Changing the tone

Any writer worth their salt knows every company's tone of voice without having to read any of the guidelines. Its basis is copywriting 101; show, don't tell, lead with the benefit, use colloquial language, blah, blah, bleuuurgh. How about thinking outside of the talkie-box?

My chief responsibility as Digital Content Manager is the brand tone of voice. I entered a heritage company with a very formal, authoritative and dull tone. Due to evolving customer behaviour, it became obvious the company had to adapt or die.

I started by ingraining the basic writing and content guidance and governance. Training editors in the aforementioned in order to break away from the boring, monotoned norm of editorial.

Once I had that established across the organisation, I knew we needed something to appeal to our strategic target segment (a far cry from the current demographic) and differentiate us from competitors and the perceived industry. Quite a mountain to climb, for an organisation whose content strategy was in its relative infancy. However, I have a few tricks up my sleeve.

This is something that's tried and tested tone of voice documents. It's normally translated as 'how would say this to your mate down the pub'. It's easy to write content in everyday language, change required to need, acquired to get and there are thousands to there's thousands. But how about writing in the language customers or prospects associate with you.

I recently organised for myself a couple of my best copywriters to listen in to real customer phone calls. It was interesting for two main reasons:

1. What customers called in about - this helps prioritise and fill in content gaps, so people are getting the info that they need.
2. How customer talk to us - there were wonderful little quirks, like using the phonetic alphabet and onomatopoeia to make content energetic, empathetic and explicit.

As I like to call it, but for everyone else, it's behavioural economics. It's applying the rules of psychology to copy not only to boost conversion, but also stops your brand sounding like a dick in all its communications.

There is so much marketing noise, everywhere. You can't watch a music video on YouTube without someone trying to sell you tampons, you can't pick up a magazine without being told you're not good enough unless you buy stuff you can't afford and you can't nose on your friends on Facebook without being asked about your excess belly fat.

To add insult to this cacophony of injury, big brands are tax dodging, exploitative, polluters and media is a lazy, dumb-downed, unethical mouthpiece for the great unwashed. This means, as a commercial copywriter, you need to work a lot harder to build credibility, relevance and be front of mind for people.

The solution is simple and just needs a bit of science:

1. System 1 - this is the emotional part of the brain (the amygdala) that also houses memories (hippocampus). This is the part of the brain that will justify anything, so long as it triggers a positive emotion or memory.
2. System 2 - the is the rational part of the brain that doesn't develop until you're a teenager. This finds the hard-sell and numbers as lies. 

If you appeal to system 1 (giving your readers a warm fuzzy feeling) and then serve up a huge dollop of system 2, you've lost your reader. So all your comms need to trigger an emotion, whether it be your lifestyle, what's important to you or aspirations.

This is why content marketing is an stoppable juggernaut. It appeals to ordinary folk, as it talks about their lives and boost their digital persona. And indirectly builds relevance for your products.

I've talked about speaking a customer's language, but who are your customers? Is your customer base reflective of society and the market? Once you know who they are and profiled their likes and dislikes, read and follow their brands - especially the ones you want to align yourself with.

Then emulate what they're doing. Get used to what they sound like by immersing yourself in their communications. Then use that as inspiration to craft your tone of voice.

Okay, I'm not saying put apostrophes where it's clearly plural. Or put the 'have' after the words 'could/should/would/can'. But don't be a grammar Nazi either.

Writer and editors are completely different breeds of people. If one person could do both well, then editors would be out of a job and writers wouldn't be producing masterpieces.

The reason for it is that editors love rules. And writers are creative. As copywriters don't have the luxury of the publishing process and long production schedules. So go easy on grammar because it isn't how people speak, innit.

This is probably the most crucial, while being the most difficult to achieve.

In an institutionalised industry, big corporations and layers of management, the key to good tone of voice is innovation. Whether you're innovating in terms of the process, governance or creativity. It's essential, you don't let the grass grow under your feet - the market moves so quickly, and people are fickle. Don't be left behind by thinking you've ticked a box.

Governance will keep your standards high and your content evergreen, but innovation will boost your conversion, increase market share and build brand awareness. So keep testing, keep growing and keep thinking big.