Creating a Unique Brand Voice: The Essentials Part 2

Four must-have best practices to really pull your unique and memorable brand voice together.

Before I go on, you might want to check out the four pillars that go into building a unique and memorable brand voice which I covered in Part 1 of this series. You’ll get a foundation onto which you can layer the best practices that follow below.  If you’ve already read through Part 1, then you might already have some ideas about how to work these next concepts into your brand voice!

So what makes an impactful brand voice that sticks? Here’s the first part in my two-part breakdown of the must-have essentials of a brand voice which (once you have them on lock) can be polished into your own unique and memorable brand voice.

Adaptability

In Part 1, we looked at flow mindset. Depending on what’s in your communications flow, your brand voice will have to adapt to fit the channel. A brand voice that either doesn’t adapt to a channel, or is so flat that there’s no room for it to tailor itself to a channel or audience means missed opportunities in speaking more directly to these people and their problems, concerns, desires, and dreams.

What’s more, a brand voice and identity that can adapt to different channels and platforms without losing its essence is more likely to be memorable. Ensure that your brand voice is flexible enough to accommodate various mediums and contexts while hanging on to its unique core qualities.

Emoitional connection

Imagine a brand that communicated without emotion. “Just the facts, ma’am.” It would feel much like a cold, slippery surface that we—as the human audience—would have a hard time grabbing onto and learning to love. Would you trust it? Would you feel understood? Probably not. Emotional connection is fundamental to how a brand communicates.

It doesn’t need to be epic, sweeping emotion, either. In fact, turning the volume on emotion way too high for a product or service that doesn’t need it might even chip away at your credibility. When wielded correctly—and on top of a solid sense of branding self—emotional connection creates an extremely sticky, and uniquely memorable brand communications experience.

The key here is to keep your audience in mind. As mentioned in Part 1, when talking about the audience’s viewport into your content, you should try to keep in mind the emotional mindset of your audience when they engage with any one piece of content. What constitutes a top-of-funnel emotional connection isn’t the same as the connection you find at the bottom. Hopefully, by that time they’ve gone on a little journey with you, you’ve told them a story or two, and you’ve started building a relationship.

Brands that evoke emotions and resonate with their audience's values, needs, and desires are more likely to be remembered. In line with adaptability, craft your brand voice and communications identity to appeal to the key emotional notes of your target audience.

The brand identity in this photo is so blurry because they haven’t used these best practices. For real, though.
(Photo by Patrik Michalicka on Unsplash)

Clarity

Clear and concise communication is vital for a memorable brand voice and identity. Let’s not, however, confuse “clear” and “concise” with “simple” and “short”. In fact, too simple or too short could make things more confusing and opaque.

This ties back to adaptability. Make sure that your messaging can be easily understood as possible by your target audience on the first pass. This means on all levels: grammar, logic, and appropriate terminology. Ask any UX writer whose job it is to poke holes in even the most straightforward-seeming of text: If it’s not clear on the first read and there’s room for questions on meaning, then you’ve already lost both the credibility and cognitive friction games.

Consistency

It might be instinctual to interpret “consistency” to mean keeping to the same narrow band of phrasing, taglines, and wordings. Wrong. While that might be in line with the dictionary definition of the word, the reality is that consistency in brand communications is far more complex.

In fact, buying into the “narrow-band approach” (as I like to call it) could be one of the single most damaging mindset to your brand communications. This doesn’t mean abandoning uniformity and standards—but it does mean asking yourself what it means for your brand on any one channel. What’s the most basic common denominator or set of characteristics about the way your brand communicates to your audience?

Whether it’s voice and tone, or styling—make sure that’s clearly executed on every channel. How does it look in product communications versus an editorial campaign yet still feel part of the same whole? That's where real, lasting consistency that sticks with your audience happens.

Now what?

By incorporating these elements, and those in Part 1 into your brand voice and nonvisual brand identity, you can create a unique and memorable experience for your target audience—leading to increased brand recognition, loyalty, and engagement. Standing out from the crowd doesn’t happen by reducing your brand voice down to the path of least resistance; it happens by forging your own vocabulary of experience and belonging with intention every step of the way!