Overview
Your brand constantly battles to win over customers, build equity, and encourage brand recall. So, ideally, you want to communicate in a way your customers find immediately appealing. But while many brands only focus on design systems, fonts, and colors to showcase their differentiation, they often overlook the central, critical glue of it all: the brand voice.
You will learn in this article:
- What a brand voice is
- Why brand voice matters
- How to create a brand voice
- Tips for establishing your brand voice guidelines
- Some of the best brand voice examples
- How to access your free brand voice template
After finishing this article, you will understand how your brand identity ultimately translates into your brand voice and shapes your brand’s personality. Collectively, this brand understanding identifies what you stand for, what to communicate about your position in the market, and how to speak this message to your target audience.
What Is Brand Voice?
Brand voice is your brand’s personality. Bringing this brand voice definition to life, here’s an example.
A beachwear brand uses surfer slang in its marketing materials to convey a relaxed, on-the-beach vibe that matches its customer persona. A subtle yet powerful way to connect with your audience and shape your brand positioning.
We can convey brand voice through anything from text and images to emails and packaging design.
Some companies take “brand voice” literally. For example, Allstate uses actor Dennis Haysbert’s iconic deep, soothing voice to make you feel like “you’re in good hands.” Amazon puts little smiley faces on their packaging to let you know they’re a happy, friendly delivery company. At this point, companies can confuse brand voice with brand tone.
Brand Voice vs. Brand Tone
In branding, it’s essential to understand the difference between a brand’s voice and its tone. Brand voice refers to your brand’s overall personality and character conveyed through your communications and marketing materials. It is what you want your brand to be known for and how your target audience perceives you.
Brand tone refers to the specific emotions, moods, and attitudes conveyed in your messages, and it can vary by context and situation.
Simply put, a brand voice is what we say, whereas a brand tone is how we say it. For example, a brand can have a voice of sustainability but communicate it with deep concern or anger.
Differing tones attract differing audiences, even if the brand voice remains consistent.
You convey your brand voice anywhere your company communicates, so actively think about how you want your brand’s personality to come across before launching a marketing campaign.
Is Brand Voice Really That Important?
Your brand voice is the defining factor in how your brand comes across to your target market. It shapes everything you do, whether or not you do this intentionally. And if you’re not intentional about it, believe us, you still have a voice; it just might not be what you want.
In a crowded marketplace, standing out is essential to succeed. Developing a brand voice is a great way to showcase your brand’s unique personality and stand out through brand differentiation. A consistent, well-defined brand voice helps your business become more identifiable. Research shows that brands with consistent presentations can increase revenue by 33%.
Not only does a well-defined, well-executed brand voice help you stand out, but it can also help you attract customers.
Think about it; if you were Someone who wasn’t incredibly tech-savvy and wanted to buy a new computer, what would you choose?
- “10th-gen Intel Core i9 with GeForce RTX 3070 Super graphics card,”
- “fast and powerful, the perfect way to watch media.”
While both companies might offer an identical product, the first comes across as complex. It might attract more tech-savvy consumers, but unless a translator is on hand to switch the language, it would likely drive away the average person. The second company positioned itself as straightforward, appealing to more people, with a brand voice that Apple has seen massive success with!
Creating a consistent brand voice helps consumers identify with your business. Like in real life, once Someone gets a sense of your brand’s personality (and likes it), they’ll be more likely to develop a relationship and become a long-term customer.
The Benefits of a Brand Voice That Resonates
Having a brand voice is good, but having a powerful one that resonates beyond brand presence wins in today’s competitive landscape. A similar product exists on every corner and every device, making it not only about grabbing attention but keeping it.
Creating a brand voice that resonates creates conscious-level conversations and subconscious-level purchase intent. Making your brand voice distinct is a force multiplier that extends the reach of every marketing effort and strengthens your impact on consumers ready to buy.
How do you accomplish this? The brand voice must be part of your overall brand strategy.
Brand Voice As A Part of Your Brand Strategy
As with every part of your brand strategy, you must consider, test, and report on the impact of your brand voice in the marketplace.
Who is in charge of your brand voice? Is it your copywriter, brand manager, or communications director? Having a team member take ownership of the brand voice is the first step to ensuring it remains a conversation through your evolving brand strategy.
Creating and nurturing your brand personality may happen once every calendar year, but you must continuously monitor and discuss your brand voice.
How to Create a Brand Voice
Establishing a brand voice requires finding the intersection between you and the customer. Find agreement between your brand’s unique selling proposition and natural brand identity, and then make it flow with your customer’s hopes, wants, and desires.
Identifying your brand’s archetype, personality, and values will help establish the voice, but it does not guarantee that it’s a voice your target audience wants to hear.
So before you create your brand voice, be sure you understand who you are and everything you can know about your target customer.
Tips to Develop Your Brand Voice
Whether or not you know it, your brand has a voice, so why not work to develop it into something beneficial for your business?
Here are a few tips to help you develop your brand voice and create a unique personality that customers can identify with and stand out.
Be Consistent and Write Everything Down
Building a brand voice takes time and requires communication across various channels. Since there’s so much that contributes to your brand’s personality, a consistent voice is critical.
If you develop one voice for your social channels and another for your website copy, your customers will get confused. Incongruent brand consistency will prevent you from building a cohesive brand personality.
Ensure your brand voice is consistent across all your communications, social media posts, email blasts, and blogs.
For many brands, this is easier said than done. How many people contribute to your company’s communications across all your channels? There’s a good chance it’s more than one. That means everyone who works on your marketing campaigns needs to be on the same page regarding your brand voice. Documentation is vital at this stage of development and implementation.
Document your company’s personality traits, such as preferred vocabulary, phrases, values, and tone. Include plenty of examples to minimize confusion. A marketing manager or agency can review the reference guide to get a feel for the brand voice and whether it has a consistent tone.
Audit Your Current Voice
Even if you are not actively developing a clear brand voice, your business operations and consumer expectations are deciding one for you. Instead of starting from scratch, perform a brand audit by reviewing your past and current communications to see how your brand’s personality is already coming across to customers. From this, you will understand many of your existing brand voice characteristics.
Note how your audience interacts with each of your communications. If you get a lot of engagement on certain communications, identify the traits they share to see which voice resonates most with your customers. Then use that information to develop your cohesive, unique brand voice.
Who Is Your Target Audience?
Knowing your audience is rule number one in marketing. Think about the potential customer you’re trying to attract or who you want to keep. What kind of language or images would they identify with most?
Consider key audience demographics:
- Age
- Gender
- Location
- Interests
- Needs
- Pain Points
Once you understand your ideal audience, develop a unique brand voice that resonates with them.
For example, if you have an authentic Texas BBQ brand, you might try throwing in a “y’all” occasionally. Usually, slang isn’t ideal for corporate marketing, but in this case, your brand’s voice will be in tune with its region of origin.
Review and Make Changes
Once you document your brand voice guidelines, don’t just stick them on the shelf to collect dust. Brand voice isn’t static. Regularly review your brand voice document to identify any changes driven by social or marketplace trends.
For example, using emojis wouldn’t have been a part of any brand voice back in the 90s. Today, every brand that wants to show off its fun side uses emojis, sometimes several in one line!
It might help to have visual reminders about the importance of your brand voice. You may need to put a poster in your office with a dart that points to your specific place on a brand voice chart. It might seem over the top, but ideas like this help prevent your brand voice from becoming “out of sight, out of mind.”
Regularly review the brand guidelines for your “voice” and make changes accordingly.
Brand Voice Examples We Love
Brand voice examples come in all shapes and sizes. Continuing with our theme of being fresh, here are three examples.
Native
Native is a personal care company specializing in all-natural deodorants, soaps, and shampoos. The brand’s voice speaks of its commitment to sustainability and well-being, and its marketing emphasizes the significance of caring for your body and the environment. Native’s brand language is earthy, natural, and uplifting, reflecting the company’s position as an industry leader in eco-friendly personal care products.
The Honest Company
The Honest Company is a lifestyle brand that sells non-toxic, environmentally friendly household and personal care products. Its commitment to transparency and honesty defines its brand voice, and its marketing frequently focuses on informing consumers about the dangerous ingredients in many traditional products. The Honest Company’s brand language is direct, educated, and empowering, reflecting the company’s position as a market leader in safer, healthier household and personal care products.
The Gourmet Chef
The Gourmet Chef is a small kitchenware brand that offers a variety of high-quality, chef-inspired goods for home cooks. Taking home cooking to a higher degree of elegance and inventiveness gives their brand voice an elevated appeal. Their marketing features professional chefs demonstrating how to use their products in the kitchen. The Gourmet Chef’s brand language is aspirational, motivating, and knowledgeable, reflecting the company’s position as a premium distributor of kitchen products for discerning home cooks.
Show Off Your Brand Voice
Developing a consistent brand voice helps your brand stand out and stay recognizable. It should reflect your communication style, align with your audience, and be defined clearly in a brand voice guide. This is what makes brand voice matter it creates consistency across every communication channel. Once established, it should be reviewed and refined to stay relevant.
Social media
Consistency on social media requires discipline. The same voice should carry across every post. That means aligning your content calendar with your brand development strategy and ensuring the team responsible for voice reviews outputs regularly. Without this, your messaging becomes fragmented.
Content Marketing
Content often includes tone direction but lacks a defined voice. That gap creates inconsistency. Your voice should be applied across all content to support brand development in marketing. If not, the message breaks, especially when positioning conflicts with what the content promotes.
Packaging Design
Your voice is not just written. It shows up in design. Fonts, colors, and imagery all communicate your brand. These elements must align with your voice and support creative brand development. When they don’t, they create confusion and weaken the connection with consumers.
Advertising
Advertising drives conversion, but voice still matters. A mismatched tone can create short-term gains and long-term damage. Strong execution balances performance with consistency, helping to control brand development costs while reinforcing a clear, consistent brand.
Measuring The Effectiveness of Your Brand Voice
A clear brand voice only matters if it works in real interactions. You are not measuring tone in isolation. You are measuring how your brand’s personality and brand’s identity show up across the full experience, from marketing to customer service. That includes how consumers respond to a different tone, how well your voice guides and tone guidelines hold up, and whether the message is understood and acted on.
Testing needs to reflect real behavior. Surveys and focus groups provide directional input, but validation comes from in-market signals. A/B testing different executions shows which voice aligns best. Social listening and customer reviews reveal how people interpret your message. Sales data and analytics confirm whether that voice is driving engagement and purchase.
Brands like Dollar Shave Club built strong brand awareness by applying a consistent voice and testing how it performs, not just how it sounds. The goal is not to define a voice once and for all. It is to measure, refine, and ensure it continues to perform across every touchpoint.
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Having A Smash Brand Voice
SmashBrand is a data-driven packaging design agency that specializes in building brands with a strong brand voice that drives brand recognition and sharp brand positioning. We align brand messaging, brand communication, and brand values to create consistent experiences that build trust and long-term brand loyalty.
Our process integrates strategy, design, and testing into one system. We define the right voice, apply it across every touchpoint, and validate performance before launch. This ensures voice consistency and gives your brand the clarity it needs to stand out and convert in-market.
Kevin Smith is the founder of SmashBrand, a brand development agency specializing in the CPG and FMCG sectors. Under Kevin's guidance, SmashBrand seamlessly integrates brand strategy, design, and detailed consumer testing, ensuring impactful market outcomes and enhanced sales velocities for its clients.
Key milestones in his career:
Before establishing SmashBrand, Kevin ventured into entrepreneurship with Nutri-Sport at 21. Recognizing the untapped potential in sports nutrition, he rapidly expanded to seven retail locations within a year. This success led to the formation of a distribution company serving all nutrition stores throughout Arizona.
Subsequent ventures included pioneering e-commerce stores and launching Athletic Xtreme, a globally distributed sports nutrition brand. Notably, Athletic Xtreme won BodyBuilding.com's Brand of the Year in 2006 and found its place on the shelves of major retailers, from GNC and Vitamin Shoppe to Walmart successfully exiting in 2014.
Apart from brand milestones, Kevin's journey includes commendable service as a Marine Corps veteran, where he was honored as a DOD Marine of the Year in 2001.
While leading SmashBrand and investing in budding brands, Kevin is committed to mentoring aspiring CPG entrepreneurs. His profound industry knowledge, from grasping retail trends to understanding shelf dynamics, serves as invaluable guidance for brands striving to carve out their niche.
Central to Kevin's approach is a consistent philosophy: Marry actionable, data-centric findings with proven strategies to ensure brands stand out and succeed in retail.
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