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Cat Stevens sang the famous words, “I love my dog as much as I love you. But you may fade, my dog will always come through.” As I round the two-month mark away from home, there is one thing on my mind every day. And it’s how much I miss my dog.

I’ve had so many psilocybin, ketamine, and ayahuasca sessions that my soul is a little sick of having my entire being challenged to the point where I look death—and my own sanity—square in the face. But for those of us unlucky enough to have battles with the dark side of the human mind, the struggle must go on. So, wish me luck. Oh, and hey, enjoy today’s post!

STRATEGISM 🔮

A Guide To Crafting Your Brand Voice

What is the voice of a brand? That is today’s question. And what does it really matter? Well, it seems that brand does matter—a lot. The average person is estimated to encounter between 6,000 and 10,000 advertisements each day. This includes ads across all media, such as digital platforms, TV, radio, print, and more.

Think about that. We are advertised to ~8,000 times per day on average. How the hell are we supposed to stand out? Well, one way is through a well-defined, nicely fitting brand voice.

Your brand voice, as much or more so than logos, fonts, and colours, is how you want to talk to the world. How you want to be seen. A consistent voice can make a brand feel more relatable, distinctive, and most importantly, trustworthy.

So today, let’s dive deep into what it takes to craft the ultimate brand voice for you and your organisation that will have your customers dashing for the Kool-Aid.

Brand voice through a historic lens

The ‘brand voice’ is somewhat of a novel idea. Rewind 150 years, and advertising was really about features and not much else. Take John Smedley of Matlock, Derbyshire, and his famous Chillie Paste as an example.

We really only know what it is, supposedly, good for. We know it is for rheumatism, lumbago, gouty pains—whatever the heck they are—bronchitis, and so on. We are even told what the ‘outer package’ and ‘inner package’ look like. Everything was quite literal.

During the mid-20th Century, as the advertising industry grew, companies began to recognise the importance of differentiating their brands beyond products alone.

But possibly the most famous example of beautiful ad copy from the last century was Volkswagen’s famous Think Small campaign. Written by Julian Koenig at the Doyle Dane Bernbach (DDB) agency in 1959, the campaign was ranked as the best advertising campaign of the twentieth century by Ad Age.

*_{Don’t worry if you can’t read the text—I share the full copy below.}

The copy for the famous ad was light-hearted, playful, and free-flowing. And it pushed against the competition. It was the perfect ad.

And it really was one of the catalysts for a new beginning in advertising. Mad Men-style ad-pushers all across the globe were trying to emulate Volkswagen’s hit, and in doing so, moved the idea of a brand voice forward.

Brand archetypes

One of my favourite examples of brand archetypes was from a pitch I was forwarded more than a decade ago. It lays out ten different personas your brand can take on (some sources cite 12 archetypes).

With a glance, you get it right? Selling stocks: speak as The Wise. Selling porn, The Seductress is probably a better fit.

When building out a brand identity, though, you don’t need to speak in the same voice all day, every day. Like humans with real-world personalities, you need different strokes for different folks. With this in mind—usually—you would choose a primary persona, followed by a couple of secondaries. My startup, Athyna, for example, used The Joker as our primary tone, followed by The Rebel and The Dreamer as our secondaries.

You might be a design agency that works with a range of clients, from tech startups to fashion brands. When working with startups, you may adopt a casual, energetic tone that resonates with their fast-paced, innovative culture—kinda like The Joker or The Rebel. But when engaging with an old-money, luxury fashion label, you may shift to a more refined, sophisticated voice that reflects their premium brand image, using an elegant, discerning tone. More towards The Friend, The Maiden, or The Wise.

A real-world example

At Athyna, we spent time developing our brand voice. It’s been refined along the way, but the original exercise went something like this. First, my co-founder and I (yes, for a few months I had a co-founder) modelled out the business itself on a quick Lean Canvas Exercise. Then we worked on our mission, vision, and values in a few very short exercises.

This gave us what we wanted to do in the world, who we were building for, and what we aligned with culturally. Next was the fun part.

Our legendary creative director, Josefina, has worked with Google, Red Bull, AT&T, Paramount, Estée Lauder, and more, so I asked her for a quote on how she thinks about brand voice.

I am somebody who probably over-indexes on brand as a strategic advantage. And overall, although it’s not perfect, I think we are in a nice spot with our tone of voice.

Other examples from less cool companies

Now that we have heard how the greatest company on the planet does brand voice, let’s take a look at how some of the also-rans—Nike, Google, Rolex, and M&Ms—communicate their brand voice.

Example #1 - Nike and The Hero

Nike is the perfect example of a company that leans heavily on the archetype of The Hero. An example of this in action was the support Nike showed to NFL star Colin Kaepernick when he took a knee during the national anthem.

That said, I imagine this would have deeply entrenched their love for their primary target market, which would be the more affluent, liberal folk living in big-city America.

Example #2 - Google and The Wise

Google, on the other hand, is an excellent example of a company embodying the Wise brand archetype. Their mission "to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful" positions them as a knowledgeable guide helping people navigate through the ‘information superhighway’ (or German: infobahn).

Google's minimalist design and focus on delivering the most relevant search results position them as a trusted source of information and insight. By constantly innovating and expanding its offerings, from search to maps to AI assistants, Google establishes itself as a wise leader, ushering us into a more connected, technologically empowered future.

Example #3 - Rolex and The King

Another example is Rolex, which comfortably wears The King as its brand archetype. Known for its luxury watches, Rolex positions itself as a symbol of success, prestige, and exclusivity.

By owning a Rolex, customers feel they are part of an elite group that has achieved a level of mastery and success that the average human peasant could only dream of. James Bond type.

_{*Not sure why I went too hard on Rolex just now. Something took over my fingers. I simply could not control it.}

Example #4 - M&Ms and The Joker

And finally, we have M&Ms, the ultimate gagster of a brand. If you don’t love the famous M&Ms commercials that have run for decades on our screens, you have either been living under a rock or simply have a cold, cold heart. And you cannot be my friend. Seriously though—the value M&Ms have accrued over the years but these friendly little chocolatey friends should not be underestimated.

Some of my favourite brand voices today

Here are a few of my personal favourite brand voices that I see around the internet today. First, we’ll start with beehiiv, the tool this very newsletter is built upon. It’s lighthearted, silly, and irreverent. Lower case is en vogue thanks to Chipotle.

I don’t know about you but either the same 13 year old is running Hubspot’s account as well, or this is one of the biggest coincidences (coincidi?) since The Great Dennis The Menace Coincidence of 1951.

When good brand goes wrong

As with all things people hold dear, pivoting away from a brand people know and love can result in massive backlash. Clothing brand GAP has seen this happen multiple times in the last decade. In 2012, as Hurricane Sandy ravaged the East Coast of the United States, The Gap tweeted what could in fact be the most insensitive tweet to ever hit the Twitterverse.

The tweet was seen as highly insensitive and out of touch with the severity of the situation, a clear lack of awareness of an appropriate crisis voice. The archetype they must have used here was The Idiot.

Fun fact: this faux pas came on a couple of years after an attempt to fancy up their brand, following the 2008 recession, which was a huge disappointment. This 72-hour blunder cost $100M of design work and a 3% drop in stock price.

The point here is not to poke fun at GAP and Nivea. And it’s also not to say that you should never take risks or move outside your tone of voice. But the fact is, your audience listens. They care. They have an emotional attachment to the colours you use, the fonts you chose, and the jingle your advertisements made in between their Saturday morning cartoons. And they sure as hell have an attachment to your brand voice—the thing most likely to make them feel something. Advertising great David Ogilvy said it best.

How you can apply this

• Start with the important stuff: The first step towards crafting any brand archetype is to ensure you have a mission, vision, and values. What your brand stands for, its unique selling proposition, and the values it embodies.

• Define your ICP: Your audience will be next. You wouldn’t speak to a mature audience with The Joker's tone of voice in most cases. So understand your ICP, where they hang out, and then you can start to think of how you want to communicate with them.

• Choose your archetype: Get your leadership, brand, and creative stakeholders together and define your primary and secondary archetypes.

• Develop your guidelines: Knowing you speak as The Maiden is fine, but you will quickly get off track without guardrails for your creative teams. ‘This is what The Maiden does do, and this is what she does not.’

• Ensure consistency: Once you have your guidelines, you need to go and reverse-engineer your brand across every externally and internally facing touchpoint. Start externally, but don’t forget internally as well, over time.

• Double down but monitor: Once you have your brand, double down in every place you can. But monitor it over time. As new information—or a new ICP—emerges, be ready to tweak and refine as you go.

In sum

In summary, I think of brand on the same scale as you would think of an NPS score. If your brand is a 1-6, it’s working against you. A 7 or an 8 and you are ‘meh’, but build a brand to a 9 or god forbid, a 10/10 and the world is truly your oyster.

So build wisely, my friends. Take the appropriate care to set the foundation of your brand because, in business—just as it is with culture—brand is the gift that keeps on giving.

Further study

• Brand Archetypes: The Definitive Guide - Unknown

• The Ultimate Guide to Brand Archetypes - August, 2022

• Creating Your Brand Voice: A Complete Guide - December, 2022

And that's it! You can follow me on Twitter and LinkedIn, and also don’t forget to check out Athyna while you’re at it.

BRAIN FOOD 🧠 

TWEETS OF THE WEEK 🐣 

TOOLS WE RECOMMEND 🛠️

Every week, we highlight tools we like and those we actually use inside our business and give them an honest review. Today, we are highlighting Hyperbound*—the AI sales coach to help you quickly evolve and reinforce your playbooks as you scale.

See the full set of tools we use inside of Athyna & Open Source CEO here.

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