Brands Should Focus On Developing Verbal Identity

by Stratton Craig

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One of the key objectives for a brand is to get its message across to consumers. It takes time and effort to establish a working and recognisable tone of voice but, once this has been done, interaction between the brand and consumers moves to another level.
A distinctive tone of voice helps to represent a brand online and can be a very powerful brand building weapon. According to Kat Ward-Smith, head of campaigns and brand experience at O2, the one-to-one daily conversations with thousands of customers are just as important as a catchy TV ad or a creative billboard.
Interestingly, global brands spend as much as £8.7 billion on creating and improving their visual identity, including logos and colour combinations, but their combined investment in verbal identity comes in at just £1.3 billion, Marketing Week reported.
This difference could be down to the fact that consumers do not often give feedback to brands regarding the way they speak to the public. Caroline Hobbs, senior manager of customer experience at Nationwide, claims that, because it can be difficult to measure the effect of different tones of voice, brands have to experiment and find out what works best for their customer base.
There is one element of an effective tone of voice that most marketers seem to agree on, however: consumers should be able to identify and relate to it. The tone should be engaging but, most importantly, it should be consistent across channels and time, Marketing Week commented.
If you’d like to discuss your tone of voice and verbal identity, please call us. Through our fun and insightful Blueprint workshops we’re able to help you find the voice that really represents what your brand’s about.

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