What is brand voice? How to create one with examples and tips

Your marketing team spends thousands on campaigns, yet customers can’t distinguish your brand from competitors. Without a distinctive brand voice, you’re just another forgettable company.

Brand voice is a defining feature of successful companies. Brand marketers use brand voice to convey a brand's position based on its values and mission. It is critical to effectively reaching a target audience and creates unique, memorable experiences. 

This guide defines brand voice, highlights its significance, and offers guidance for developing one. Discover how to convert your brand's essence into a distinctive voice that resonates with customers.

A brand voice represents the personality of a company, business, and product.

In addition to the logo, colors, slogan, and tagline that make up a brand story, the brand voice binds it all together. What you say and how you say it will set the brand tone and is essential in forming your brand identity.

A company selling high-end clothing like Burberry will have a different advertising approach than one selling athleisure like Adidas. The content will likely look different in wording, color choices, and logo. 

The importance of brand voice can be boiled down to a handful of key components. Businesses can use it to build trust, enhance loyalty, differentiate from competitors, and provide a consistent brand experience. 

Businesses can drive better brand recognition using a memorable and relevant voice. It’s important for customers to build a connection to your brand to keep them coming back. Brands can build recognition with distinct messaging and specific communication styles.

However, a brand can only build so much recognition and trust through visual elements like a logo and color scheme. They can foster trust by offering a familiar voice that aligns with their products and brand story. 

To measure brand trust, you can conduct a Net Promoter Score® (NPS) survey to categorize customers into Promoters, Passives, and Detractors categories. NPS surveys are a proven method to track brand image and evaluate customer’s perceptions. Use a brand health tracking survey to measure awareness and reputation for your business. 

Brand voice can also enhance customer engagement by creating an approachable and relatable brand. When honing in on brand voice, consider your customer demographics and create a voice that they can connect with.

For instance, a SaaS product brand may use a conversational voice to educate customers about product features. This approachable persona can encourage customer curiosity and growth.

You should measure brand loyalty to ensure your current marketing and messaging strategies are landing well with customers.

Brands can differentiate themselves from competitors by using a distinct and recognizable voice. Customers should be able to determine when a message is associated with your brand based on the voice and tone. Brands with unique voices that meet customer expectations can stand out from competitors with lackluster branding. 

A business can foster brand loyalty by delivering a consistent brand voice across all marketing materials and channels. Customers get a sense of comfort when they know what to expect from your brand. A consistent brand voice across all messaging makes it easier for customers to connect to your brand. Over time, they will become familiar with your brand and how it communicates. 

You’ve probably heard of the terms, brand voice and tone. Make no mistake, though, because these concepts are different, albeit related. 

Brand voice is a business’s consistent communication style that showcases its unique personality.

Gucci’s conservative and innovative casual wear has a different brand voice echoing legacy and quality. Lululemon’s brand has a lighter and playful brand voice, representing its core values of health, wellness, and sustainability. 

Tone is the specific mood or feeling associated with a message.

For example, Puma is geared toward workforce diversity, workplace inclusion, and continuous accountability. They demonstrate their mission with a Diversity & Equality page highlighting social issues to reiterate their belief that “diversity makes us better.” The company shows a video testimonial using their employees to demonstrate their mission.

You can think of brand voice as what you say and tone as how you say it. Tone focuses more on the expression and mood of the message while staying consistent with the brand voice.

Tone changes based on the context of a message, whereas brand voice stays the same at all times. For example, the tone of voice used for customer support may differ from how a brand communicates advertising messages. Additionally, a brand voice may be friendly and conversational, but the business may use a more serious tone to discuss workplace diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives.

Creating a brand voice that aligns with your vision is extremely important for your business's growth and success. We will outline the six steps to creating a brand voice that drives customer awareness and emotional connections. 

Core values and the mission create the foundation for a consistent brand voice. Anchoring the voice in values and mission ensures that every message feels aligned with the brand’s purpose and character.

Defining a brand’s core values begins with identifying the principles that guide the business’s behavior, culture, and decision-making. For example, a brand might value transparency, creativity, and sustainability. 

With core values in place, the next step is to craft a mission statement. A strong brand mission helps unify employees under a common purpose while also signaling to customers what they can expect. Think of the mission as the “why” behind the business, and a guidepost for all brand activities and decisions.

Deeply understanding your target audience and their preferences and expectations can help you craft messages that align with their identity. For example, if the target market for your playful brand is millennials, niche 2010s slang like “on fleek” or “shade” may land well. And it might fall flat for generation Z.

A good way to investigate your customers’ motivations, needs, and expectations is market research. Market research surveys collect customers’ data, including demographic information, and understand what kind of brand voice your audience prefers.

Next, review your existing content across all platforms—social media, website copy, emails, advertisements, packaging, and customer service interactions. The goal is to identify patterns in tone, language, and structure.

Is the brand casual or formal? Does it use humor, technical jargon, or storytelling? Pay attention to sentence length, word choice, and formatting. 

Then, evaluate how the brand’s communication aligns with its intended identity and audience. Look at engagement metrics, customer feedback, and reviews to understand how the audience is responding. Identifying these elements can reveal what should be amplified or adjusted in the brand voice.

Synthesize the findings from your previous analysis into a clear description of the brand voice. The attributes or characteristics you choose indicate how you want customers to view your business. 

Brand voice attributes include terms like:

Your chosen attributes should describe your brand identity and align nicely with your vision. Think about your brand and how people in your target audience speak. Consider your brand’s desired personality and choose a couple of attributes to guide your voice.

Document and distribute brand voice guidelines.

A voice guide includes do’s and don’ts, tone variations for different situations (like promotional vs. customer support), and style guidelines for consistency.

This documented voice ensures that anyone writing on behalf of the brand can maintain a unified tone, whether it’s a social media manager, copywriter, or customer service rep.

Here’s an example of a brand voice chart:

To maintain consistency in your marketing, social media, and customer interactions, you must distribute your brand voice guide to relevant team members. Train your team to implement the brand voice, creating a consistent brand image no matter the medium—website copy, social media posts, and even customer support interactions. 

By keeping your brand voice consistent across channels, you can help build brand salience. This means that customers think of your brand when making a relevant purchase. 

Wendy’s and Netflix are two standout examples with distinct personalities. These brands consistently publish top-performing content in the digital landscape, using social media and traditional outlets.

Let’s take a look at their main characteristics and how they are able to make a lasting impression.

Wendy’s utilizes X (formerly Twitter) to establish a clever brand voice that keeps customers engaged. The brand embodies a playful and fun spirit, often making jokes in its messaging. Wendy's joyfully teases its competitors with lighthearted humor. This approach to brand voice has proven highly effective, especially since the fast food industry is typically viewed as less serious. 

Netflix has developed a refreshingly casual brand voice that emphasizes approachability. The tone remains light and occasionally playful, fostering a youthful and relaxed atmosphere. This approach aligns perfectly with Netflix's encouragement for customers to unwind and indulge in binge-watching their favorite shows. 

Brands often make several common mistakes when defining their voices. Consider the following mistakes as you scrutinize your brand voice:

A strong brand voice is essential for cultivating brand awareness and fostering loyalty.

Once you’ve developed a strong brand voice, you can measure brand health to grow awareness and evolve customer perception over time. Measuring brand success helps businesses reach more customers by gathering insights from feedback data.

SurveyMonkey enables you to send surveys to customers and collect data to inform your brand strategy. Sign up today to get started.

NPS, Net Promoter & Net Promoter Score are registered trademarks of Satmetrix Systems, Inc., Bain & Company and Fred Reichheld.