Your tone of voice is one of the most impactful parts of your brand - if you put the time and effort into it.
Language is how we communicate, educate, comfort and confront. Even a tiny change in phrasing can move a sentence from kind to condescending or change its meaning entirely.
For that reason, voice can be difficult to pin down and is often pushed aside during branding exercises. But the old adage is true: it’s not just what you say, but how you say it.
What do we mean by brand voice?
Imagine you send a piece of work to your boss. If they respond “OK” instead of “Great, thanks!”, you might start to worry, even if they’re intended to mean the same thing.
We pick up on these language choices all the time, and brands create impressions in the same way.
Your brand voice is how your personality comes through: the words you choose, how formal you sound, whether you use humour and even your punctuation. These choices shape how people see you and make your brand recognisable.
Is everyone starting to sound the same?
Since generative AI tools like ChatGPT and Claude went mainstream, anyone can produce copy at the press of a button.
The problem, funnily enough, is that unedited AI-generated text is often too polished. LLMs learn patterns from huge amounts of language, so without much direction they can fall back on familiar words and conventions.
You’ve probably spotted a few: delve, elevate, foster, variations of “it’s not just x, it’s y” and, of course, em dashes.
That doesn’t mean avoiding AI. We use it at Vida, and it can be a great tool. But if you’re using AI to write, knowing how you want to sound matters more than ever.
Can B2B have a personality?
It can sometimes be hard to tell one B2B’s voice from another. There’s an idea that marketing to professionals means sounding a certain way, and when you need to explain complicated products and services, personality can easily get edited out
Bluntly, B2Bs often think they need to be boring, but we’re here to argue the opposite.
Your audience wants to understand what you do, see that you know your stuff and decide whether they want to work with you. You can do all three without sounding like everyone else.
Finding your brand voice
Start by imagining your brand as a person. What would they be like?
You might land on confident, warm, curious or expert, but adding boundaries makes those traits more useful: confident, never arrogant; fun, but still professional; expert, without sounding academic.
Turn those traits into writing choices. A confident brand could cut phrases like “we aim to”, while a friendly brand could speak to its audience like a friend.
Listen to how people talk about your business too. The phrases and explanations you use internally are likely full of personality, and that’s often better than trying to sound professional.
Finally, document your voice with real examples, preferred language and things you avoid, especially when several people write for the brand or AI does some of the groundwork.
One final test: remove your company and product names from a piece of copy and put it next to a few competitors. Could someone tell which one was yours?
Ready to add some personality?
If your brand sounds too much like others in your industry, we can help turn what makes you distinctive into a voice your whole team can use.
Get in touch hello@vidacreative.co.uk