Why is a consistent brand voice so important?

“Getting an audience is hard. Sustaining an audience is hard. It demands a consistency of thought, of purpose, and of action over a long period of time.” ⁣

Bruce Springsteen

Much to the chagrin of my partner, I’ve been listening to a lot of Bruce Springsteen lately. ⁣

And it’s made me realise that The Boss is never wrong.

(Maybe he made one or two bad choices…) 

You probably already know that your brand needs to be consistent every time you do anything at all.

You need to make sure the logo you use, the colours you use, the breathing room you give your logo, etc… all stay the same.

But those things are for designers to talk about. 

I’m here, as always, to talk about words.

Just like you wouldn’t change your brand’s colours and logo whenever you felt like it, the way you write needs to stay the same consistently too.⁣

If you want to grow and maintain an engaged audience for your brand, you can’t be using a scattergun voice that goes from cool to boring corporate blah in a hot second.⁣

⁣It makes you look like that annoying person you knew at school that changed their personality depending on who they were talking to or what they wanted.

Inconsistent, inauthentic and untrustworthy.

On top of that, there are tonnes of studies that show that doing one thing consistently is much better than a scatter-gun, always-changing-on-the-fly approach.

Not to mention, consistency = mullah.

According to Lucidpress, brands that present themselves consistently see an average revenue increase of 23%.

NOICE.

Beyond that, though, it just makes good, common sense. If your voice is all over the place, then you run the risk of a customer not recognising your brand, even if they’ve come across you before.

Keep it consistent and you seem pro, put together, trustworthy, confident and authentic.

And that’s like the Holy Trinity (but for five things… Quintet?!) for any brand.

But that doesn’t mean that your brand needs to sound *exactly* the same in every situation.

While your voice — the essence of your brand — should always be consistent, your tone is contextual.

Just like in real life you change your tone depending on the mood, context, situation and audience, you should dial your tone up and down according to your situation.

Take a look at Virgin. They’re one of the Big Dawgs of branding (and pioneers of brand voice, too), so it stands to reason that the Virgin brand voice is consistent. They know how important that is.

And yet they use a variation of that voice to promote everything from flights to mobile networks.

The message changes. The tone changes. The voice even changes a little (they’ve got lots of sub-brands) but it still always feels distinctly Virgin, and as such, carries with it all of the positive connotations and expectations customers have come to expect from the brand.

A consistent brand voice lets your customers know what to expect. On top of just demonstrating authenticity, a consistent brand voice also breeds trust. (And, not to sound too much like Yoda, but trust leads to sales.)

That’s the power of a consistent brand voice.

(Oh, while we’re on the topic, this Virgin Mobile brand voice document is a fantastic example of how useful a well thought out tone of voice document can be. Check it out.)

Bringing it back to Bruce; Born in the USA, Adam Raised A Cain and The River are all completely different tonally, but they’re all unmistakably “Bruce”. ⁣

Your brand is Bruce. Go out and do yo’ thing consistently and it will be Tougher Than The Rest.

(Sorry, I really tried to resist a Springsteen pun, but sh*tty jokes are my kryptonite.)