A clear voice for your organisation

Tone of voice is more important than graphic design when it comes to your brand personality.

Most of the time it’s simple stuff - just about every tone of voice guide you read will talk about being ‘clear, warm and fresh’.

It’s all about understanding your audience and making sure you talk to them as equals, with respect, and without any ambiguity.

You might as well make it concise too as they may not read everything, or may not concentrate fully. It had better work well online too - which is not as simple as it seems.

I’ve looked after tone of voice for Argos (we wrote their copy guidelines) and Boots (I was their Copywriting Consultant and managed their language development). When No7 relaunched globally I created its tone of voice and all of its copy.

It’s not just massive jobs though. I was behind Thorntons changing ‘the art of the confectioner’ to ‘the art of the chocolatier’: a small change with a huge impact.

I’ve been a client too – running Jupiter Design, the £6million TO agency I formed around my copywriting business.

I now also look after tone of voice for some smaller, yet equally important, brands: solicitors, banks, manufacturers and even a dating agency!

Tone of voice is not rocket science but it takes some tight controlling and, when you speak with a single voice, you’ve got to hit the nail on the head every time.