Why you should – and how you can – audit your brand’s voice

BEFORE YOU CHANGE YOUR BRAND VOICE – MEASURE HOW IT’S DOING.

We’re working with brand owners all around the world to make their brand voice more distinctive, more valuable. One thing I always say is that before you think of changing anything, measure how it’s doing now. Why?

Because you want to see the good as well as the bad, of course.

But also, once you’ve put all that time, money, professional capital into changing it, you want to be able to show the difference you’ve made.

Doing an audit of your brand voice is actually quite simple and you can do it yourself. Of course, it feels a bit like going to the doctors’ for a check up: it’s going to take time, it’s probably going to be intrusive and what are you going to do if you don’t like the results of the test?

But it’s important for your brand’s health. It’s not always that intrusive. And most importantly, where we’ve seen results that people haven’t been happy, really big profound changes have then happened in the next 6 months.

BECAUSE IT’S ONLY WHEN YOU’RE VERY CLEAR THAT SOMETHING
ISN’T GOOD ENOUGH, THAT CHANGE HAPPENS.
AND THEN IT HAPPENS FAST!

The changes we see after a brand audit are that the voice aligns more with the brand’s values, more work is done in less time – often with the same or even fewer writers – more awards are won (if you like that kind of thing), and engagement with customers goes up.

HOW TO DO YOUR OWN BRAND VOICE AUDIT: it’s actually very easy. First, look at how your brand voice aligns with your brand values in different channels: take a random sample of material from different channels and score it 1-5.

Next, take a look at how much time and money you’re spending revising work – it takes a lot of time to reviewing versions 1-20 until you’re happy to sign it off, but that time isn’t free. Look at the relative cost-effectiveness of your in-house team vs. your agencies. When you’ve measured that, you can see what needs to be changed and what doesn’t.

If you want someone like Verbal Identity to audit your brand voice, it normally takes around 2 weeks from brief to you having a Board-ready report.

A Board-ready report from us includes:

– metrics on how well aligned your brand voice is with your brand values,
– how competitive your brand voice is with your competitors
– and what it could learn from some of the best brands in the world

But it will also show you:

– the skillset levels of your teams
– what it would cost to change your brand voice
– how long it will take
– AND THE SAVINGS YOU CAN EXPECT

The truth is that today, the brand voice is much more complicated than it was 20 or 10 years ago. More channels, more writers, more language, more customers expecting to be in a dialogue.

Getting your brand language right is one of the simplest things you can do to make your brand highly competitive.

If you’d like to find out more about how we’ve helped brand owners from automotive, brewing, skincare, luxury…whatever it is, whether they’re mega or start-up, please email me. I’ll send you a short paper covering what we do and how we do it. You can also read about copywriting training we offer here. 

Thank you,
Chris