Watch your tone of voice - Part 1

In this episode, Sally and Sam discuss the importance of tone of voice in branding and marketing. They emphasise the need for a consistent and appropriate tone of voice that resonates with the target audience. They share their experiences and challenges in finding the right tone of voice, especially when marketing to different segments. They also discuss the impact of tone of voice on various communication channels and the importance of maintaining authenticity.

The importance of tone of voice [00:00:13]

Appropriate tone of voice for target audience [00:01:25]

Challenges of finding and maintaining a consistent tone of voice [00:04:55]

The Importance of Tone of Voice [00:08:58]
The Example of Burberry [00:09:14]
Challenges of Maintaining a Consistent Tone of Voice [00:10:08]

The importance of matching tone of voice with the target audience [00:18:15]

Breaking the tone of voice occasionally [00:19:07]
Having different tones of voice for different platforms [00:21:48]
The importance of testing, learning, and monitoring [00:26:14]

Balancing factual content and brand personality [00:27:00]
Different tones of voice for different products [00:27:57]

We'd love to hear your thoughts and experiences, so please share! Tweet us at @meanderspod, message us on Facebook, or email [e-mail]

Marketing Meanders is hosted by Sally Green, Partner at YMS and Senior Marketing Consultant, and Sam Birkett, founder of Amiable Marketing and Specialist Marketing Consultant.

Sally Green:

I am an experienced marketing consultant who loves helping people plan and implement successful strategies, creating campaigns that both strengthen the brand impact and increase revenue streams.

Working with me will give you a proper understanding of what does and doesn’t need to be done, how you can measure your success and how to get the best return on the effort you put into your marketing. Working with both large organisations and SMEs, I will help you set achievable goals, create a strategy and develop sustainable marketing plans that will show positive returns on your marketing effort.

Connect with Sally on LinkedIn.

Sam Birkett:

I specialise in higher and executive education marketing strategy, and operational and tactical support. Specialisms include LinkedIn lead generation and conversion campaigns, Persona and Proposition development, Content strategy, Webinar, Interview, Podcast and Video creation.

My consultancy works with institutions and organisations both in the UK and internationally, and over the last 16 years, I've been fortunate enough to work for world-leading organisations.

Connect with Sam on LinkedIn.

Creators & Guests

Host

Sally Green

Partner at YMS and Senior Marketing Consultant

Host

Sam Birkett

Founder of Amiable Marketing and Specialist Marketing Consultant

What is Marketing Meanders: The Marketing Podcast for Marketers and Small Business Owners?

Welcome to Marketing Meanders with Sally and Sam, the fortnightly podcast with over 50 years of marketing experience squashed into each episode.

We discuss the many aspects of marketing, emerging trends, and challenges we all face in marketing our businesses, sharing our own experiences and advice from industry experts. If you're a marketer, you'll recognise some of the stories we tell, and if you are a small business owner, hopefully, we'll answer a question or two.

Sam (00:00:13) - Hello, everyone. Welcome once again to Martin Meanders with Sally and Sam. And we're doing our usual things. We do. We talk offline about what we're going to talk about, and then we end up talking about what we're going to talk about without recording it. So just to let you in there, we've now hit the record button and today we are talking about tone of voice. So something that a lot of people, if you're not involved perhaps with branding, copywriting or marketing who are listening to this, it might be something you've at least heard of and you're aware of in other areas in terms of how you actually create a personality and for your brand or or for your business, for your for yourself as well, you know, your tone of voice you may use on your own profile on say, LinkedIn or something like that. Everyone has a tone of voice in their in their writing and their messaging and what they're trying to get across and how they're trying to get that message across to an audience.

Sam (00:01:05) - And of course, it's a very important part of the marketing and branding toolkit to to to get this right at early doors and then to consistently utilize it and I suppose explore it and develop it over the long term, would you say? Sally Oh, no, completely. I think it's incredibly important, but I think it's it's very.

Sally (00:01:25) - One of the big mistakes people make is I think my tone of voice must sort out my tone of voice. And people forget to do what you have to do with all marketing and that's put your customer first. So you've got to make sure that your tone of voice is actually appropriate for your customer and you might need multiple tones of voice you might need a tone of voice for. So just suppose you're producing chocolate and you might want to tone a voice for mothers. You might want a tone of voice for kids, you might want a tone of voice for busy workers who just want to grab chocolate as they walk to work. So tone of voice is has got to be appropriate for your marketplace.

Sally (00:02:02) - So it's all very well saying I speak like this, but you might speak like this and it might really turn off your market. So you've got to absolutely put your customer first.

Sam (00:02:10) - That's interesting because as you say, multiple tones of voice, because I do remember when I was working on a project at Pearson Education and it was all to do with maths educational products. So there you were, you had a maths educational product which you needed to talk about and promote to, to, to the, to the teachers at the same time that you're trying to talk to the parents and then also for the children as well. So there were, there were aspects of the, the marketing of the way you explained and talked about this product with three sets of audiences. So, yes, one thing that you're obviously the content you're going to be sharing is going to be different, but you had to be. I always remember there was this part where we were doing this piece and we had to really sort of work out exactly who was who and what we were doing.

Sam (00:02:53) - And you were flitting between all of these. And at the same time, of course, this was one product in one division of Pearson who also have their own sort of tone of voice overall. So it can get confusing sometimes when you've sort of got multiples. But as you say but, but the most important thing being who who's the audience that you are actually communicating with?

Sally (00:03:12) - And this isn't rocket science because it's something we all do every day. I don't speak to my dentist in the same kind of way as I might speak to my mates in the pub, you know. Yes, no, I wouldn't. But some people say, no, you've got to be completely authentic with everybody will actually know you don't like kids, do it. Kids learners do it really, really quickly because kids, they don't speak to their mates in the same way as they speak to their friends, to their parents. I don't think. Well, if they do, that's extraordinary. But they just don't say we're all doing a tone of voice is so important.

Sally (00:03:44) - And it can really it's and to be honest, it does sell the product. Just that's why, you know, that's why people care about the voices that you hear on advertising, on ads. And that's why that kind of when people are doing those film clips, there's always that deep Tony voice that talks about film clips. We know what we're expecting to hear for certain extent. So and we're quite surprised when we don't hear it.

Sam (00:04:11) - Yes, exactly. That's it, isn't it? And it's and I suppose what we can explore to the different types of tone of voice in terms of written speech, how you capture a kind of a template almost, because, you know, you have a tone of voice and a personality of a brand which is quite often administered by and promoted by a whole lot of different people, you know, So we can talk about it from a kind of a, you know, one, one person band kind of perspective of, well, I make soap or handbags. Cotswold handbag company have I have a tone of voice which has been captured and sort of templated somewhere so that when we get people to come in and help us with marketing campaigns or copywriting or web copy or whatever, they get the tone of voice, you know, without having to be explained.

Sam (00:04:55) - There's almost like the templating and sharing of that as well, isn't there? Which is.

Sally (00:04:59) - And that's hard.

Sam (00:05:00) - That is.

Sally (00:05:00) - Really hard.

Sam (00:05:02) - And that's the hard bit, isn't it? I think because I was going to talk about how you find your tone of voice, but I mean, I suppose too. Well, I don't know. Maybe we should go into how you find your tone of voice from a marketing.

Sally (00:05:12) - That's really interesting.

Sam (00:05:13) - Then the templating of it. Because, I mean.

Sally (00:05:15) - Finding a tone of voice is really hard because are we talking about is it the tone of the voice of the product? And then each marketeer might have their own version, have their own take on that tone of voice. Or is does everyone have to say the same things in the same way? And I don't think that's right, because I think one of the power of of what makes pieces of marketing intriguing, interesting is the creativity of the marketeer. On top of that tone of on top of the product's tone of voice.

Sally (00:05:51) - So I think finding just let's talk about Cotswolds handbags tone of voice is probably going to be um I was nearly gave it a gender there but let's make it genderless because anyone can use a handbag but it's going to be probably quite middle class. I would say middle to upper class probably. It's probably they're not cheap, so it's going to be quite serious. And I can see you all the listeners can't see this, but Sam's face is clearly not agreeing with me. Um, which is how it should be because you have to discuss these things and it's, it's probably also, um. Uh, quite serious. Think they're quite serious handbags myself.

Sam (00:06:39) - Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely. Well, I think you're right. I mean, I. But not quite. No, not corporate. I mean, whenever I hear. Whenever we talk about it, it's funny because, again, this is the thing, isn't it? The human mind? You get a vision. Well, I get a vision in my mind of of the shop.

Sam (00:06:53) - And I see it in somewhere like Bolton on the water. If people know that have bought it on the water and you know, typical chocolate box Cotswold place, that's the kind of place where we'd have our we'd have our showroom or something. Shop. Yes. And so you're walking. So that needs to it needs to be in keeping there needs to be quite smart. Yes. Quite polished. As you say. It's it's reasonably high end, isn't it? Um, coherent.

Sally (00:07:17) - Very coherent. Not. Not stuttering. We're not speaking in rap.

Sam (00:07:20) - Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And it's got to sell. It's got to sell some of that, that personality of, you know, aspirational living a little bit as well hasn't it. In a way. So which will not appeal massively to lots of people. But, but again, that's the whole point. It's differentiating itself to to apply it is going after. Yeah. Um, so yeah, finding that and then and then as you say, I mean that it's almost that sort of template or that I'm trying to think of a different analogy for it, that kind of, you know, you've got that, um, the ethos.

Sam (00:07:55) - I mean, I've been tuning in to the cricket a lot recently with the Ashes going on and, and they were talking, there was this little series they produced about sports leadership and psychology of how you lead teams and, and talking about the fact that there's a sort of a team ethos. So all these individual players within a team, whatever sport it may be, they will all interpret and express themselves in slightly different ways. Someone's more defensive, someone's more attacking, someone's more a loudmouth, someone's very quiet. But they but if they share the same central kind of ethos and feel, you know, there's a feel to it and you know, is this us? Is this the brand? Is this, is this the product and the brand? Is it within the stable? Almost? If that makes sense. So you go, that's it. But then that's the thing as well, though, isn't it, about, as you say, about just individuals and a company that grows starts off with a founder who says this is what Cotswold handbags is and Bags is and this is the tone of voice and it's very much influenced from me and my background.

Sam (00:08:58) - So you either then replicate that like sort of green fly on a on a rose or you or you. So it swarms and takes control or you sort of go, it's this feel and it can evolve and it can adapt and change its that.

Sally (00:09:14) - Yeah. And you might find that your tone of voice is affected by your audience because there's a really good example of this, of Burberry who was his Burberry is very Cotswolds handbags when people would probably I think be wearing a Burberry mackintosh they would may well be holding a Cotswolds handbag bag. It's very probably similar. However, Burberry had a real big shock because I've forgotten who it was. But there was a rap artist, a black American rap artist, who suddenly started wearing Burberry products. He was wearing Burberry coats, he was wearing Burberry scarves. And all of a sudden you're thinking, hang on a minute. And then all of his fans wanted to wear them as well. And so suddenly your tone of voice is now stopped being bought on the water and started being Bronx, New York.

Sally (00:10:06) - Yeah.

Sam (00:10:08) - Yeah, exactly.

Sally (00:10:08) - You think? Oh, this is interesting.

Sam (00:10:11) - Yeah. And then how do you how do you work with that? Because, I mean, there's an awful lot there, I suppose, about your, you know, brand in general, which is, you know, thinking about how do you present yourself in every other way, but tone of voice being one of those, which is the, the key thing, um, reminds me of an example actually of somebody on Twitter where they remember this is so you always think of these things, you know, you completely forget which where this was and what it was. Ah, you come up with perfect. It was them. Oh, I can't remember who it was, but it was, it was something like, so it was a Twitter account of a respectable, I say respectable, you know, very sort of conservative, kind of, you know, serious brand. And and then someone came along and spoke in some, you know, like a kind of kind of local lingo.

Sam (00:11:00) - And it was very it was literally written like sort of like, hey, hey, how are you doing? And, you know, very, very sort of, um, street, what do you call it? I mean, I'm so un Street, but like street Street kind of interpretation of English. And then you think, well, they're going to come back with a very sort of straightforward reply. They didn't. They they mimicked the language and came back and said, this is how it's going to go. And that stood out to people. And they went, Oh, that's quite good fun that you've you've come back and you've, you know, you've actually melded to your audience, you know.

Sally (00:11:29) - Yeah, that's absolutely right. But that you've got to be really careful with that because you've got to make sure that you remain authentically yourself. The brand that the tone of voice remains authentically itself. You can. I mean, you can. It would be like the queen suddenly every time and every time she went to Scotland, she put on a fake Scottish accent or, you know, went to Cornwall and spoke in a Cornish accent.

Sally (00:11:52) - It would be it can be that wrong. So you've got to make sure that, you know, the king always speaks like the king, regardless of where he is, that he carries his brand through, doesn't just go, Oh, I'm in Cornwall, better speak. You know, I'm down here in Dorset. They do a funny euro accent. Yeah.

Sam (00:12:09) - Exactly. Well, because that's the thing, isn't it? And you were saying earlier on about the fact that, you know, children and all of us, we don't we don't speak in the same way with everyone who we speak with. There's going to be variances. But in the middle, in the centre of it all, of course, you and there's main patterns that you will follow. So I suppose that sort of tone of voice once you've actually, you know, it's all the good work isn't it, about, you know, understanding what your brand is, what its values are, and your audiences again, crucially, just keep on going back again, again, again to what is it the audience is is there to what do they need from the brand and why does it exist? If you've answered all those questions and you start to get a feel for, well, this is how we would then talk.

Sam (00:12:47) - This is the sort of personality of this brand, isn't it, overall, You know, it's perhaps it's very personable. It's trying to be it's trying to be very, um, you know, sort of open and honest and transparent with things. And so the kind of things you would say and the way in which you would say them will manifest, that's what that's what someone can expect if they see something from you.

Sally (00:13:10) - And this is important because this will have things like it's not just about how you write the copy. This is going to be things like when you're doing emails, are you going to personalize them all? Are you? That person says that opens your emails with Dear Sam, blah blah. Or are you just going to say hi or are you going to say what your mate, you know, that kind of thing. So this person, it's it's going to feed through to what happens with part of your automated marketing as well. So that tone of voice is going to be part of how the how you write going to write your nurturing emails.

Sally (00:13:44) - Yeah, come on you know, get a grip. You you must love it. Or are you going to say, we're so fascinated that you started to look at our products, etcetera. So that tone of voice matters.

Sam (00:13:55) - Yeah. Oh, absolutely. And I mean, you know what? I was just going to when we were thinking about the whole thing of how to template it and then try to get a sense. I suppose I'm just thinking about this whole how do you pass on the torch and you get new people joining a team to understand that as well and, and get and get what it is across all of the different platforms. So perhaps you start using a new channels, you say perhaps it's like now we're suddenly we are communicating with video saying you go, well, we've always written stuff and we've always had static images and we know we've had phone calls and emails with people, but we've never had to actually express ourselves, you know, on a video usually. Yeah, yeah. And then suddenly like, Oh, well, what does that look like? What would I be wearing? You know, Because that's exactly.

Sally (00:14:35) - Do I wear a tie?

Sam (00:14:36) - Yeah. Do I wear a tie? And do I do I sit there at a very sort of, you know, rigid way and then, you know, talk about it and, you know, perhaps if you're employing a new videographer and a producer who comes on board and says, Right, so I need to understand the tone of voice and what it is how you're going to do this, they need to interpret that. But it's interesting because then you can probably at least say, you know, you can give the kind of spiel about this is what the tone of voice is, is, is the written stuff that you have about it. This is what we collectively understand about this as a team. But then you could say, well, it's definitely not that. It's interesting when you look at someone's written something for you and or done a video for you or whatever, and it's like, Oh, that just feels wrong, you know, which is useful, isn't it? Because then, you know, it's not that.

Sally (00:15:18) - I mean, it might be something that you could add to when you're doing your personas or avatars of your audience. It might be something you could add to the bottom of that to say, okay, this brand, this this brand, it reads Dickens. It, it, it really enjoys, um, I now can't think, um, drama, costume, drama. It's very, very interested in visiting National Trust properties. And this is what sets the tone of voice. This is and this might make it easier for your, for new people to come on board to actually recognize what this is going to sound like. Mean. These are cliches and huge broad brush strokes, but they do actually work. And I know what this person looks like now. Yeah, I can imagine their sofa. I can imagine what they drink. They probably drink tea and eat crumpets. It's, you know, it's all of those things that suddenly you're getting is getting that tone of voice in there.

Sam (00:16:14) - Yeah, Yeah.

Sam (00:16:14) - Well, and that's the thing, as you say, about personas. And you know what? It goes to the nub of marketing, I think, overall because that sort of clocks and way, but it really does because I think it is that it's the and this is, you know, the artistry, the creative artistry stuff, which is the art of marketing, that interpretation of and again, that connection with all of all of the sort of scientific stuff you do to to get to an audience and get a message. But how are you making them feel? What emotions are you trying to elicit? And you get the emotional thing from a well written character in Dickens. You know, if you you can read just a few lines and it makes you feel a certain way, you go, okay, well, this is very this is either very traditional, this is very kind of okay out there. Not not really. My generation feels a bit don't really know quite how they're talking about things. And but again, I'm doing all of that based on all of these different comparators in my mind, aren't I? By going, that's an image of the brand.

Sam (00:17:13) - I see the brand in my mind as as that, you know, perhaps you can even use something like dogs and say, what sort of dog would it be? Things like that. All those references, isn't it?

Sally (00:17:21) - Absolutely. I mean, it's not easy because you might find that for marketeers it can be very difficult because sometimes you just don't suit the tone of voice of what you're marketing. I probably would find it extremely difficult to market wrap. Brand. I'm in a brand of, you know, I would be way out of my depth and I probably could learn how to do it. Probably, but I'd find it extremely difficult.

Sam (00:17:52) - Mm hmm. That's I mean, that's the interesting thing, because you do find sometimes when you're working with somebody or you're seeing them or something, and then you you go you go to an office and and then you just see you see the whole manifestation of the brand, don't you, in the office, perhaps, particularly if they've got quite a bit of money and they can make it in their own style rather than just hiring flat space.

Sam (00:18:15) - And then you just go, Yeah, this works. And then the people there, you think, Yes, I can imagine. These are the sort of people who would be working here. And they completely they match the demographics they're going after, for example. Yeah. And but then that's the thing, isn't it? If you can match yourself quite well with the kind of the kind of product, the kind of area industry that interests you, then you're going to bring a lot more to that and and helping that tone of voice as well. Aren't you really? Yeah, absolutely natural.

Sally (00:18:42) - It's more natural. Completely natural. I mean, there's no reason you shouldn't sometimes break the tone of voice. Just occasionally. I'm trying to. Oh, I know. Um, Cadbury's did it occasionally because Cadbury's is chocolate and it's all, you know, the caramel bunny and all very lovely. And then all of a sudden they had a gorilla playing the drums. That was breaking the tone of voice and it worked brilliantly.

Sally (00:19:07) - It was a brilliant advert, whoever, because it just said, Here's the tone of voice. It's all gooey and nice. We're going to do a gorilla playing the drums and that stick that's going to absolutely shatter the tone of voice and everyone go, Oh, wow, that's extraordinary.

Sam (00:19:22) - What's that? Yeah, that's the thing. You said you've managed to break through, haven't you? In that way. And that's so important these days as well, to actually have something that does break through. And it is It's when you change things, isn't it, that gives you that opportunity to actually stand out to your own followers and people who know you perfectly well anyway. And then but then you follow on from that once you've got their attention back and that it's so hard these days, attention, because that's potentially a pitfall for people if they do when they're starting out, they're trying to establish themselves. Perhaps they are trying to be quite loud and shouty or or trying to copy other people a bit too much or to try and be a little bit contrary.

Sam (00:20:00) - And, you know, they sort of perhaps a bit of a scattergun approach, which of course is we were saying off line about testing and saying, well, what what does actually work? Because, you know, you've got an idea in your mind about how you want this to work, how you want to establish a tone of voice. And then you've got, is it working? You know, what do people think of this? Do they actually respond to this or are we doing something a bit wrong as well? That's so important, isn't it? Get that.

Sally (00:20:26) - Right. I think I'm testing. It would be really interesting because you could do really interesting testing on am I going to shout at you and say, buy this now or am I going to say, please, would you mind having a look at this? So because those two tone of voices and you might find that you might, you might test it and it'll tell you one hell of a lot about your audience because you might find it might help you segment your audience because you probably have got one audience, but some of them might like being pushed into things, shot, cross and, you know, off you go, do it now.

Sally (00:20:56) - And some objected to it. And then you might find that you can segment your audience and then completely speak to them differently and find that you've got a much, much more structured marketing behaviour because they don't all want the same and you're getting and it might increase your sale.

Sam (00:21:12) - Yeah, exactly. And not that that kind of makes me think as well about, about the whole thing of who owns it, you know, because you can own your sort of tone of voice of what you say and what you project to the world. But these days, increasingly, the fact that once you unleash your brand and your messaging out there, then it's all of the stuff. What other people saying about it? What are your customers saying to other people and to the world about about you and how are they? And that's the fascinating thing, seeing how they're reinterpreting and following you and perhaps resharing your content and how are they talking about it? Is it in a similar way or a very different way? Yeah, monitor that.

Sam (00:21:47) - Well, can't you.

Sally (00:21:48) - Think it's difficult because is it do you have to have more than one tone of voice because the same tone of voice might not work on all platforms? So the way you speak on LinkedIn might not be appropriate for the kind of promotional videos you're doing on TikTok. Yes. So you've got to be able to have two concurrent tones of voice.

Sam (00:22:14) - Yeah, Yeah. That's the thing, isn't it? It's like I'm trying to sort of I'm going to my brain to trying to nail the correct analogy here about sort of think of it, of it being within a family or a stable. So, yeah, you know, this is from this brand, but it is different as well at the same time. So it's a different strand of it. So you've got that sort of, um, not it's not a budget, you've got that kind of it's very much a part of the same family, but it is a different aspect of it and it's exactly the same. I mean, actually, funnily enough, I'm working with a client who LinkedIn's like a predominant channel and things have done on LinkedIn in a certain way and that's been very successful.

Sam (00:22:55) - But then if you are trying to talk on Twitter or Instagram, etcetera, and you're thinking, well, hey, you know, hey, should we be there? Okay. Be If we are there, we need to we need to speak more, more succinctly straight away. So it has to be shorter. It has to be snappier, punchier. The graphics perhaps need to be different. You know, we just need to do things differently. And and we will have a slightly different type of follower. An audience is on there and as opposed to LinkedIn. But it's yeah, as you say it is then not only are you trying to establish a tone of voice in the first place, then to say, how do you perpetuate that? But then also which, which strands. I'm almost seeing like a kind of a family tree, you know, you see in biology books about, you know, what part of the thing, you know, like as part of the same family. It's because an entomologist friend of mine was talking to me last Friday about the difference between moths and butterflies and oh, I won't start going down that now because this goes on forever, because he basically changed the whole concept of what's a butterfly? If you were to see if you were to see a creature that exhibited these, you know, at night time, what would it be? It you say, well, it's a moth, obviously.

Sam (00:23:59) - And you go, Well, no, because not all moths are out nighttime. Actually a lot of butterflies throughout the nighttime as well. And, you know, but it's like he said, But the convention is you see something, you have the triggers, you go, I know that's part of a family. And I don't know how I've ended up with butterflies and moths.

Sally (00:24:14) - But but no, that's interesting. But it's I mean, it is it can be quite hard because you might find that. You do. You might find that you do start to drift into having completely different marketing. You mark it differently on LinkedIn than you do on TikTok, and maybe that to keep your your brand authenticity alive on both of them. You can't have a brand that suddenly a different shape on that something it's got to be blue on on TikTok and pink on LinkedIn You so you've got to hang on to that brand authenticity whilst letting it have a different tone of voice. And that's really hard.

Sam (00:24:58) - Yeah, yeah. And that's the thing.

Sam (00:25:00) - And you start, I suppose, when you get to that sort of territory as well, if you then start to it's interesting because you can see it informs the external picture and informs the internal picture in terms of like, well then teams develop, don't they? Then you say, well, okay, now we've got to a certain point where this brand team will be here, this brand team will be there, but the person at the top of all that who's who's judging how we how we keep things together and what to what degree we need to what consistencies or lack of consistencies do we need that that's where the real the sort of strategic marketing kind of and branding comes in, isn't it?

Sally (00:25:37) - And then the strategy is how tightly are you going to tie those apron strings? Can you loosen up and say, actually the brand can become a bit bit more diverse to make it work on these two contacts? Maybe a Cadbury's chocolate? It is purple, but maybe it can be a slightly different colour purple or it could have lots of other colours around it on TikTok, whereas on LinkedIn it's just pure purple.

Sally (00:26:05) - Yeah. How But you do need to test that. As you said, you have to test it really carefully to make sure you're not losing brand identity.

Sam (00:26:14) - That's the thing, isn't it? And that's why it's, that's so important that to sort of test, learn, monitor because that's the only way you'll really get it because I think you can see that you could start with an idea because human beings are very good at sort of going off into tangents and then, well, we're very good at attendance, but.

Sally (00:26:30) - All the time. Here we go. Meandering.

Sam (00:26:33) - Meandering. This is the why. But people are very good at sort of going off and something sort of contorts itself and it becomes something else over a period of time, almost imperceptibly, and eventually it's something else. So that's why I think, I suppose market research, working with your customers, working with external viewpoints to say, look, you seem to have lost your way, you seem to have gone off into something else, which is quite a long way distance from what you were trying to achieve originally with your brand identity.

Sam (00:27:00) - And, and I think it's that sort of, I suppose like my example earlier on where, um, you know, you're producing something which is, you know, quite, quite sort of factual perhaps, I don't know what I said this online or offline, but I was talking about producing a factual metric or something which can end up being a bit too much about the content and less about the personality of the brand or the person who's posting it. And you can start to lose personality when perhaps you're going into too much detail, particularly I guess with like more complex products, for example, where you've got something where you're talking about this widgets got, you know, all these amazing bells and whistles and it can do all sorts. I mean, balancing that as well, isn't it sort of where does that sit? What sort again, what sort of relationship are you trying to develop with person who's going to buy the widget? You know what's important to them because it may not be, you know, really personal and highly emotive and exciting.

Sam (00:27:54) - It's more about it's very practical and that's fine. It's a.

Sally (00:27:57) - Nut. It's a it's a nut in a washer. It's, you know, it's very pressed steel and that's all. It's not a colour, it's not anything. Do you have to give it a personality. Yeah. Is your tone of voice just. It's a nut. It's this size. It does this by it. Maybe that's maybe that's the right tone of voice for this. You don't have to have it. Writing poetry and dancing the waltz every Friday.

Sam (00:28:18) - Do a little graphic video with this not moving around. But then again, you might say, yes, we're going to we're going to no stand out. We're going to have nuts that are dancing. You know, these these metal nuts. Yeah, it might be more about throughout. Then you can say, okay, this is quite dry, boring sort of stuff about, you know, you're going to buy 10,000 of x widgets and 6000 of these nuts and everything. But the key thing is they're going to arrive with you on time, you order them and they will be 24 hour delivery wherever you are in the UK Customer service.

Sam (00:28:45) - Here's a picture of one of our representatives who's not a chat bot. It's real. Yeah, it's around. That's where you invest your sort of that. That's the tone of voice, all about service, high quality service, that's responsiveness and blah blah blah. So it can be there. So some people might be thinking, well, yeah, my stuff is rather boring, but it's like, well, there's a tone somewhere and there's going to be one of the I suppose it's messaging as well, isn't it? It's what are the messages you're trying to represent?

Sally (00:29:10) - But it's a tone of voice said the same thing effectively when they're really next to each other, they're kind of so close that they're almost one thing.

Sam (00:29:18) - Yeah, exactly. Well, that's the end of part one of our discussion about tone of voice here on marketing meanders. And if you have any questions you'd like to ask, you can contact us at Meanders Pod at gmail.com. That's meanders pod or one word at gmail.com. And we look forward to carrying the conversation next time.

Sam (00:29:37) - Bye for now.