Words are the essential tools of communication. But they are so much more. They convey information, they express emotion, they influence, persuade, motivate. They do all the things that a successful business wants to do – if they are used well. Or, if they are used badly, they undermine a business.
After decades of obeisance to the notion that “we live in a visual world,” the word has struck back. From “a picture is worth a thousand words, business is returning to a position closer to that articulated by Bill Bernbach in the 1950s.” But not necessarily worth one word. The right word.”
Verbal Identity
Many businesses, particularly those that adhere to principles of branding, now attach equal importance to words and images. Visual identity – the consistent use of logos, colors, typefaces, photography – is an established management discipline.
Verbal identity – managing a brand’s tone of voice through style, vocabulary, names, and the use of stories – is in its relative infancy.
Combining the visual and the verbal provides the means to make brands that really work. A prime objective of any modern brand is to create better relationships with its consumers. Companies use their brands to create and maintain better relationships through conversations, just as individuals do. Many of those conversations are conducted in written form, whether in print, in emails, or on the internet. But as “conversations” implies, they need to be written as if they were spoken – a more informal approach to language than business practices of the previous years.
The words used in those conversations – through all experiences, including the internet – are reflections of brand’s personality. When products and services are basically similar, words can be the principal means of differentiating one company from another.
In 1998 three British college friends formed a company that makes fruit smoothies. A very simple business and, at that time, a tiny market for the product. They called the company Innocent Drinks. They had little money to spend on visual identity, but the founders had a playful approach to words. They channeled their creative effort into writing words – humorous little stories – that appeared on the labels of their products.
Innocent’s verbal identity begins with its name. They are innocent of being the little guys up against big corporations – but also in believing in the natural goodness of pure fruit with no nasty additives. All their words reinforce this proposition through the disarming use of humor. A very clear sense of the Innocent personality emerges through every word they use, even down to a distinctive, honest but funny way of listing the ingredients of their products.
The news about Innocent spread, appropriately enough, by word of mouth. People talked about them, shared the humor of the labels (which changed constantly) and became loyal fans. Innocent got other things right too, particularly distribution. In a matter of few years they were ubiquitous, the United Kingdom’s fastest-growing food and drink company.
Words Are Slippery
Many businesses copied Innocent, but Innocent’s success was built on the consistency of its tone of voice and its absolute righteousness for what it does. Different brands need different personalities and different words. Those words also need to be consistent across the brand’s disciplines and range of activities. Otherwise the wrong words can undermine a brand.
It is relatively easy to manufacture a tone of words that works in external communication such as advertising. People regard advertising – particularly on TV – almost as a form of entertainment. Naturally, good advertising uses words creatively. But there is a danger if a brand’s advertising sends a message of say, offbeat friendliness and if a consumer’s subsequent encounter with a brand representative or communication is disappointingly dull or unfriendly.
The Individuality of Words
A brand’s tone of voice needs to work from the inside outwards, if it is to have real credibility. It should start with a brand personality that is distinctive and owned by the individuals responsible for shaping the company. But every individual has a role to play, because everyone represents the brand through the words that they choose to use. If a brand such as Zenith Bank, a leading multinational financial service provider based in Nigeria, choose the catchphrase “In your interest,” for example, this places responsibility on the behavior of everyone representing the brand. The consumer has a right to expect a degree of creativity from all the brand’s representatives. And words are the most available creative resource for any company to use.
Content matters as well as style. Even if, for example, Zenith and Innocent had created an identical brand personality for themselves, their words would be made different by the fact that Zenith would describe banking and technology, whereas Innocent would write about fruits and the making of juice. Content influences vocabulary, the choice of individual words. Those words are further ordered by structure and they are connected by style.
For a brand to achieve true differentiation in its tone of voice, all these elements need to be combined with craft. The outcome should be a playful richness of language rather than approaches that masquerade as verbal identity by restricting vocabulary to an approved list of words. Brands and their representatives, need to see what they do as storytelling.
Telling the Story
Stories are one of the fundamental forms of communication. Through stories, individuals and businesses can understand the world better and engage more effectively with audiences. Stories can be used to achieve a number of important business objectives.
- Provide starting points for brands and continuing touch points of inspiration as companies grow;
- Become a means of encouraging personal creative expression by employees, and therefore increased motivation;
- Clarify the purpose of a business and inspire greater internal and external loyalty;
- Illuminate the meaning of business strategies and principles so that they are more easily understood.
Developing Skills
It is clear that the need to establish a distinctive verbal identity (including the use of storytelling) makes demands of a company and its individuals. Not everyone can be a fluent, skillful writer. But we all use words as part of our work – it is an inescapable fact of modern working life.
Companies need to look at the way they manage the words that individuals produce on their behalf. Champions – discipline by discipline, department by department – have to be given responsibility for setting and maintaining a high standard of written communication, internal and external. They need to create and adhere to an agreed tone of voice that projects a consistent brand personality. Skills need to be nurtured through guidelines, training, books, and online learning.
Creativity is Fundamental
Many years ago, “creativity” was required only in an advertising agency. Today every business needs to be creative and it needs to inspire and harness the creativity of all its people. This is not an optional extra, but an essential requirement for survival, growth, and reinvention. Businesses that lack creativity will increasingly struggle to survive. Creative skills therefore need to be nurtured and developed in businesses of all kinds. Writing is the creative skill that is, literally, closest at hand for any business. By developing people to express themselves more creatively through words, businesses can unlock the potential of innovation, increase the impact of communication, and become more effective in writing business.
The business benefits are reinforced by the additional advantage of personal development. Businesses are increasingly reliant on the quality of people, and they need to make sure that people feel that they are fulfilling their potential. Writing is an effective way to help people in a business to achieve personal development.
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