• by Alan Siegel , Columnist, June 19, 2018

Sadly, the majority of brand messages fails to achieve the most essential tasks of communications. They lack clarity. They pose conflicting messages. They often don’t even pay lip service to integrated themes.

The digital revolution has raised the din of information exponentially, radically altering the messaging environment by its speed, novelty, and noise. Every marketer must recalibrate their brand voice to find the right pitch, tone and the ideal volume to ensure being heard. This new dynamic has forced organizations to:

• move from one-way communications to a dialogue

• incorporate personalization, flexibility and simplicity

• react with instant responses to rumor, speculation, criticism on the internet

• convert brand communications to expanding digital platforms

• build social responsibility into your brand voice

• with globalization of the internet, pay attention to translating English for multi-national markets

Voice works as brand glue, crystallizing strategies behind identity. A fully developed voice drives all communications to project a distinct personality that reinforces customer interactions. It’s a “red thread” running through every touch-point, beyond advertising and media to embrace reputation and crisis management.

10 Brand Voice Lessons

Marketers should master these lessons to build a coherent brand voice.

1. A clear, precise statement defining your identity is the foundation for a sustainable voice that will focus all communications.

2. Define the overarching purpose— the reason for being in business — to replace cumbersome, generic mission statements.

3. Leverage the intellectual power of the organization — don’t ask customers what they want to create on your brand platform. Take an inside out approach. Shake things up - get storytellers, investigative reporters, artists and poets to participate in brainstorming sessions.

4. Authenticity is critical. Being seen as a corporation with a conscience is paramount. People want organizations to live up to values and own up to mistakes.

5. Every business must expect the unexpected. Today, anyone can inflict lasting damage on a brand within seconds. Businesses must have an organizational voice program in place with digital experts empowered to quickly respond.

6. Audiences are no longer passive. Organizations must support meaningful conversations.

7. Sharpen your master narrative to incorporate stories that create emotional connections, which are more effective than rational arguments.

8. To truly connect with audiences, a brand must humanize, personalize and bring clarity, the ultimate sophistication, to its voice. 

9. Virtually all organizations with a distinctive voice program have a dynamic, visionary leaders who are unwilling to compromise core values, which encourages employees to live the brand voice.

10. Just as we are coming to grips with how to extend our digital voices, AI is creating a voice-centered world where virtual assistants will become the preferred communication. People tell them to get information on goods and services, revolutionizing consumer interact with the marketplace.

Today we must focus on migrating brand voice to new platforms, while maintaining the essence of the brand. This requires an entirely new way of dealing with communications. The future poses many challenges but brand voice backed by brand purpose shall prevail.