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Brand Voice and Tone: Aligning Your Visual and Verbal Communication
We focus on the brand’s voice and tone as a core element of its identity.
In a previous article, we provided a comprehensive guide to a strong brand identity. In it, we said that a business’ brand identity consists of multiple elements that all need to adhere to a consistent overarching vision and support each other. These elements include the brand’s logo, typography, color palette, imagery, tone of voice, etc.
In this article, we will focus on the brand’s voice and tone as a core element of its identity. We will provide guidelines on how to align your visual and verbal communication as a business owner, as well as how to create rules for the brand’s tone and voice.
When people think of a successful brand, more than likely they envision logos, color schemes and slogans, but there’s more to it than that. As a business owner, your brand’s voice (the words you use and the way you use them) and its tone (the emotional quality of your messaging) need to align with your visuals.
If they don’t, it can be distracting, confusing and immersion-breaking to your audience. In that way a brand’s communication is similar to that of a person. We have all had the experience of talking to a person whose verbal and non-verbal communication don’t match.
Perhaps you’ve had a conversation with a business professional like a doctor or a lawyer in elegant clothes who heavily used jargon and curse words, making you question their public persona. Brands are no different. When their visual and verbal communication clash, at the very least, it can be off-putting to the customer.
If there is slight misalignment, the customer might unconsciously perceive it, unable to quite put their finger on it, but having the impression that perhaps you don’t know what you’re doing. If the misalignment is serious, the customer is sure to notice.
On the flipside, as a brand agency, we have seen how powerful it is when a brand’s visual and verbal communication work together seamlessly to build trust through consistency.
Consistency lets people know what to expect when interacting with your brand, whether they’re browsing through your website, reading brochures, or interacting with your social media posts. When everything is in sync, customers feel like they know your brand, which makes them more likely to engage with it and trust it.
In short, the effects of voice and tone may be subtle, but it is important to get them right.
As with all aspects of your brand identity, you should first understand your audience. Who are you speaking to should be the most important factor in determining how you speak, what you say, and how to support your message visually.
These aspects will form the overall personality of your brand. Think of traits you would like your core audience to associate with it, such as formal or informal, serious or funny, traditional or quirky.
A fun and quirky brand might use bold, bright colors and informal, humorous language, while a more traditional one might lean towards neutral tones and formal language.
In a previous article, we discussed in depth how a conservative brand can benefit from powerful visual design without losing its seriousness.
Once you have a clear idea of how you want your brand to look, feel, and sound, it will be easier to ensure consistency across all your brand materials. On the flipside, not knowing what you stand for and what you want your brand to be will undermine your efforts to create a unified image of your business.
As we said earlier, in order to be successful, a brand’s messaging needs to be consistent across all your brand materials and all communication channels. This includes everything from your website to social media, as well as emails, business cards, brochures, packaging, ads, physical locations, etc.
If you use playful, light-hearted language in one email and a serious, formal tone in another, it creates confusion for your audience. That being said, consistency doesn’t mean that you have to be rigid. Your tone can shift slightly depending on the context, but it should always feel like the same “person” speaking.
This becomes increasingly difficult to accomplish as your business grows, as your team expands and you work with more external partners. Each of these actors, if tasked to work on or with your brand materials, will have a different understanding of your business, different tone and voice, as well as different motivations and values.
That is why it is crucial to set clear rules on how to work with the brand. This is typically achieved in the brand book, a.k.a. brand manual or brand guide. In it, you lay down rules for employees and business partners on how to use the brand’s logo, typography, color palette, and, importantly, the tone and voice they must adhere to.
The tone of voice as outlined in the brand book can be broken down into scenarios such as how you speak on social media, in marketing materials, or in customer service. There can also be specific guidelines for copywriters on the appropriate tone for articles, blog posts, your website copy or your ads.
As your business evolves, it will become increasingly important to train employees to use the right tone of voice, to continuously refer to the brand book, and to set up processes to test outgoing communication.
The brand book is a key business asset that is supposed to distil all the business’ understanding about its own brand.
If you choose to work with us on your next project, as an experienced brand agency, we will ensure that your business has a comprehensive and clear brand book to rely on.
When setting rules for verbal communication for your brand, it can be helpful to think in terms of pairs of opposites to determine which is more appropriate in your case. There are no right or wrong answers, as long as the voice and tone are aligned with your audience’s tastes and expectations.
Here are some examples of common yet contrasting strategies:
- Formal vs. Informal
Formal: Structured, professional language.
Suitable for law firms, financial services, or luxury brands.
Informal: Casual, conversational tone.
Often used by tech startups or lifestyle brands to seem approachable.
- Serious vs. Playful
Serious: Straightforward, factual, no-nonsense language.
Common in industries like healthcare or insurance.
Playful: Lighthearted, humorous, and fun language.
Used by children’s brands.
- Confident vs. Humble
Confident: Assertive, authoritative language that expresses strong belief in the product.
Common in tech or luxury brands.
Humble: Modest, self-aware language.
Often used by eco-conscious brands or non-profits to convey authenticity.
- Corporate vs. Friendly
Corporate: Structured, formal, and sometimes impersonal.
Usually found in large enterprises or B2B services.
Friendly: Warm, personable, and inviting.
Frequently used by community-driven or customer-focused brands.
- Serious vs. Quirky
Serious: Reserved and professional.
Often used in finance, law, or medicine.
Quirky: Unexpected and offbeat.
Often used by creative agencies or niche lifestyle brands.
- Direct vs. Indirect
Direct: Clear, concise, and to-the-point language.
Used by productivity tools, software companies, and time-sensitive services.
Indirect: Polite, suggestive, and roundabout language.
Used when softening a message, often in luxury or customer service industries.
- Emotional vs. Rational
Emotional: Focuses on feelings, stories, and personal connections.
Common in non-profits or consumer goods like beauty products.
Rational: Focuses on facts, data, and logic.
Common in B2B marketing, technology, and financial services.
- Innovative vs. Traditional
Innovative: Trendy, forward-thinking language.
Used by cutting-edge technology brands or fashion labels.
Traditional: Grounded, time-honored language.
Used by heritage brands or industries like banking or education.
- Sophisticated vs. Down-to-Earth
Sophisticated: Polished, refined language.
Often used by luxury brands, high-end hospitality, or premium services.
Down-to-Earth: Simple, relatable language.
Common with community-driven, sustainable brands, or those aiming for broad appeal.
- Expert vs. Accessible
Expert: Highly knowledgeable and technical language.
Often used by specialized industries like medical equipment or high-tech products.
Accessible: Easy-to-understand, user-friendly language.
Common in consumer technology or educational platforms.
To demonstrate that the above contrasting strategies have a real and noticeable effect on the tone and voice of a message, we will rewrite the same sentence using each of them. You will be astounded how much of a difference a simple change in tone can make.
For our example, we will use the sentence “We serve our communities with pride and grace.”
Here is how it might sound with a different tone of voice:
- Formal: "We are honored to serve our community with a deep sense of pride and commitment."
- Informal: “We’re super proud to serve our awesome community every day!”
- Serious: “Our commitment to serving the community is driven by a profound sense of responsibility and purpose.”
- Playful: “Serving our amazing community fills us with all the good vibes and big smiles!”
- Confident: “We proudly serve our community, knowing we make a positive impact every single day.”
- Humble: “It’s a privilege to serve our community, and we’re grateful to be part of something bigger than ourselves.”
- Corporate: “We are dedicated to delivering exceptional service to our community with the highest standards of professionalism and pride.”
- Friendly: “We love serving our community, and it’s an honor to do it with pride and a big smile!”
- Quirky: “Serving our community? It’s our jam, and we do it with a whole lotta pride and joy!”
- Direct: “We proudly serve our community every day.”
- Indirect: “It’s always a pleasure to be part of such a wonderful community, contributing our efforts with pride and joy.”
- Emotional: “Serving our community brings us immense joy, filling our hearts with pride each day.”
- Rational: “We consistently serve our community with dedication, ensuring each interaction reflects our values of pride and satisfaction.”
- Innovative: “We’re reinventing the way we serve our community, blending pride and joy into every interaction.”
- Traditional: “For generations, we’ve proudly served our community, upholding values of pride and joy in everything we do.”
- Sophisticated: “With unparalleled pride and a deep sense of joy, we are honored to serve our esteemed community.”
- Down-to-Earth: “We take pride in doing good work for our community, and it brings us a lot of joy.”
- Expert: “Our service to the community is driven by a strong foundation of professional pride and satisfaction in delivering consistent results.”
- Accessible: "We love helping out around here, and it makes us so proud and happy to serve this community."
In practice, you won’t need to define your brand’s communication guidelines in such detail. It will be easier to define what to avoid.
You must allow your messaging a degree of freedom to make it sound natural. Don’t be too rigid in defining rules.
As with other elements of a brand’s identity, common themes can be identified across industries.
Conservative fields like law, medicine, and finance, for example, often use a formal, serious, confident, and corporate tone.
On the other end of the spectrum, lifestyle brands that cater to a young audience typically go for informal, quirky, emotional and accessible language.
It is important to keep these themes and prevailing trends for reference when choosing the tone of your brand, even if you don’t decide to follow them. They reflect the customers’ general expectations in those industries. If you decide to subvert them, our advice is to do so cautiously.
Since the majority of brands in an industry follow general trends and themes, this can create room to differentiate your brand. For example, if you are a conservative business, you can position your brand as particularly human and approachable.
This can be achieved, for example, by aiming for a more informal, approachable and humble tone, on the verbal side, and warmer design on the visual side, e.g. organic pictures of people in natural settings as opposed to office shots of people in suits.
As we said earlier in the article, every aspect of a brand’s identity needs to adhere to a unifying, coherent vision and support the others.
We discussed how a brand’s tone of voice can greatly affect the audience’s perception of its message.
We saw how making the message more formal, informal, serious, etc., subtly influences the feelings evoked by it. One sentence could be rewritten in a dozen ways, each leaving the audience with a different impression of what was said.
Now imagine, for example, your brand’s website in all of its complexity, all of its pages, sections, paragraphs of text, images and animations. You can see how changing the tone of your writing will affect all other elements on the site.
For example, if you use a personal, calm, friendly tone for your copy, your logo will need to look the same way. Perhaps it will be drawn in a soft, friendly font and in soft, warm colors.
Perhaps the icons and graphics on your site will feature round shapes and gentle curves, not sharp edges.
The animations and interactions, too, will be soft, gentle, and subtle, not dramatic, exciting, or bombastic.
The same can be said about your choice of colors. Muted pastels come to mind, warm and reassuring colors, not bright neon ones.
In summary, no element should feel out of place. Each should feel strategically placed to evoke a certain feeling.
As we have shown, a brand’s verbal communication is just as important as its visual one. Its voice and tone can determine your customers’ perception of it to a large degree.
It is important to get to know your audience to determine what is most appropriate to say and how to say it in the right context. Your messaging can be made to sound more serious, formal, friendly, or quirky, depending on the feelings you want to evoke in your audience.
The brand’s verbal communication strategy cannot be formed in isolation but must take into account the visual side. If a discrepancy exists between the two, depending on its severity, it can lead to confusion on the customer’s part or an outright rejection of your brand.
To align the verbal and the visual aspects of a brand means to make its voice and tone compatible with its other elements like the logo, typography, color palette, imagery, etc.
When determining the appropriate verbal strategy for your brand, it is important to keep in mind industry trends and themes. This will allow you to safely differentiate your brand without alienating audiences.
If you decide to work with us on your next branding project, send us your brief!
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