The TOTALLY TOUGH TONE OF VOICE CHALLENGE.

I’m in two minds about the concept of tone of voice as applied to marketing in social channels.

Succinctly describing a brand’s tone of voice is a distinctly advertising discipline.

And advertising disciplines are not always fit for social purpose.

“What is our message?” isn’t the most helpful question when it comes to social media strategy for instance.

In fact make that three minds.

Tone of voice is also the advertising discipline that is most prone to bullshit.

Worse than that it’s often vacuous, first-base bullshit born out of wishful thinking rather than reality.

Nonetheless it is worth interrogating a brand (and/or a culture) for personality and tone of voice traits that can be usefully applied or interpreted by the human beings at the sharp end of your social media strategy.

And, to this end, we came up with THE TOTALLY TOUGH TONE OF VOICE CHALLENGE (TTTTOVC).

It’s a workshop technique that’s designed to get internal stakeholders really thinking about their brand.

And it really is tough.

The toughness is the antidote to bullshit and safe, first-base thinking.

Here’s a word cloud populated by the safe, vacuous, first-base tone of voice words that I’ve most frequently encountered during my two decades plus of doing “this stuff”.

These words are all useless.

They’re useless because they accurately describe the tone of voice of every brand on the planet.

Name a brand that deliberately positions itself as UNconfident. Or UNfriendly. Or UNapproachable. Or UNtrustworthy. Or UNprofessional. Or negative.

Clients and complicit agencies gravitate to the tone of voice words in the word cloud precisely because you can’t argue with them.

And then the creative teams in the complicit agencies simply ignore the tone of voice section of the creative brief and do their own thing, safe in the knowledge that whatever they come back with will be seen as confident, professional etc……. because it can’t not be.

The tough bit of this totally tough challenge is that you’re not allowed to use these words. In fact you’re not allowed to use any word or phrase for which the complete opposite wouldn’t be a viable option for a competitor brand..

For example…

“Broadsheet” would be fine because “tabloid” is also a viable tone of voice option.

“Polished” works because “warts and all” would be a viable alternative.

Believe me this is really tough for most client stakeholders.

But it is also very rewarding once you’ve collectively broken through the pain barrier in a workshop environment.

Once one person in the group “gets it” and comes up with some rich, relevant, differentiated language there is a domino effect as the penny drops for everyone.

In our last workshop we got a few phrases that the group was palpably proud of. They were phrases that I couldn’t wait to share with the agency because they were accurate, pointed, dare I say “ownable”, and – unlike the usual tone of voice suspects – impossible to ignore.

Try it. It works.

And, if you liked this, check out the other techniques in this series.

Social media workshop technique #1 – Glass half full, glass half empty.

Social media workshop technique #2 – What have social media ever done for us?

Cop a load of these Tiny books from printstagr.am. They are funky, dinky, and magnetic. Yes, they stick to fridges.

Printstagr.am exists to turn Instagram photos into a variety of hard copy formats.

It “usually” works by connecting to Printstagr.am using your Instagram account, selecting the photos you want to print, selecting the format you want to print them in and paying.

That’s fine if you want photos from one Instagram account.

But we wanted to collate photos from multiple Instagram accounts using a single #blondedigital hashtag.

This was a special request.

But a special request that, to prinstagr.am’s credit, they agreed to fulfil.

In fact their approach to customer service was the most human experience this correspondent has had in quite a while.

Witness this verbatim reply to an email in which I thanked them for their flexibility and responsiveness.

“Responsiveness is due to the fact that I am a real human being. But don’t let that fool you… I also get really lazy sometimes and totally ignore customers and then have backlogs of emails to catch up on, which is seriously stressful and kind of makes me want to cry sometimes. Thanks in advance for understanding if sometime I don’t answer an email.”

Out of context that might seem like a public relations nightmare. In the context of the email exchange in which they had gone out of their way to make something unusual happen for me it was incredibly endearing.

An endearing experience and an endearingly cute end product.

GUEST POST

This post was kindly written by Andrew Ingle. Andrew is a freelance copywriter with whom it has been a pleasure to work. He is a gentleman, a craftsman and a true pro. He can be contacted at copy.writer@btinternet.com. He is clearly passionate about writing for websites, and one day he may even get around to writing his own.

Ok, his words and opinions from here on in….

If, in the short walk from pub to pad, the hot-totty you picked up at the bar changed appearance, attitude and sex, you’d have the right to feel a tad worried. Cheated even.

Then why is it that so many agencies and their clients are apparently unperturbed by the fact that customers are reading web copy that bears little or no relation to the ad that sent them to the site a millimoment before?

If the ad is cheeky and chatty, the website copy should be cheeky and chatty too… Isn’t that common sense: a branding basic from ‘The Ladybird Book of Marketing’? Seemingly not.

Sharing the blame

Where does the fault lie? It could be that the digital agency has failed to see the wisdom of investing in writing talent. Or worse still, the client has written the copy. (Sadly, neither of those is unheard of, and will be the subject of Whinge No.2.) But, more often than not, it’s all down to a lack of communication in our communications industry.

In this connected, networked world of ours, it’s bizarre to see such a gulf between the agency that writes the site copy and the agency that writes the ads directing prospects to the site. There’s little or no connection. Step beyond the landing page and any tone that the original ad possessed goes walkies.

And no, of course, this isn’t true of all sites (or of all agencies and all clients). But unless your standards are depressingly low, it’s undeniable that good web copy is the exception rather than the rule. And good web copy that’s consistently on-brand, hitting the right tone of voice from one end of the map to the other, is as rare as rocking horse poo.

Nobody is immune

Just before writing this, I took a link to a famous drinks website. This brand is one of my favourites, with a lovingly developed tone of voice that makes me smile at least once a year – usually at Christmas.

Designwise, the site is charming and witty (as it should be). But, once you’re all loaded, the tone changes. The site loses its voice. The writing is dry, repetitive and overlong. It’s everything the brand wasn’t before I got on the site, but is to me now. What a shame.

Surely it’s in the interests of the client and their above-the-online agency to ensure the digital copy is on-brand and on-promise? The site is where everyone gets to see – and prove – ROI: it’s where conversion takes place, data is gathered, sales are closed. It’s not just important. It’s frigging vital.

Making the marriage work

What’s the solution? Well, a single agency doing the whole shebang is one answer. A Jack of all trades. But that’s not always possible or desirable; unless you’re pretty sure the in-house talent is evenly spread across all the agency’s offerings.

So, assuming there’s more than one agency involved, it’s got to be client-led. The client is, after all, responsible for these arranged marketing marriages. And only the client has the clout to get all those egos toeing the line.

The client has got to insist – from day one of the contract – that their agencies talk, meet and work together on a regular basis. So very regular that the usual preening, point-scoring and political positioning of most inter-agency meetings (we’ve all been there) doesn’t just become foolish but untenable.

Channels of communication must be permanently open and used. Briefs must be shared. And systems and positions must be set up to ensure that the terms of this relationship are adhered to. All parties must invest in it.

And if agencies really have their client’s interests – as well as their own fragile reputations – at heart, they’ve got to be ballsy enough to tell it like it is. That without this kind of relationship, they simply can’t be as good as they could be. Indeed, as Dave Trott never said to me, “nobody can work well in a vacuum, unless they’re called ‘Shake ‘n’ Vac’.”

Of course, this sort of creative cohabitation doesn’t just apply to copy. It applies to every facet of any campaign that requires the input of more than one agency.

No excuses

It’s all very irksome for the client, because it means more work, and probably greater cost. They might even have to stay in the office until 6.15pm. But the resulting ROI will prove the effort worthwhile.

On the flipside, it may not make an iota of difference. If, after everyone has been properly informed, consulted, included, briefed and generally loved-up, the copy is still tummy-rot, then it’s okay to flourish the waggy finger of disappointment in the red faces of those responsible. Clearly the fault lies elsewhere. Exit Whinge No.1. Enter Whinge No.2…