Oct 10, 2012
Does Your Brand Have a Distinctive Voice?
As a designer, I confess to a built-in visual bias when it comes to brand expression. I tend to experience a brand’s essence primarily through my eyes, by seeing how it draws me into its world. And when I’m working with clients on a branding project, one of my first steps is to create a book of strategically selected pictures and graphics that create a feeling of immersion in the character and the unique ‘feel’ of the brand.
The next step though, is just as crucial. It involves the expression of the brand through words.
Most major brands have graphic standards that instruct internal and external communications people about how to maintain the brand’s integrity from a visual perspective. Fewer brands have similar guidelines about what the brand should ‘say’ to stakeholders.
Why is a brand story and a brand vocabulary so important? Simply because your website, your brochures, your advertising and social media are all opportunities to draw customers into your brand world. The words you use should reflect who you are and what makes you distinctive. Take something as elementary as how you describe your customers. Westjet calls them guests. Augusta National Golf Club, where the Masters Tournament is played, insists on calling them patrons. Most professional firms use the word ‘clients’.
The decision to use those terms is the first step on the way to creating a corporate vocabulary and a corporate story that differentiates and distinguishes. It’s just that most organizations never take the next step and end up sounding like every other organization in their communications.
Given that you have a unique story to tell, when you use the same phrases and thoughts as everyone else to express it, you’ll sound the same as everyone else. Don’t tell me you’re innovative, tell me why. Don’t tell me that you value your people, tell me how. Don’t tell me you go the extra mile, take me on the trip with you. As we constantly tell our children… ‘use your words’.
Category: Branding, Spyder Works
