning creative awards, and the administrators make the trains run on time. But if admin people are customer-facing, then tone of voice becomes a shared issue.

Shaping customer experience

Marketing and admin both deal with customers, but at different stages in their experience. Marketing bring in new customers, encouraging them to begin the buying cycle; admin deal with ‘processing’ people who’ve already made a decision to buy.

Taking a different tone at post-purchase stages of the customer experience, albeit unintentionally or unconsciously, sends a message – and not just the message carried in the words. For example, if the tone of ‘existing customer’ communications is unwelcoming, customers may infer that the organisation only cares about them until they buy, or that the tone adopted in marketing communications is a put-on. Writing in ‘officialese’ is a defensive reflex that puts up barriers between author and reader – and readers will sense that, even if only unconsciously.

If customer experiences were isolated, linear narratives, inconsistent tone would be less of an issue. As long as people buy, who cares what they feel after the sale?

Unfortunately, many experiences end with a decision on whether or not to repurchase (should I replace this product, or renew this service?). And bought experiences aren’t isolated; they mingle with others’ via the sharing of opinions and recommendations – a process that’s now turbocharged by social media. In some sectors, the way customers feel after they buy could have far more impact than above-the-line marketing.

Ultimately, brands are what people think about them. If we’re serious about building a brand, we have to take every interaction into account – not just the ones that are easy or fun to manage.

Chalk circles

It’s a real problem, but it’s so subtle and intractable that most organisations either don’t know about it or choose to ignore it. As with other issues that affect two or more departments at once, there’s very little appetite for broaching the subject. More often than not, marketing and admin resort to drawing a chalk circle around their responsibilities, focusing on core tasks just so they can get things done.

Administrators deal with the nitty-gritty of sorting things out at the sharp end, fiercely defending their right to use the tactics that they feel are most effective – such as making notices with clipart, or creating their own email signature. And because they are so focused on short-term efficiency and local problem-solving, they tend not to look at ‘big picture’ outcomes like customer experience. (To be fair, they’re rarely invited or expected to.)

Marketers, meanwhile, collaborate with outside agencies in tightly bounded, outward-facing branding projects that don’t involve their colleagues in other departments – reducing scope to increase control. Often, their ultimate nightmare will be the obligation to gather and act on feedback on their carefully considered campaign from people in other departments who couldn’t care less about marketing (perhaps even despise it). Very rarely will they take on the Herculean task of getting their colleagues to act and speak on brand. They may talk about brand and tone, but when it comes down to it, their focus is very much on the low-hanging fruit of sexy ad campaigns rather than grasping the nettle of tone across the organisation.

Don’t go there

Could copywriters and agencies do more about this? Should we be raising these issues with our clients? We probably should, but on the whole we tend to decide that we simply won’t go there, for the sake of a quiet life. We’re just as guilty as our clients of drawing chalk circles around the tasks we’d like to do.

As copywriter Tim Rich notes in this post, those who offer ‘tone of voice’ services are rarely offering to help with the spadework of imposing a consistent tone. And who can blame them? Even the finest tone guidelines, backed up by the most incisive training, probably won’t sort out the tangle of internal politics. Why take on a problem that you won’t be allowed to solve?

We have to be realistic about costs, too. I’m not sure how many companies would pay a copywriter to write their lost-property notice, or even help its admin people learn how to write in a particular tone. (Although, as I hope I’ve shown, a case can certainly be made for it.) With limited resource, it’s only natural to focus on the communications that make the biggest splash – even if they’re not necessarily the most important ones for customers.

And that’s why tone of voice is so often the icing on the cake, rather than the words that go right through the rock.

What is funk?

There are lots of definitions of ‘funky’, from musical to olfactory. In copywriting, our definition is probably something like ‘stylish and modern in an unconventional way’ or ‘not quite right; offbeat, unconventional or eccentric’. Funky copywriting takes an unexpected or unusual tone in relation to whatever the reader expects.

In most cases, this means adopting a register that is less formal than expected in the context, featuring one or more of the following:

• a warm, chatty tone of voice, like friends use with each other
• contractions – ‘we’re’, ‘don’t’, etc
• colloquialisms – e.g. ‘till the cows come home’, ‘give it a try’
• grammatical imprecision – sentence fragments, words missed out, misconjugations etc
• any other tropes, idioms or styles used in everyday speech rather than written language
• youthful usage – words and phrases that would be used by young people, or even children, including slang (‘chillax’, ‘sick’, ‘pwned’, ‘wibbly’, etc etc)
• light-heartedness, jokes and frivolity, often even when talking about ‘serious’ things (such as product specifications, origins of ingredients, legal matters etc)
• self-referential or metatextual devices that break down the fourth wall, foregrounding the nature, format or medium of the marketing communication itself (see Is meta copy better copy?)
• a fair amount of content that serves only to reinforce the tone, as opposed to serving one of the usual practical purposes of copywriting (informing the reader, communicating benefits, asking for the sale etc).

A funky tone is likely to be reinforced by the style and format in which it’s presented. In print or online, you might see rounded or handwriting fonts, text at an angle, rounded corners, bright colours and so on. In broadcast media, you’d expect to hear the words being spoken by Ruth Getz rather than Tim Piggott-Smith.

Funky vs informal

Some might say that the points above are just a definition of an informal tone of voice. In my mind, the distinction between informal and funky is the level of familiarity with the reader that is assumed.

Copy can be informal while still preserving a certain distance or respect – indeed, that’s the sort of tone I usually recommend for B2B clients. A good B2B website is friendly and engaging, but never forgets why the visitor is there. It’s the textual equivalent of the shirt without a tie, or talking across the corner of the table – friendly, collegial and collaborative, but still businesslike and focused.

In contrast, funky copy gives you a cheeky nudge and wants to be best friends forever. It’s definitely ‘off duty’ and up for a good time.

Gettin’ bad ain’t always good

When is it right to get funky? From one point of view, it’s easy to see how copywriters might regard funky text as a panacea. After all, we all want to get closer to the audience, right?

Well, if that were always the result, every ad would read like a teenager’s Facebook page. But getting too funky on the reader’s ass in the wrong context can be disorientating, perplexing or even irritating. Inappropriate funk can fatally damage rapport, rather than reinforcing it – imagine a funeral-home director who wears Adidas and you can see why.

With that in mind, let’s look at five different UK brands’ forays into funk and assess their success. Can I count it off like I did at the top, fellas?

Quavers

Quavers are cheese-flavoured potato snacks, a bit like Wotsits (Cheetos in the US). Actually, they’ve always struck me as being Wotsits’ poor relation, but there you go.

The package copy is a classic slice of funky writing:

Curly little things, Quavers, and no two are the same. Some twistier. Some that wrap around your tongue. But they’re all crunchy and melty, and pleasingly cheesy. So go on pop one in your mouth…

I’m not sure I could improve on that – or as JB might put it, ‘the way I like it is the way it is’. In style terms, it ticks all the boxes: sentence fragments (‘some twistier’), contractions (‘they’re’), colloquial language (‘pop’, ‘cheesy’) and very little practical point (it’s selling you the product, but you’ve probably already bought it by the time you read the packet).

In fact, it’s this last point that really lets this copy sing. Just as classic funk celebrates funk itself, so the best funky copy doesn’t overburden itself with meaning. All this copy does is evoke the sensual experience of eating Quavers in a light-hearted, melodious way that appeals both to the young and to the young in spirit. Walkers’ agency really tore the roof off the sucka.

Interactive Investor

From the sublime to the infuriating with Interactive Investor, which offers online share dealing and financial information. As a regular visitor I’ve had plenty of chances to see II’s error message, which reads as follows:

Oooops Requested Page Unavailable
Oooops, something’s not quite right but rest assured we’re working on it right now. Please try again in a minute.

The funky elements are the ‘Oooops’, the colloquial ‘not quite right’/’in a minute’ and the contraction ‘we’re’.

I think it’s fair to say that you should not fool about with your reader when they’ve got an irritating problem that’s not their fault. Interactive Investor is a serious site, used by serious investors with serious sums at stake. One reason for trying to log in to it might be the urgent need to close your ill-advised £100-per-point spread-bet long on Connaught before Isaac and Jemima’s school fees go up in smoke. In such a situation, the last thing visitors want to see is a cheeky, not to say facetious message written in haste by an immature web developer (as the mixture of informality and Apache-server-speak suggests). It’s completely at odds with the tone of the rest of the II site, it contains a blatant lie (are they really working on it ‘right now’ at the second the message is generated?) and obviously I think it’s a terrible mistake.

First Direct

First Direct was a trailblazer in the UK retail banking sector, offering the first ‘no branches’ phone-and-internet banking service (hence its name). From the outset, it’s signalled its difference from other banks through its informal tone of voice. (Ten years on, all the banks do the same thing, all the time – a particularly tiresome approach after they’ve shattered the economy by gambling our savings on CDOs.)

Sometimes the First Direct approach is cool, and sometimes it’s not. Here’s the legal notification at the base of each page on the First Direct website:

Because we want to make sure we’re doing a good job, we may monitor or record our calls. We hope you don’t mind.

Note the use of contractions to signal informality. However, there are no easy synonyms for ‘monitor’ or ‘record’, so these words have to stay in, which is a bit jarring.

‘We hope you don’t mind’ is a bit disingenuous. It’s illegal to record someone on the phone without their knowledge or permission, but if you ask your bank to stop recording during the call you’ll probably get short shrift (I tried it with BT once and quickly got passed on to a manager). So this rather coy sentence is covering up a much harsher underlying reality.

Overall, I’m not sure how successful, appropriate or indeed necessary it is to phrase this particular text in this way. Although First Direct’s tone is generally successful, it might have considered dropping or modifying it here.

Innocent Drinks

Innocent is a classic case of informal brand positioning and tone of voice. Taking the cue from the brand name, everything screams faux-naïf, childlike, wide-eyed innocence. It’s an instantly recognisable tone that forms a core part of the Innocent brand. It’s also easily parodied, as this amusing post demonstrates.

Innocent aren’t messing about. The tone has even been extended to its website’s meta descriptions, so that when you Google the brand you get a message right there in the search results:

Hello, we make lovely natural fruit drinks like pure fruit smoothies and fresh yoghurt thickies. Everything we produce tastes good and does you good.

It’s a brilliant idea, brilliantly executed. Before you even click, you’re feeling the Innocent brand and also have a good sense of the product range and its USPs. The ‘hello’ is a nice touch acknowledging that the reader is probably encountering the brand for the first time. In marketing terms, Innocent has done all it can to make this ‘moment of truth’ an enjoyable experience.

Click through to the website and you’ll find a cutesy tagline (‘little tasty drinks’), navigation links that jiggle up and down excitedly and plenty of all-lower-case text set in Futura Round (which used to be Mothercare’s font and is also used by Early Learning Centre) to connote childhood and learning. Tonewise, we’re tasting plenty of funk flavas – contractions, colloquialisms (a ‘bunch of veg pots’ is mentioned at the time of writing) and youthful usage (‘healthy stuff’).

Head over to the ‘things we make’ page and you’ll find the tone has been expertly extended to describe the product range:

Thickies: Live probiotic yoghurt, real fruit and honey all mixed up to make you feel wonderful.

Smoothies for kids: Just like our grown up smoothies, but with recipes specially selected for small people.

Technique-wise, I can’t fault this – it’s tight, concise, vivid. How successful it is all depends on whether you buy into it. If you find this tone engaging and different, you’re going to love being on the Innocent site. If you’ve come to find nutrition information for your allergy-ridden child or find out what Innocent are like to work for, it might grate a little bit.

But in fact, formality fans can still find tons to enjoy at Innocent. Because the tone actually devolves quite dramatically once you get away from the home page, whether intentionally or not. For example, this blog post almost completely abandons Innocent’s brand values, not to mention GCSE standards of English:

So what is GI exactely? [sic]
It’s a scale that ranks food on the effect they [sic] have on blood sugar levels. The scale runs from 0 to 100 and glucose is used as the reference and has a GI of 100. The effect that other foods have are [sic] compared to this. So the GI of a food tells us whether it raises blood glucose levels a little, moderately or alot [sic].

Since I’m talking tone, I won’t take Innocent to task for all the grammar and spelling howlers, embarrassing though they are, or criticise the shonky phrasing, or observe that defining the acronym ‘GI’ might have been a good idea. No. My point here is how quickly the tone has changed – in just two clicks from the home page. Now, Innocent might argue that this is deliberate, since the ‘serious stuff’ can’t easily be covered using their ‘selling’ tone. I think it’s probably more to do with the cost involved in getting a copywriter (or, indeed, a proofreader) to edit every blog post before it goes online.

We’d all like to think that readers will focus first on the parts of our website that we like the best, or where we’ve spent most time and effort. In our minds, we see them methodically working through our top-level pages one by one, just as we planned them out. Unfortunately, online, ‘do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law’. People click where they’d like to click, not where you’d like them to click. If you want to deliver a consistent experience, you’ve got to make sure your brand values can be felt in every corner of the site. Your blog posts – which could easily be landing pages, after all – should sell as hard as your home page. And if you want to make it funky, you’d better take it right on to the bridge.

Little Me Organics

Little Me is a range of organic toiletries for small children manufactured by KMI Brands. The following text is from the back of their hair and body wash with dill and organic lavender (you can also read it here):

Lots of mummys [sic] got together to create a range that was carefully selected to be the best for their little ones. Little Me Shhh Sleepy Head uses the safest and most gentle organic essential oils and botanicals to help relax baby for a restful night’s sleep whilst wrapping skin in loving moisture.

I’m too tired to correct the spelling so let’s get straight to the tone. ‘Lots of mummys got together’ is a good start, but then we flop back into the established language of consumer marketing with ‘range’ and ‘carefully selected’. As with Innocent, we need to see the funk maintained.

Now on to the instructions for use:

How to use: Ask Mummy or Daddy to apply a small amount on to their hand or wet cloth and gently massage it on to your wet little body (make sure they don’t get it into your eyes!), then rinse well…

This certainly makes a change from the usual ‘stern pharmacist’ tone we’re used to in this context. However, once again, the tone hasn’t been kept tight. ‘Apply’ should have been ‘squirt’, while ‘a small amount’ could have been ‘a little bit’ (or even ‘an ickle bit’). And ‘massage’ could have been ‘rub’ or ‘rub-a-dub’ without a catastrophic loss of meaning.

The use of the third person ‘ask Mummy or Daddy’ foregrounds one of the uncomfortable truths about funky copywriting – rather than being sincerely aimed at the reader themselves, it’s rather more cynically aimed at a fictitious third party that the reader perhaps identifies with, or aspires to. (Or, worse, that the marketer or copywriter aspires to.) In this case, the reader is invited to project their own bibbly-wibbly language on to the actual end consumer, their child – great if they buy into it, crashingly embarrassing if they don’t.

The same fictitiously funky target audience is used in many other contexts. For example, video games like Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater and the Burnout series are marketed with the ‘extreme’ language of US teenagers, even though many of those buying them are full-grown men with jobs. So we see ridiculously ‘street’ and ‘youth’ language being deployed in a marketing communication that’s actually passing from one 30-something white-collar executive to another.

Finally, here’s the cross-sell punchline from the Little Me package:

Remember, tell your Mummy or Daddy that there are other products in the Little Me Organics range that you can have oodles of fun with.

Once again, we’ve got a slight mismatch between the youthful usage of ‘oodles’ and the marketer-speak of ‘products’ and ‘range’ – although, being charitable, this contrast could have been what they were aiming for. For me, though, the Little Me copy demonstrates the importance of keeping your funky tone of voice consistent in the passages where you’ve decided to use it – and, as a corollary, not striking a tone that you can’t sustain.

Lack of confidence

A while ago, I tweeted this: ‘I’m sure a lot of funky copy gets approved because people are afraid of looking boring’. Fellow copywriter Richard Hollins responded that ‘With a few exceptions, funky language indicates a lack of confidence in your message’. I’m sure he’s right.

Such a lack of confidence can be either emotional and rational. Emotional lack of confidence often results from plain old boredom – you’ve done so many ads or leaflets in the same vein, year after year, that you feel you simply must shake things up a bit. But it’s crucial to remember that new readers are always coming to your brand and your message afresh. If they don’t get the facts, benefits and brand tone that have traditionally led people to buy from you, your marketing is not going to deliver growth. On top of that, your new tone might not please your existing fans. Change your tone of voice by all means, but do it because customers’ tastes have evolved – not because you feel like a change.

Rational lack of confidence in the message – that is, you know it’s weak – means either that the message hasn’t been defined or refined enough, or that the underlying value proposition won’t cut it. Either way, a funky tone of voice ain’t gonna fix what’s broken. Go back to the drawing board until you’ve got a message that doesn’t need bells and whistles on it to be convincing.

Is it time to get funky?

If it’s inappropriate, or done ineptly, funky copy can easily come across like an uncle breakdancing at a wedding – eager to please but ultimately insincere and rather pathetic. And the impact on the communication is disastrous – not only do you fail to connect with your imagined ‘funky’ readership, but you alienate the dull-but-viable readers you should have targeted in the first place.

So before you decide to funk up your copy, the key questions to consider are:

• Who are we talking to?
• What tone would they expect in this situation? Are we departing from the expected tone?
• Is our chosen tone more likely to appeal to them, and prompt them to take the actions we want?
• How do we know they’ll like our tone in this particular context? Are we making assumptions, or projecting our views on to theirs?
• Why are we writing like this? Why is a simple, factual style not appropriate here?
• Does this tone of voice enhance my message, or detract from it?
• Are we sure we’d lose the audience if we lost the funk?

I’m not saying that dropping the funk is never appropriate. Just be sure that it does something for the core of the copy, as well as its surface, before you get on the good foot.

ABC Copywriting delivers professional, premium-quality business writing services to corporations and organisations throughout the UK. We’re a cheerful lot and we’re always chuffed to chinwag, so if you want to chat about your project, grab the rap-rod and give us a tinkle. With ten years’ experience of developing content for clients of all types, we are ideally placed to meet your copywriting needs. Our copy’s too bootylicious for ya baby!

The problem here is not quality, but consistency. While any of the ideas here might work in isolation, they are too different in terms of their ‘personality’ to gel. In other words, this text has no single, recognisable tone of voice – and this makes the communication almost totally ineffective.

What is written tone of voice?

Written tone of voice is simply the ‘personality’ of your brand or company as expressed through the written word. Tone of voice governs what you say in writing, and how you say it – the content and style of textual communications, in any setting and in any medium.

Why bother about written tone of voice?

Managing written tone of voice is a key part of achieving a unified character across all your communications, internal and external. Just as it’s desirable to have a consistent look and feel in design terms across stationery, signage, advertising and online marketing, so it’s also worthwhile ensuring that the content of all these media feels like it’s coming from a single source.

If you want your communications to be in harmony, you've got to keep control of the tone

Giving a brand or company a proper ‘voice’ gives an impression of solidity, trustworthiness and honesty; in NLP terms, it makes communication congruent. Conversely, inconsistent tone of voice (or graphic style) gives a dissonant, self-contradictory impression that readers will find discomfiting, even if only on an unconscious level. As in normal life, we find it reassuring when people stay more or less the same over time – if their style of communication changes radically from one day to the next, we might trust them less, or even become concerned for their mental health.

Brand vs company tone of voice

I’m saying ‘brand or company’ as though written tone of voice were the same for both. There are a few important distinctions.

• A company might have several brands, each with its own tone of voice.
• Brand tones of voice might be completely different from other brands belonging to the same company, or from the company’s corporate tone (consider the contrast between a Walt Disney microsite and its corporate content).
• The audiences for brand and corporate content might be utterly different, with no overlap whatsoever – or they might be aimed at the same audience at different times, or in different situations.
• An individual brand’s tone of voice is likely to evolve much more quickly than a corporate tone, perhaps to stay in line with changing customer expectations, while corporate tone of voice is more monolithic, expressing the unchanging values or corporate culture of the organisation.

Defining tone of voice

The easiest way to consider tone of voice is in terms of the personality of your brand or company. If it was a person, what would they be like?

To keep things simple, three values is probably enough. More than that risks duplicating values, or obsessing over minor details. Three broad-brush statements of personality should be plenty to pin down the essence of a brand. Here are some examples:

If you want to liven things up a bit, you could try asking what type of car your brand would be, or what type of biscuit, or whatever. But beware of being led astray by your chosen metaphor. Inanimate objects only have the personality we project on them; this type of thinking can take you into a hall of mirrors where you’re just playing with ideas, not talking in terms of business reality. Human values are the key to strong marketing.

The problem with B2B

The last example in the table above illustrates the problem for many B2B companies: finding values that are genuinely unique. While knowledge is a key attribute of a good IT support provider, in another way it’s just the least one would expect. What differentiates one provider from another is the depth and nature of the knowledge and its application. But that kind of nitty-gritty detail doesn’t translate very well to broad-brush statements – it’s the same problem I documented in my article on writing a company tagline. The values listed above could just as easily apply to any other IT support provider – or indeed, any professional support firm of any type whatsoever. And this results in broadly similar tones of voice across the B2B sector.

To wriggle out of this straitjacket, some B2B firms pretend to have values that they actually don’t. This leads to self-consciously friendly or funky text, probably embellished with bright orange graphics and rounded corners. Personally, I think this is a mistake, as I blogged in my piece entitled Let’s be honest. Believable brand values and tone of voice can’t be a work of fiction. Your tone of voice should be consistent with reality, as well as with itself. It’s far easier to stick to a tone of voice if it’s in harmony with they way you habitually write or speak. So if your IT support company is bluff, masculine and ‘all business’, make that your tone. Some people will want a partner like that, so focus on converting your most promising prospects. If you put on a mask, people will see through it soon enough anyway.

From values to style

Armed with your three values, you can consider how they translate into the nuts and bolts of hands-on writing: register, vocabulary and grammar.

Defining the register of your writing is often a case of choosing a point on a continuum. For example, you might need to decide where your tone of voice sits between these extremes:

Vocabulary is simply the choice of words, and you might want to stipulate what type of words can and can’t be used within your tone of voice. However, we’re now moving into a complex, highly subjective realm where the definitions of terms can be slippery. Let’s say, for example, that your law firm is only going to use ‘formal’ language, or that your cellar bar is going to use ‘funky’ wording. Are you sure that everyone will understand what those words actually mean? Is your idea of ‘funky’ the same as theirs? Examples are one way to get over this problem, but it could still be an issue.

Copywriters are often told to make their writing more simple or accessible (I am, anyway), but there’s always a price to pay. Long words may sound stuffy, but they are very precise. For example, there are no genuine one-syllable synonyms for words such as ‘altruistic’ or ‘intuitive’. If you want to get rid of them, you’ll have to rephrase at length or lose some meaning. Conversely, if you use the most precise language you possibly can, some sense of friendliness or ‘looseness’ will be lost. It’s a trade-off either way.

In terms of grammar, you might want to consider whether to use contractions (‘we’re’, ‘it’s’ and so on), avoid long sentences or allow some rules to be broken (such as sentences beginning with ‘and’). Here, it’s just a question of how far you want to go, and what is useful to the people doing the actual writing. (There’s no point talking about gerunds or dependent clauses if people don’t know what they are.) Here’s a post I wrote about grammar rules it’s OK to break. 

You might also want your writing to be original or arresting. While that seems a laudable aim at first sight, it won’t necessarily guarantee that your communications succeed. Originality isn’t necessarily effective. Readers over 50, for example, may be accustomed to finding certain content in a certain format or style; deviating from that norm probably won’t bring you any benefit. Instead, your aim should be to express yourself as well as possible within the communication conventions of your sector, like a film director working within a genre. For more on this, see my piece If clichés work, use them.

Variation in tone of voice

Written tone of voice is rarely the same in every situation. Just as people might speak differently to their colleagues than they do to their children, so brands need to have different verbal registers. Some of the dimensions of variation are:

• Mood. Although the underlying ‘character’ of the brand might change, it can still have different moods. For example, a series of letters designed to guide the customer of a double-glazing firm from initial introduction through to purchasing might make the transition from a bright, breezy tone through to a more serious, studious and detail-oriented feel as the relationship develops.
• Medium. Different media require different ways of speaking. The most obvious example at the moment is social media, which is generally agreed to require a different tone from other online channels or offline marketing. For more on this, see my guide to online tone of voice for business.
• Audience. Your brand might need to talk to different people. For example, a website selling children’s shoes might include content aimed at the children themselves, and other content aimed at their parents. If the users and purchasers of a product aren’t the same person, you might have to consider how you’ll talk to each group.

Keep it simple

Personally, I don’t think there’s any need to overbrain written tone of voice. Content consultants who want to play the fairy godmother might tell you that you need a huge manual on how to write in every situation – rather like the expensive ‘brand guideline’ documents that design agencies love to create. Unfortunately, tone of voice guidelines will not compensate for lack of writing ability or common sense, just as brand design guidelines do not turn the average Microsoft Word user into Peter Saville. People with a tin ear for language will not be saved by rules and regulations, because writing is an art as much as a science.

As the saying says, rules are for the observance of the foolish and the instruction of the wise. Those who ‘get it’ don’t need loads of detail, while those who don’t will be left none the wiser by it anyway. A one-page summary of your brand values, along with an explanation of how they translate into writing style, will be a huge step forward if you’ve never considered tone of voice before.

Oh, and one final thought: if you decide that you simply must publish a humungous style guide, do make sure it’s not embarrassingly full of mistakes…

A breath of fresh air – brought to you by Alpen…
We know you know this is just another promotion on the back of your bag of cereal, so we’re not going to pretend it’s anything else.
It’s simply a chance to win great prizes…

This is what we might call a metanarrative: a story about a story, or a text whose subject is itself. Instead of promotional text talking about the benefits of the product, or the prizes you can win, the first paragraph here talks about the promotion itself.

That metatextual Alpen bag in full

I find metatexts fascinating, partly because I enjoyed studying them as a literature undergrad many years ago. But do they really work as marketing copy? Let’s unpack the pros and cons of this particular example.

On the plus side:

• It’s unusual. Metacopy is very rare, and this in itself generates interest. Not many cereal packets are written like Borges, Beckett or Baker. And this is, as the Alpen packet observes, a breath of fresh air.
• It’s exciting. In a world where corporate- or consumer-speak stands in for real human communication, honesty has a frisson of risk. So there’s a certain excitement to seeing metanarrative actually being used. You’re thinking, ‘Did they really say that?’
• It can build rapport. In metanarrative, the authorial voice shrugs off its bonds, breaking through the boundaries of the text to address the reader directly. This can generate a sense of one-on-one interaction, of talking to a real human. In a marketing context, this could build trust and a sense of identification.

And on the downside:

• It’s thin. By which I mean that there isn’t a lot of meaning there. The two main ‘takeaways’ from the Alpen copy above are ‘You’re clever’ and ‘We’re not lying’. While that’s an unusual message, it’s arguably not a very compelling one. The reader might well respond, ‘So what?’
• It’s egotistical. There’s always benefit in flattering the reader, but in this example most of the credit is being given to the advertiser themselves, for being so honest about their promotion. And that’s a turn-off.
• It’s weak. When you get to the second paragraph in the Alpen example, you discover that behind the pretence, it really is just the same as other competition promotions – which is exactly what the first paragraph said, but it’s still disappointing somehow. All that difference ended up as just more sameness.
• It’s still marketing. Post-structuralism succeeded structuralism when it became clear that there could be no fixed point ‘outside’ the text from which to determine its ‘real’ or ultimate meaning. In other words, a book about books is still a book. A literary critic is still a writer. ‘Freedom’ from narrative, like moral certainty, is an illusion and all meaning is ultimately relative – or endlessly deferred, as Derrida postulated. In the present context, that means that ‘honest’ marketing messages are still marketing, because the medium is the message. Any text included on a cereal packet – even a Zen koan – is intrinsically commercial; this is a place where we expect (and get) material transaction, not friendship or truth.
• It’s cynical. Following on from that point, marketers should always, always remember that people aren’t stupid. They’re not going to buy into your message just because you said it in an unusual way. To expect them to is profoundly cynical and manipulative, so don’t kid yourself. (The only exception is if you manage to generate a positive emotional response, as opposed to a wry intellectual smirk.) Perhaps there’s greater honesty in selling with genre and cliché – giving the readers what they want, know or expect – than putting on a pose of originality for purely self-centred reasons.

On the whole, I think the cons outweigh the pros. And yet, I think there are circumstances when metacopywriting can work. Predictably, they’re the times when the metanarrative can allude to some benefit for the reader, or a problem of theirs that could be solved.

This example is taken from Ian Moore’s excellent book Does Your Marketing Sell? It was used to promote a new insurance product introduced by Royal & Sun Alliance to brokers, who sell insurance on its behalf. At the time it was used, insurance brokers were having to put up with fluctuating service levels from insurers, as a result of internal upheaval following big structural changes in the insurance market. Rather than gloss over that background, it made a virtue of the fact that R&SA wasn’t perfect:

Announcing the launch of yet another household product that’s not quite right for your customers (and seven reasons you should sell it)

The body text went on to appeal to brokers to help R&SA develop and improve the product.

In my opinion, this is a more successful metatext because it engages the emotions, rather than just playing games with meaning. It talks directly to a problem that the readership had. And the body made good on the promise of the headline, using it as the jumping-off point for a set of real benefits, honestly presented and maintaining the metatextual authorial voice established by the headline. Alpen, by contrast, stoked up the fire of expectation with its metanarrative, but threw cold water on it by bookending it with cliché.

So in summary, meta isn’t always better. This most radical of copywriting strategies works best when it’s allied with the two most traditional – focusing on the customer and communicating benefits.

The egotist

The egotist holds forth interminably on his favourite topic, himself. He’s oblivious to the bored sighs of those around him, failing to notice them backing away towards the vol-au-vents.

Marketing moral: focus on the customer, not yourself.

The counsellor

The counsellor is full of unwelcome ‘why don’t you’ advice for everyone she meets – she’s the answer to a question nobody asked. Sadly, her ideas aren’t always that useful.

Marketing moral: expertise is becoming devalued in some fields (notably social media). Cultivating strong personal connections may work better than positioning yourself as an expert.

The geek

It's not a party if there aren't any vol-au-vents

The geek batters you into submission with an enthusiastic but crashingly dull monologue about his phone, computer or other gadget.

Marketing moral: don’t confuse technical features with customer benefits. Unless you’re targeting early adopters or gadget fiends, new technology does not sell itself.

The wiseguy

The wiseguy keeps the jokes coming even if they’re not appreciated, appropriate or even funny.

Marketing moral: humour doesn’t travel well and should be used with great care – are you sure you’ll get the reaction you’re hoping for?

The wallflower

The wallflower stands shyly on the sidelines even though her best friend could be introducing her to plenty of guests if asked.

Marketing moral: proactively cultivate and request referrals and testimonials; join the conversation in social media and see where it takes you.

The skinflint

The skinflint brings Liebfraumilch but drinks Moët.

Marketing moral: reciprocity is everything in modern marketing, particularly social media. You have to give something (of yourself) before you receive.

The butterfly

The butterfly is always looking around the room for someone more interesting to talk to.

Marketing moral: don’t neglect here-and-now customer needs in the quest for new connections or business, however exciting it might feel. It’s far easier to get an order from an existing customer than from a ‘cold’ lead.

The nervous hostess

The nervous hostess flits between conversations, asking everyone if they’re enjoying themselves (and the vol-au-vents).

Marketing moral: don’t over-regulate the social media conversation about your brand or content. Allowing criticism shows strength and confirms authenticity. Allow time and space for others to answer on your behalf; it will be more powerful.

The gatecrasher

The gatecrasher shouldn’t even be here at all but he never misses the chance to party, even if he doesn’t know anyone.

Marketing moral: don’t waste marketing spend on making a big splash when you really need focused exposure. Only relevant attention can be converted to sales.

The chatterbox

The chatterbox just won’t shut up!

Marketing moral: We can’t talk and listen at the same time; make time for learning and sharing as well as pushing out content. No one wants to work with a consultant or service provider who can’t listen.

So much for my list. Can you suggest more?

Personally, I welcome it. At least we know they’re human. What’s the alternative? Everyone loves to flame the failures, but would we really be happier with a smoothly oiled PR machine, trotting out relentlessly positive, shallow responses to critical tweets, like a politician?

Although social media has a diverse user base, there’s a recognisable ‘SM personality’ that seems to predominate: young (or young at heart); generally positive; informal; chirpy (bordering on facetious); marketing and new media literate. When people berate companies for having the ‘wrong’ social media voice, they usually mean that the company in question has taken a tone that’s too far from this norm. But if your firm’s true ‘personality’ doesn’t conform, should you affect a different tone of voice to fit in?

Many firms have struggled to find their voice in social media. Some have rather stiffly adopted it as a purely ‘push’ channel, conducting a monologue rather than a dialogue. Some, like Habitat, have been hauled over the coals for underhand techniques. And some, like ASOS, are blessed with enough photogenic, web-savvy, Twitter-literate staff to give them all usernames and let them loose (see @ASOS_Amy, @ASOS_Nat and others).

A while ago, I blogged on the topic of honesty in marketing: the idea that by promoting a message that accurately reflects what the organisation is really like, we can be more congruent, more confident and (I believe) more effective in terms of reaching new customers. So why shouldn’t firms’ negative character traits come through in their social media? It may not fit the rigid stereotype of ‘engagement’, but perhaps it’s more honest in the deepest sense.

The phrase was ‘at your fingertips’. Few would dispute its status as a cliché. It appears in Catch-22, which was published in 1961 (‘Lieutenant Scheisskopf had the facts at his finger tips’) and was surely familiar even then. So it’s clocked up a good half-century of use in print. A Google search turns up over 10 million results. By any measure, this is a familiar figure of speech.

I don’t want to rock clichés. But they’re making my readers buy

I was writing about a portable electronic device, so ‘at your fingertips’ had a literal relevance (unlike Joseph Heller’s metaphorical usage). But there’s no doubt that the phrase is what George Orwell called a ‘dying metaphor’ – a worn-out figure of speech that has lost its capacity to add colour to writing. But what could I say instead? Go literal and say ‘within easy reach’ or ‘close at hand’? Or informal with ‘right there where you need it’?

The problem is that none of the alternatives carries quite the same meaning. So I can avoid the cliché, but only by sacrificing clarity. Is that really a trade-off I want to make?

The project I was working on was a B2C landing page selling stylish electronic products as Christmas gifts. Traffic was to be generated with an AdWords campaign. For my money, there were three key perspectives, all relating (naturally) to the audience rather than me or the client.

• Mindset. Once they’re at a landing page, we know the audience is interested, motivated and actively searching for the product. They’re not in ‘socialising’ or ‘surfing’ mode. So there’s no need to ‘interrupt’ them, grab their attention or try to generate interest ex nihilo. They are, in effect, a voluntarily captive audience.
• Profile. People have different levels of literacy and vocabulary. For literate readers, ‘at your fingertips’ is painfully crass. But for others (my target audience), it’s a useful signpost. They don’t read a lot of books. They don’t analyse every ad they see. They’re short of time and buying presents is just ‘one more thing’. I need to inform and persuade, not entertain or intrigue. Trying too hard won’t add value, and could do harm. 
• Resonance. In terms of tone, I’m trying to involve the reader. So I want my words to be warm and welcoming, reassuring them that they’re in the right place. There’s no call for anything edgy, surprising or challenging.

In other words, I believe the cliché was the right choice for the task at hand (or at fingertip).

As copywriters, our aim is not to express ourselves, but to serve the interests of our clients and their customers. We choose the words that bring those two groups together for mutual benefit. Creativity and originality may be appropriate means to that end. But it’s our duty to do what works, regardless of whether we like it ourselves. Copywriters are servants, not artists.

But (you object), surely creativity and originality are worthwhile in themselves? My personal answer is ‘yes’. But that’s because I’m university-educated and aesthetically sensitive (in theory at least). And the idea of ‘worth’ is a value judgement that has nothing to do with what works commercially. If I want to be creative, I should do it on my own time. (That’s one reason why this blog exists.)

Anyway, why do clichés become clichés? Because they’re so useful. Orwell exhorted his fellow journalists to comb through their text for over-familiar idioms and replace them with something newer and fresher. But this misses the point. Clichés endure because they serve a unique purpose. Like favourite cardigans, they get worn out precisely because of their appeal.

To sum up: if a cliché is the right tool for the job, the conscientious copywriter goes right ahead and uses it.

The overarching theme of all these points is to remember what you want to achieve, coupled with what is appropriate and possible within each channel, and shape your tone of voice accordingly.

Your website

• Tone of voice: concise, direct, informational

Your website is your online shop, office or call centre, and should therefore be all business. Information is your key aim, as well as reassuring surfers and searchers that they’ve found what they’re looking for.

Strike a tone that reflects who you are, but don’t let expressing your corporate ‘character’ get in the way of information and/or converting interest to enquiries or sales. Link out to social media presences so people can get more of a sense of who you are, if and when they want to.

Blogs

• Tone of voice: authoritative, knowledgeable, human

Your blog is where you display your smarts. Leverage your industry knowledge to write buyers’ guides, subject overviews, in-depth focus pieces and so on that are relevant to your work. Comment on industry developments too.

Write what you really think and don’t dumb it down too much – you want to come across as authoritative and knowledgeable, and it’s OK if novices don’t get every word. Don’t sell too much, but link to your website when you can. There’s room for humour if you’re sure it will work. Keep titles and headings relevant and, provided you’re on topic, SEO will take care of itself.

Article sites

• Tone of voice: helpful, inclusive, authoritative

Closely related to blogs, article sites are a great way to deploy your industry knowledge in a forum where it’s likely to generate interest, credibility and traffic. (Here’s a useful list of them.)

There is potential repurpose some blog posts as articles. Steer clear of outright self-promotion since many article sites will reject articles that are too ‘marketing’. Instead, try to offer content that genuinely has value for a broad range of readers: how-tos, hints and tips, useful lists, guides and so on.

PR sites

• Tone of voice: impartial, journalistic, factual

At PR sites, you write about your business in the third person, as if you were a journalist, usually focusing on new developments that are ‘newsworthy’.

Your tone needs to be balanced, even when the whole point of the piece is to say how great you are. Obtain quotes (e.g. from clients) to back up what you’re saying, and let them provide the enthusiasm and colour. Seek facts and figures that support your argument too. For example, you could position your latest new product or service as the response to an emerging trend.

LinkedIn

• Tone of voice: urbane, friendly, professional

LinkedIn is like an interview. It’s where you paint a picture of yourself as an individual professional. (You can also create corporate profiles.)

At LinkedIn, you’re very much ‘on duty’ – it’s the pinstripe suit of social media – but that’s not to say you can’t be friendly.

Keep the tone relatively formal, but concise – just as if answering interview questions. Keep your profile updated, connect with members of relevant groups and consider what your interests say about you. Answer questions in your area if (and only if) you can add significant value to the questioner.

Twitter

• Tone of voice: topical, immediate, irreverent

Twitter is like a chat around the watercooler. It’s the place to mix the personal and professional, with a strong emphasis on the present moment and humour.

In my opinion, you should Tweet a few interesting third-party links, a few personal links (e.g. to your blog) and a whole lot of personal observations, which can be as quirky, obscure or mysterious as you like. Some people say every Tweet should be relevant – personally, I do enjoy throwaway, impulsive and inconsequential content too, even during work time and from work contacts. But whatever you tweet, keep it clean, friendly and funny.

@EveningNews is a great example of how Twitter tone of voice can differ from the corporate tone (or, as here, the tone of a paper publication). 

Facebook

• Tone of voice: lively and friendly, but measured

Facebook is the SM equivalent of the drink after work.

Professional and personal social circles may overlap, so think carefully about what you post (particularly images). Facebook content is more persistent than Twitter, so you need to think carefully before you post. Without suppressing your personality completely, you might need to consider whether your profile is suitable for everyone who might see it.

Our fundamental belief is that few things in life are more important than the food you buy. Good quality is essential.

One immediate comment is that the second sentence is flabby, redundant and pretty obvious too. If it needs saying at all, it can be rolled into the first sentence (‘…than the quality of the food you buy’). But what I’d really like to focus on is the attitude or stance of the text, and what it can tell us about copywriting.

I do like healthy food as well, honest

Be relevant

Does the average dry-roasted-peanut consumer care that much about quality? I personally doubt it. We’d better give the benefit of the doubt: this text probably appears on every product line. But even if I was reading it on the back of some broccoli, or baby food, do I really care that much about the beliefs of a supermarket? Therefore:

• Write about customer benefits or don’t write at all. Otherwise you’ll just dilute the relevant messages you do have to offer.

Be believable

Who’s talking here? Who does ‘our’ refer to? The company? A company is a legal or financial construct without ‘fundamental beliefs’. Perhaps ‘our’ refers to the people who work there. Are they all together on this point? Do the checkout ladies, the drivers and the shelf-stackers all buy in? When beliefs are so fluid and so personal, can they really be shared?

The truth is that no-one really believes this kind of egotistical, self-centred ‘value statement’, or learns anything from it, or remembers it (apart from grumpy copywriters). It does almost nothing for the reader – and, as a result, for the company too. The key take-away is:

• Don’t stretch credibility. Read it out loud and see how it comes across.

Be respectful

Although ostensibly about ‘our’ beliefs, the copy is just as just about ‘you’, and the importance you attach to your food. There’s an insidiously preachy undertone. ‘Come on now, you can’t really want to eat those Wotsits. Try this couscous instead, it’s divine!’

Too proud to use actual evidence to support its position, it comes across as snooty and patronising, washing over the reader and missing a precious chance to connect with them. My advice is:

• People aren’t stupid. Don’t talk down to them.

The key to having the right copywriting attitude is simple: picture your average reader, put yourself in their position and imagine what they’d want to read. It may be very different from what you want to tell them.