Language is a powerful tool and smart brands use it as one of their key brand assets when building their brand voice. A brand’s voice should seep effortlessly through marketing, cutting through ‘noise’ from competitors and expressing a unique personality to their audience. Here are some examples of brands that got it right.
Virgin Media
Their brand voice feels:
• Tongue-in-cheek • Easygoing • Informal • Playful
The cheeky ‘Let’s get it on’ vans are a perfect example of playfulness whilst linking to their services. Their “audience is youthful, intelligent, and tech-savvy, and we like speaking to them in their own language.” In addition, the Usain Bolt adverts are just another example of how Virgin Media connect with their audience in a playful manner.
Cancer Research
Their brand voice feels:
• Human • Direct and Personal • Authoritative, but friendly
Cancer Research UK’s Race for Life is a series of events raising money for research into all types of cancer. I personally admire the campaign ‘Cancer, We’re Coming to Get You’. The empowering, direct language literally ‘runs’ through all their advertising. It was a much needed honest and direct campaign that approached the topic of cancer head-on. I loved how this campaign highlighted the positivity and power of people supporting one another and lift the lid on a topic that should be expressed openly.
MailChimp
Their brand voice feels:
• We are plainspoken • We are genuine • We are translators • Our humour is dry
When I think of brand language, there are a few champions that spring to mind – MailChimp being high on the list. Their approach is usually informal, offering offbeat humour and a conversational tone. MailChimp clearly has fun with their language and brings joyous imagery to its users. They summarise their language as being “weird but not inappropriate, smart but not snobbish. We prefer winking to shouting.“
Innocent Drinks
Their brand voice feels:
• Informal • Light-hearted • Quirky • Witty • Playful
One of the most well-known brands in language is Innocent Drinks and they are renowned as successfully being informal and friendly. They have distanced themselves from being a disconnected company by using language to converse colloquially with their customers. Examples such as “This recipe is a bit special” allows Innocent Drinks to come across as down to earth with its customers.
Spotify
Their brand voice feels:
• Playful • Witty • Sincere • Passionate
A personal favourite of mine, Spotify champion their brand language with unexpected, playful and witty statements as shown in the below examples. Their engaging ‘in-joke’ style really engages with its customers. I believe Spotify’s brand language became a brand language trendsetter of recent years.
Ben & Jerry’s
Their brand voice feels:
• Fun • Authentic • Brave • A little controversial • Wacky
One of the most well known in brand language arena is Ben & Jerry’s. It all starts with their original brand values from which their business was based. The authentic and slightly controversial tone connects with people, the real core behind Ben & Jerry’s. I love how they engage the senses with scrumptious wording throughout all of their product descriptions. Take a look at the below example and tell me that you don’t want to devour the entire pot after reading that!
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