CorpComms Magazine

Lovers the world over know that there is a marked difference between what people say and the way they express it, but it has taken businesses a while to deduce the same about their relationships with customers.

Unfortunately, there is often a disconnection between the ways companies advertise and brand themselves and the experience of customers when they communicate with them.

However, as branding becomes more sophisticated, this too is now being given attention. The buzz phrase is 'tone of voice' and corporate communication departments and external agencies now take it very seriously.

'Often, tone-of-voice projects are connected with a cultural change programme or a rebranding,' says Rob Ettridge, client services director at brand language consultancy Red Lorry Yellow Lorry.

'A lot of companies concentrate on a new logo or corporate or product branding but, if a brand is to communicate its values well, it has to resonate within an organisation, so we get involved in rolling out a particular style of writing, based on a business's culture and brand values.'

One example is Liverpool Victoria's rebranding as LV= in 2007 to shake off its image as an old-fashioned friendly society.

Part of the puzzle

The new identity rejuvenated LV='s visual brand, increasing its insurance, investments and pension customers by more than one million.

LV= also spent a year working hard on employee behaviours and brand engagement but directors felt that there was a crucial piece of the puzzle missing.

'Whilst our distinctive brand identity and advertising raised consumer expectations,' explains marketing director David Radford, 'we were concerned that not all our supporting literature and fulfilment material adopted an equally distinctive and accessible tone of voice.'

Red Lorry Yellow Lorry analysed and examined the essence, values and behaviours of the new LV= brand and the quality of its communications, collected opinions of key stakeholders and summed up the tone LV= wanted in three words: straight-talking, empathetic and fresh.

Business-wide tone of voice principles and guidelines were then rolled out to 300 people from marketing through to technical and compliance departments, by holding workshops, publishing guidelines in print and on the firm's intranet site and staging individual writing clinics.

Almost 1,950 priority documents, including 1,500 complaint letter templates, were changed, while a tone of voice helpline was set up to offer phone and email support to staff.

LV= also established a tone of voice 'hall of fame' to showcase the old and new methods of communication and chose and trained official 'wordsmiths' to pioneer the new approach.

'Our goal was simple but challenging,' adds Ettridge. 'It was for every piece of LV= communication, no matter where it sits along the customer or employee journey, to sound and look like LV=.

'The outcome has been clearer and more effective communications throughout the customer journey. Research showed that customers viewed LV='s documents as much more engaging, straightforward and easy to understand.

'We're gradually 'tone of voicing' everything that LV= customers and employees see and hear - from signs in the loos to posters in call centres. People are noticing, and they love it.'

Radford agrees. 'We've found that our members and customers respond positively to a more straight-talking, empathetic and fresh style,' he says. 'Too many of our competitors talk down to, or patronise us as customers. At LV=, we're trying to ensure any contact feels like a conversation between equals.'

Tone of voice is a complex subject however, not least because companies, like people, can have dramatically different personalities. Branding and design agency The Workroom, for example, recently created two contrasting tones.

At household goods group Reckitt Benckiser, a new positioning for the company as The Power behind the Powerbrands was deemed to require a clarified tone of voice, refreshed corporate values and visual language based around the themes of power, speed, agility, spirit and drive.

At facilities management business Balfour Beatty WorkPlace, however, the brand expression is We work. You excel and the language needed to reflect the service mentality of the business, as well as making the company stand out within both Balfour Beatty Group and the wider marketplace.

Brigid McMullen, managing director at The Workroom, explains: 'Reckitt Benckiser is a highly competitive fast-moving consumer goods business that does things in double quick time to beat the competition to market, is incentivised to perform, acts with entrepreneurial spirit and takes risks to succeed.

'Balfour Beatty WorkPlace, meanwhile, is essentially a people business, offering services and bespoke solutions to solve facilities management and operational issues. Its approach therefore is considered, thoughtful and sometimes strategic. It's much more about the ability to adapt to customer needs, concerns and personalities. The words we use to describe their tone are; confident, bright, open and committed.'

For many companies, however, understanding and developing their tone of voice is at a comparatively early stage and Stuart Anderson, director of integrated communications agency 85Four, believes that the issue is not considered enough by companies.

'All too often corporate materials, be they websites or annual reports, have a different tone of voice and very often a different one within the same website or document,' he says.

Sometimes this is because companies want to emanate qualities that at first sight might seem contradictory, he argues. But in such cases, he views effective use of both design and tone of voice as even more important.

'We've just branded a financial business that wanted to be 'strong', 'conservative' and 'simple' but at the same time 'approachable', 'different' and 'detailed',' he says. 'These obviously contradict each other. So we used the first set of values for the design, making the visual style very bold and confident, reinforcing that this is a serious business. This obviously appeals to their target audience group, so once they are comfortable with what they are looking at and feel they are in a safe environment, you can then use the tone of voice to express personality. We used the second set of values for this, by being straight-forward, active tense, pithy, first person and inclusive.'

Such brand values can be further adjusted, he adds, depending on which stakeholder is being communicated with.

'As long as you keep the fundamental messaging the same, the tone you take with customers is obviously going to be different to the tone you take with investors,' says Anderson. 'But also in the corporate world the tone can be different for different purposes. For example, one would expect a company to take a slightly different tone of voice when explaining its strategy to when it is outlining its corporate social responsibility policy. The clue is in the expression. This is the 'voice' of the company.'

Potential pitfalls

Just as in personal situations, choosing the right tone to express different messages can be beset with potential pitfalls.

McMullen complains that tone of voice is too often thought of as a kind of 'wrapper' very late in a branding process and that it also often remains the property of brand and communications people and is only expressed through advertising and product literature.

'The tone of voice that businesses use in their communications should be an expression of the brand personality and needs to be derived from the soul of the brand and reflect how the business wants to communicate,' she says. 'There's no point being overtly expressive if this is out of the comfort zone of the brand and its personality. Great brands integrate tone of voice into their business everywhere. Orange and First Direct would be very good examples.

'The brand values are not just marketing and brand speak but are integrated into how the business is run, from the chief executive to frontline staff.'

Moreover, she says, choosing the right tone of voice can guide employees to be brand ambassadors by providing examples of how to live the brand.

The healthiness and wholesomeness of Innocent Drinks is one example, she argues, while paying attention to tone of voice is also good advice for charities, government departments and quangos.

At Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs, for example, a push to be friendlier and more helpful under the self-assessment tax system has arguably made the taxman more accessible, while several government departments including the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) have worked hard to improve written and spoken communications.

It goes to show that saying the right things can repair corporate relationships as well as personal ones. 'If your tone of voice is clear, concise and non-fluffy, your communication is clearer and quicker,' states McMullen. Marriage guidance counsellors could not put it better.  

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