August 2022
Recently I’ve had the pleasure of working with an amazing advertising agency, whose founder and CEO wanted to review their marketing mechanics, audit and develop their brand communication, look at the competitor marketplace and put a plan of action together regarding attracting new business.
I’ve avidly watched this very special boutique agency for more than 20 years via various roles, like when I was Marketing Director for Tower Records and they designed for the once fantastic HMV. Their skill sets span TV, moving image, brand, design and post-production. Their enviable client base today includes Asos, BBC, Channel 4, Nike, Rolls Royce and the music & art industry.
Our worlds were once more intertwined when I ran my own agency and employed them to design the brand & logo. It was such a fun and fruitful project, to let an external agency design our brand. I remember my business partner was initially appalled at this strategy, bemused that budgets would be spent doing something we could of course create in-house.
The logo, colour scheme, cultural ethos and brand framework they designed was perfect; it delivered bang on brief, budget and time, was a sound IP investment, ensured our busy creatives were not side-tracked with internal personality politics and gave us a seriously strong toolkit to play with for seven years. It enforced my personal belief that sometimes, it’s a wise investment to employ an external expert who can bring talent to the table and get the difficult things done!
Back to the all-important confidential agency brief. It was a really interesting project to progress as one of the biggest denominators, which we discovered needed a deep dive into, wasn’t what we expected. It wasn’t the marketing plan, or the personnel prowess, a need for an audit and a plan of action, or the lack of the marketing budget - which is normally the general outcome. The primary consideration in this highly competitive marketplace, for this very beautiful, finely tuned, and highly experienced agency, turned out to be TOV - ‘tone of voice’.
“Tone of voice expresses the essential personality of a brand. The more individual the voice, the more distinct the brand becomes.”
- Terry Hunt, founder of EVANS HUNT SCOTT and co-creator of
Tesco Clubcard.
Bearing in mind an agency is also a brand, and a tone of voice denotes personality, culture, age, experience, attitude and even soul. It’s how it sounds to other people. It determines how you speak to your customers and various audiences. Online, on POS, on social – everywhere! It helps reinforce other aspects of the brand, agency, and business. It can speak in the right way to one type of person whilst repelling another. A general way to be able to tell if you have a strong and distinctive tone of voice is to consider whether your key audience would be able to recognise you based on content alone, with no logo. Or whether two pieces of content on two different channels sound like they’re coming from the same brand, speaker, and writer.
"A distinctive tone of voice deployed consistently can become as recognisable as your colours and imagery.”
So what were my major finds in this exercise, across the board, competitor-wise, regarding tone of voice? My main discovery was in the lack of specialisation and differentiation. Whilst I appreciate internal marketing is a different and often difficult proposition for any business; for an agency, who are shouting at their loudest and proudest, it is crucial.
For example, without knowing which agency I was looking at and the clients they represented, the messaging, the themes, the photos and short videos from the top ten competitors were all terrifically and worryingly similar. It appeared they’d all employed the same social media executive or agency to create their posts, headlines and stories. I found it frustrating when brands or businesses posted the exact same message and design across all social media, regardless of the company, the channels’ differing audiences and necessary bespoke styles of communication. It was often difficult to know which agency I was looking at!
Excessive exclamation marks and millennial style speak (LOL) were utilised in high abundance which can be great in an impromptu friend-to-friend personal message, but can really look immature in a professional scenario. Headlines were haphazard and uncreative condensed copy served to weaken, not enhance, the creative communication. Important summaries for an uninitiated newcomer were ignored and Grammarly was unemployed. I’m not saying all agencies need to employ a fully-fledged copywriter to curate their social media copy, but I am constantly amazed that in these digital days we don’t give social content the consistent consideration it craves.
It was so easy to spot when a brand had changed their in-house social media exec. too by the sudden inconsistencies in style and strategy, headlines, photography or even colour schemes. It’s always made me wonder how these basics can be unaligned and inconsistently managed in this age of social media importance.
Another digital storm which can highly affect the end outcome of a post or beautiful creative collage within a story, is the process and system chosen to – ahem – simplify the process. It’s worth bearing in mind that one system is always the best solution for one outcome, and simplicity is key especially when many people, working different schedules, need to curate a planned outcome together as easily as possible.
In conclusion, all agencies, whether digital, brand, ATL, PR or through the line, need to be acutely aware of their strategy and tone of voice when speaking to their different audiences including clients, collaborators, businesses, colleagues, and customers, be it online, through the line etc. The old adage that ‘consistency is king’ always rules and social, digital and content is always a chance to shine and communicate confidently. Less is more too. The agencies who blithely posted every day were not as interesting as the twice weekly stories with style. And the email newsletters which were created twice weekly? Not half as considered as the random monthly emails.
Okay, rant over, we all know it makes sense. Right?
GHBRAND have advised the following brands on their digital and social media strategy: Boxpark, Chelsea Football Club, DMA, Expedia, Microsoft, Tesco, Virgin Atlantic, Vodafone etc.
Georgia also was founder and MD of top 5 digital agency Zinc, part of Havas Media, for seven years.
For further information please contact georgia@ghbrand.co.uk