This article is written by James Freeman-Gray and taken from CMSWire, where James guest posts. You can see the original article on DAM, and why we shouldn’t forget why it started, here.

I was exposed to the need for DAM a few days ago. While wrestling with some clothes in a changing room my eye was drawn to some small graphics about the care and attention this business put into making its products.

Beautifully art directed, fantastic copy — they stopped me in my tracks and I wanted to share them.

I’m a sucker for subtle, thoughtful communication — the contemplative, diligent stuff that’s powerful because it isn’t trying to shout louder than everyone else, it just has a clearer voice.

Dam builds engagement

So, there I was. Desperate to engage with this brand — to use my social platforms to congratulate them for creating compelling, engaging communication I actually wanted to share. Sadly, despite trying to connect with them, the response was lukewarm to say the least. They didn’t have copies, couldn’t send me anything, didn’t even know where the artwork was stored. I was left feeling a touch discouraged.

In the end, the blurry photo I took myself acted as the customer’s voice of their brand. A small, but relevant example of the need for a joined-up DAM system, one which could have reacted to a customer’s needs and gone towards making their communication a virtue rather than detracting from it with my poor attempt at a reproduction.

This got me thinking.

DAM is one of the by-products of a new way of marketing and engaging with customers. It’s an expression of a more relationship focused method to interact with customers. It’s also why a fundamental perspective change is needed on how businesses communicate.

It’s a balancing act

Evolving DAM strategy, just as with the boom of social, is a rebuttal to the one-way, minimal channel, broadcast communications model. It’s a shift in the balance of power between business and the customer.

But with this new model come new responsibilities. Not just to interact on the channels customers choose to use, but also to be mindful of this balancing of the relationship. And perhaps an acceptance that there is only so much you can control. This, for me, is the key to where DAM can become a true asset for businesses.

Moves to control asset management are perhaps the businesses best chance at, if not controlling what customers say, then certainly the brand integrity with which they depict them. But this misses the point of why DAM has come to exist in the first place. It’s an opportunity to play to the shift in power, and to use it as a vehicle to enable customers to interact and promote communication made for them.

Giving the customer control

If I had my way, every DAM strategy, and in fact every communication strategy, would come hand-in-hand with a MFT (made for them) counterpart. A reminder that asset management of this kind exists because customers now have a share of how a brand is perceived and communicated, and the business is responsible for delivering the assets in the right way, at the right time.

The role of DAM, as much as retaining brand integrity, is to reach out when customers choose to interact, and ensure the systems are there to support them when they do. To build the relationships that lead to advocacy not through tighter controls but through greater empowerment.

To realize the real winners from a customer-focused DAM solution, and social, and the shift in power, are the customers — and through proxy, the business.

To recognize the personal, the thoughtful and the individual. Because it’s not your brand, it’s your customers.

To treat asset management as a way to control is perhaps missing the very point DAM has become so critical in the first place. With a new set of rules for the game comes the need for recognizing the need to control less and enable more.

A big challenge, and the need for a new perspective for many organisations? Quite possibly. A chance to make the most of shifting nature of customer relationships and conversations? Absolutely.

As evidence for the importance of tone of voice (ToV), I’d like to call Tesco and HP Sauce as witnesses. Tesco recently offered the new iPad for £49.99 on its website.  HP Sauce changed the amount of salt in its recipe.  Both have been pretty controversial and generated plenty of social and conventional media noise.

It’s worth looking at the responses from both organisations.  Both contain the three most significant mistakes that organisations make when they’re responding to criticism.  They’re a pretty common trinity, so let’s call them “CorpSpeak”, “It wasn’t me, sir!” and “Passive third person”.

Here’s HJ Heinz, responding to criticism of their new sauce formula:

“Thank you for contacting us with regard to HP Sauce.

The essential ingredients for HP, the nation’s number one brown sauce, include Tomatoes, Malt and Spirit Vinegars, Molasses, Spices and Tamarind, and these have not changed over the passage of time.

In line with changes in consumer tastes, we have long been committed to reducing added salt in recipes to meet voluntary targets with support from consumer health campaigners. This very minor change to our famous recipe was made in November last year, and rigorous consumer tests confirmed there was no significant difference in flavour between the old and new recipes. HP Sauce still tastes great!”

And here’s Tesco:

“We always look to offer our customers unbeatable value but unfortunately this is an IT error that is now being corrected.”

CorpSpeak

Like “it wasn’t me” and “passive”, CorpSpeak is designed to put as much distance between the organisation and the problem as possible.  It consists of a sort of shinyfaced, fingers in ears, la-la-la-can’t-hear-you tone of voice.  In this case, it’s lines like “HP Sauce still tastes great!” and “We always offer our customers unbeatable value.”  These may well be true, but there is a more effective way of persuading customers – particularly disgruntled ones.

Take a step over to them, acknowledge their view, then start to move the argument on.  Because you’ve acknowledged the validity of their views, customers will be happier to listen to you.  A bit of humility goes an awfully long way.

“It wasn’t me, sir!”

There are times to stand up and take responsibility.  Dealing with customer complaints is one of them – even when you’re right.  Tone of voice is an effective way to do this.  Heinz tries to lay the metaphorical blame on health campaigners, the consumer and taste panels.  Tesco aims for the old favourite, the IT department.  In both cases, it would be more effective – and certainly more authentic – to take the hit and accept responsibility.  It’s often a tiny difference in tone of voice that makes the difference.  Tesco could have talked about “our IT department” or had a few words in the statement from the Head of IT explaining what happened.

“Passive third person”

This is one of the most powerful tone of voice techniques organisations try to distance themselves from blame – yet most people never even realise it’s being deployed.  Instead, they just get a feeling they’re being weaseled.

Examples:

“This very minor change to our famous recipe was made in November last year…”

and

“…this is an IT error that is now being corrected.”

Notice how these things just seem to happen, with no people involved?  The recipe change was just made – no-one was involved.  The IT error is now being corrected – not by anyone, it’s just being corrected.  It wasn’t us – we didn’t do it.

A rather more authentic tone of voice involves you.  For example:

“We made a very minor change to the recipe…” or “Our IT department is working to fix the problem.”

It’s a tiny tonal difference, but a powerful one.  Have people do things, say things and fix things in your written material.  It adds authenticity and believeability.

If you can write for customers in a way that avoids this rather weaselly trinity, I guarantee you’ll see results.  You’ll see fewer complaints escalating.  You’ll find customers easier to deal with – and happier to deal with you.  Simply by being a bit more human, a bit more authentic in your tone of voice, you’ll make yourself more accessible to your customers.  In short, as well as concrete, measurable changes, they will feel differently about your organisation. Don’t believe me?  How do you feel about Innocent Smoothies and BT.  Tone of voice in communication has played the significant part in forming those opinions.

It’s hard to do this – social media in particular – can be unrelenting and unstinting in criticism – but the implicit authenticity in a straightforward tone of voice starts to build dialogue rather than monologue. And dialogue is the foundation of customer relationships.

Customer Experience people are, after all, a bit like him.  They face the customer and their own organisation simultaneously.  I’m going to suggest, though, that it’s time to forsake Janus and worship Zeus instead.

Why?

Because Homer called Zeus “the god of strangers.”  And that’s precisely what customer experience people need to be – strangers.

Everyone talks about being ‘customer facing’ or ‘customer centric’.  It sounds fair enough, but it fails to take perspective into account.  If you’re facing the customer, that means you’re standing inside your organisation, looking out.  Your perspective will always be that of an insider.  To transform customer experience, you need to be outside, looking in with the perspective of the customer – because it’s only then that you spot the real problems, the real touchpoint failures, the real communication gulfs.

I had two letters this morning, one from First Direct, the other from Virgin Money.  They illustrated perfectly why Zeus beats Janus every day of the week.

Both letters did nearly everything good, Janus-worshipping customer comms is supposed to.  Both were – pretty much – in plain English.  Both signposted where I could find more information.  Both were signed by a named contact.  You get the idea.  But one reinforced my relationship with the organisation that sent it.  The other nearly had me reaching for the phone to cancel.

First Direct wrote about a credit card I’d almost forgotten I had, with a few pounds still owing on it.  I’d set up my account just to make the minimum repayments. They suggested I could be paying more interest this way and that I should think about upping my direct debit.  Fantastic.  They’ll make a few quid less on interest, but will I be telling everyone I know how great they are?  You bet.  Up goes their NPS.

Virgin Money wrote too, telling me about some new terms and conditions.  There was a slightly weaselly letter and an 8-page booklet of Ts and Cs, all set in 8pt font.  Yes, it was in plainish English – but that didn’t matter.  The whole thing was incomprehensible in a practical sense.  Yes, there were changes to Ts and Cs, but what were they?  Which ones had changed?  How would they affect me?  Were things worse than before or better?  No-one had sat on the outside of the process – been a stranger – and thought about how the customer would understand the pack.

I tweeted about it and got a reply.  Virgin said “we can make a copy available in an alternative format if you’d prefer” thus showing they’d completely missed the point. They were inside, facing out, worshipping Janus.

It’s only when you stand outside your organisation, in the place of the customer, that you can get any sense of how to communicate effectively.  You need to be a stranger.  Most customer experience people think they do it.  But when was the last time you sat down and wrote a list of all the unspoken questions your customer is likely to have, and answered them?  When was the last time you trialled a piece of customer-facing communication on someone who’d never seen it before?  When was the last time you meaningfully sought out and listened to a customer’s views on your communication.

Being an outsider takes guts.  It’ll often put you at variance with your organisation.  But, when you do, it’ll transform the way you communicate with your customers.  And that, in turn, transforms your business.

Customer Service is in the difficult cavern between the needs and mentality of the customer, and the needs and mentality of the business. It’s the bridge between the corporation and the individual – and this is perhaps the issue.

Having been exposed a a wide range of customer support centres, I think most customers would be shocked at how dedicated and customer-centric these environments often are. There’s a lot of people who do care, who do want to help. Too often though, they’re also just too disempowered to do so.

The shield of responsibility

Customer Service can often act as a bulletproof vest against the customer’s needs. Systems and processes are set up to protect the organisation. To shield it from requests it feels are unreasonable or don’t directly improve the bottom line. The issue with this is the negative equity it produces from every single customer who gets confronted with the brick wall of “no”. Equally, the impact it has on people working in those environments is significant – in cultural and perspective.

For us, the customer service or call centre’s remit is to be the customer’s champion. To be the gatekeeper of the brand the business promised to deliver on through its millions in advertising and brand.

This is a huge responsibility, and one which is often carried out with minimal scope for adding value to the customer journey. If a department is focused internally, it will never be able to change its focus to the emotional needs of those who bought.

Empowerment vs procedure

If a Customer Service centre is dedicated by procedure, it will act that way. Every possible angle is covered by a system, by a protocol, or whatever management intervention is necessary. The problem here is that you fall into the “computer says no” mentality that causes huge frustration for both sides.

People are complicated, and their issues (or perception of them) is equally complex and irrational. Watching a cold, thoughtful process collide with a frustrated customer is a fascinating experience, and one which only highlights the disconnect between what the business wants and the needs of the customer.

Sure, process is important, but empowerment is king. Mark Mullen, CEO at First Direct recently commented that “86% of First Direct complaints are resolved on first call!” Why? Because they empower their people (not staff) to help the customer, not to obey process.

Quicker issue resolution and higher retention saves businesses huge amounts, and ultimately contributes to positive brand equity. Equally, it can have a significant impact on the mentalities of those facing the customer.

Culture, mission and permission

Creating a culture of empowerment can have a huge impact on customer perception, but equally huge reductions in cost from quicker issue resolution, better debt recovery and increased retention rates. Empowerment means, to some degree, risk – as it involves trusting people to make informed decisions about how best to approach a problem. Trust then is perhaps the biggest obstacle for organisations to overcome if they’re to build a culture that empowers rather than hinders.

Customer Service departments need support to redefine their mission, from shield to customer champion. An overt and public declaration that their role is to do whatever is necessary to delight the customer rather than wholly protect the bottom line. Customer Service are the ambassadors of your brand promises, but they don’t have hundreds of millions in PR and advertising to plaster over issues. They have a real-time connection with a customer, usually in a emotional situation. They are the interface between organisation and human, and they should be facing towards the customer.

Organisations are, by and large, focused on acquisition. Sure, there are some trail blazers out there fighting the good fight from a retention and customer delight model, but, culturally these are few and far between. This isn’t fundamentally wrong, but it does require some careful thought where the customer is involved.

A cultural of empowerment, and a customer-centric approach to issue resolution are invaluable tools for any businesses bottom line – they just require a different perspective.

• one of your ads?
• one of your statements or invoices?

Another question… which one do most organisations spend more budget, time and care on?

It’s odd, isn’t it? All that thinking that goes intothe ATL and acquisition, all that investment and energy. Yet there’s so much potential for customer delight and retention in the hidden communications. The stuff that rarely gets a blue-sky brainstorming session. Rarely gets brought up in conversations about how have the biggest impact with the communication that an organisation already uses.

Perhaps because they’re not immediately obvious, or sexy, or likely to get an award, they tend to be the ‘orphans’ of the organisation. Customer Services can’t often retain full responsibility for them. Neither can Accounts – nor IT. Marketing doesn’t always get involved either. So they get produced by a little steering group of IT, Ops and Customer Services. No comms specialist involved. And often it shows.

Thing is, these little hidden communications are the ones which matter the most to customers. Delivery notes, T&Cs, instruction manuals, user guides. These are the communications that customers interact with, that they take action on, that they need to understand. These are the communications they turn to when things go wrong, when they need to know what to do. They are phenomenally important. That’s because they’re the communications that really deliver on your promises, when your customer needs reassurance the most.

Changing your perspective and looking more closely at them can show you potential customer interactions you’d maybe not even thought of. It can open up doorways into having a significant impact on customer perspective or NPS, all without costly infrastructure changes.

Hidden communications are a huge source of opportunity, not just to improve the overall quality of communication but also to find hidden gems that will delight customers when they need you to delight them most.

The reason is simple. As much as we try to deny it, we are emotional and not rational creatures. People make decisions for emotional reasons. Yes, they’ll give you beautifully logical reasons for their behaviour if you ask, but these will be skillful post-rationalisations for deep-seated emotional reactions. And this is just as true for your B2B customers as your B2C. Undervalue the emotional aspects of your communications and you can have the best processes possible – you’ll still hemorrhage customers, perhaps without even realising why.

Basic human needs

People have a series of basic human needs (Griffin and Tyrrell, 2003). They need respect, security, attention, autonomy and control, amongst a whole range of other factors. So how does your customer communication deliver these? In short, how much humanity is there in the way you communicate?

Often, from inside an organisation it can be hard to see. One gets used to stock phrases and standard paragraphs and can miss the emotional overtones. So try a quick test. It’s just a rough measure, but a good place to start to see where you could make improvements.

How to start

Start with your current customer comms. Take ten minutes and print off a quick selection of your customer-facing material. Not the mainstream stuff, but the standard paragraphs, maybe a debt recovery letter and a response to a complaint. What messages do those communications send? What’s the tone of voice? Is there respect, autonomy and attention? What emotions do they generate?

Do your debt recovery letters, for example, treat customers who’ve fallen behind with respect – or are they straight in with threats and big sticks? It’s always a good idea to leave room for escalation.

All your communications matter

And everything matters, not just the statements and bills. Your customers will judge you and have an emotional reaction to every single thing they get. If you’re a hotel chain, that’s the little card slip-cases room keys come in and the folder of information in the rooms. If you’re a car manufacturer, it’s the service letters and notes about winter checks. If you’re selling on-line, it’s the whole post-sale experience. They’re all opportunities to use emotion to build relationships.

Because when you use your comms to make people feel differently about your organisation, you make a powerful bond that will keep them with you – no matter how hard your competitors try to poach them.

The correspondence I had from the watch company… not so good. I wanted to be reassured I’d made the right choice in spending more on a repair than most people blow on a weekend in a smart hotel. With champagne.

I also wanted the communications to sell me the quality of work they were going to do – to explain the processes behind the price, to make me feel special, to tell me I was one of the cognoscenti for buying their brand. They didn’t.

It had nothing to do with how much they care about service.  That was clear from the quality of work.  This company employs real craftsmen.  But applying the same perfectionist standards to their communications would mark them out from their competitors as clearly as a new tourbillon.

The difference – luxury and commodity

Luxury brands exist in a different world from commodities. It’s a world where experience is all. Walk into Argos to buy a commodity Casio and you get one sort of experience. Walk into an authorised dealer to buy an IWC, a Piaget or a Lange & Söhne watch and things will be rather different.

This difference in experience is absolutely key. Why? Because people buy a luxury brand for what it says about them – as much as for the thing itself. That means the brand needs to make that experience overt, clear and distinctive throughout.

Making the luxury world real

Everything is geared to making the experience – and the luxury world – real. For some customers it is. For others – the majority – it’s aspirational. That means, when they touch the brand, it needs to be solid and real or they’ll stop believing in it.

But the world won’t always be perfect. And the higher a brand raises aspirations, the further it has to fall when things go wrong. And that’s how I felt when my favourite watch company sent me the estimate for servicing my watch. A bit let down. As though the brand I loved – and have bought into – cracked a little.  It was a little like taking the back off one of my Glashütte watches and finding a battery.

There was nothing dreadful about the stuff they sent me – it was polite and accurate. But it didn’t try to reassure me, convince me they’d be the best people to do the work or give me any sense of the brand I’d bought into.   People want to be acknowledged by premium brands; to feel they’re special, part of the club, members.

Communications – the measure of the brand

Every single communication a luxury brand has with its customers is a chance to prove that the brand has real depth. And, because people need to interact with the brand functionally, the service comms needed to be at least as good as the ads, if not better.

Vital at every stage of the process

That’s why communications at every stage of the process – not just purchase – are more vital to your brand than the ads and events. That’s why service estimates, instruction booklets, guarantee cards all matter. That’s why they need not only to carry your brand values but embody them. The process needs to run like a Bentley engine – unobtrusive, smooth, quietly efficient.  In short, they need to delight as much as the original product.

Without the same care – or more – than your ads, the whole thing comes down like a house of cards.

By the way – the watches in the photos don’t give any hints about which watch I’ve just had back from service!

Written by Mark McArthur-Christie

“Leadership involves the creation of powerful narratives…that are much more than mission statements or messages. They are actual stories where there are goals and obstacles, where good and bad things can happen along the way, and where the people involved feel part of an enterprise that’s trying to end up in a better place. Top businesses are using stories to share knowledge and build effective corporate cultures.”

Howard Gardner, Harvard University

Well said Howard! Brand stories saw a revival about 10 years ago. Sadly, the idea has never found the credit it’s really due. Why?

Firstly, true brand stories are simply not there to be direct sales tools. Secondly, and most fundamentally, brand stories only work if there’s a deep authenticity to them.

Let me explain.

Selling stuff

We’re all looking for that little edge – that final, gentle push that makes a potential customer buy from you rather than the next guy. Selling through stories is a fairly effective way of doing this – but it’s not the same as your Brand Story. Sales stories usually end up being more like embellished case studies than real “stories” – nothing wrong with that, but they don’t serve the same purpose. Look at it this way:

Sales stories can help sell the businesses product.

Brand stories explain the reason that business exists, and therefore its value.

Put another way; Sales stories prompt a call to action, Brand Stories give a reason to believe.

Brand stories encapsulate the journey for that business, the highs and lows, the successes and failures, the visionary who saw the World slightly differently and went out to change it. They are the expression of an inner belief system that builds authentic depth to a business; and authenticity and depth are key to differentiation.

Sales stories can be used by staff to leverage a potential sale but the process is different and brings about different results. It’s more focused on the benefits behind a product, that you can encapsulate in a narrative. Useful, and effective, but not a Brand Story.

Brand stories and the “why”

Behind every great business is a “why”. This “why” drives everything that business does, and often the way that it’s done. It often comes out in stories, which add a layer of character and depth to the business and, by proxy, what it sells. But you’re buying in to that business’s “why”.

Great businesses always have a compelling “why” underpinning them, or more accurately, they’ve recognised the value of a Brand story in supporting their position.

Finding, encapsulating and expressing that “why” can bring a dimension to a business that’s often lacking. It solves the “your product, service and delivery are all as good as the next person’s, so what next?” conundrum.

For anyone interested in the reasons for the importance of “why” I’d recommend Start with Why by Simon Sinek.

Authenticity is key

The key to a great Brand Story is authenticity. We’ve found this time and time again – when a story doesn’t quite ring true it undermines a customer’s belief in the business. Stories are about unrelated events, about people, about failure and humanity. They’re about belief in a greater cause – a vision to create a business that does more than just sell.

If there’s a dissonance between what you “say” your story is, and what your customer knows to be true, you’re demonstrating that you don’t really know yourselves. Being true to oneself and building an authenticity into your story are the key to getting the right people to adopt it.

These things can sound a bit “other worldly” until you think about the percentage of a purchase that’s made up from emotive reasoning. Even in the driest of B2B sectors, emotive reasoning still plays a huge part.

Relevance. Then and now

The shift in consumer empowerment has meant your customers have a hand in creating the Brand narrative. Their impressions of your business all add, or detract, from the original story and position.

For some, this is a terrifying thought, but usually only those who are masking their “why” with a story veneer. It’s not the feedback that worries them, it’s the fear of being found out! It’s another reason why honesty and authenticity are so vital.

I don’t want to make a big song and dance about social media but in terms of empowerment, it’s had a HUGE impact on customers’ ability to make their own stories up about a brand. What’s more, they can then communicate these stories to other potential buyers.

Businesses only have a small percentage of the power they once had in this relationship, so the role of accuracy and honesty are more important than ever.

In summary

Brand stories, weaved into your business and expressed through your communications, gives a powerful depth to your position. They explain why you do what you do. This, in turn, gives your customers both reassurance and a sense of why you’re different.

That difference – a way of setting you apart from your competitors – is becoming ever more important. Consumers are actively solicited constantly by your competitors. First mover advantage lasts just months. Price competition and comparison is instant.

But you can’t just make something up, nail it together and hope it holds. Customers can spot fakery instantly, and tell their Facebook friends and Twitter followers in seconds – so your brand story needs to match what really is at the heart of your brand.

But get it right, build a powerful brand story that’s authentic, well-communicated and sound, and no competitor can touch you.

Written by James Freeman-Gray

Businesses create mini-universes where they exist and operate. They have their own culture, own values, and with them, they develop a language. But this language is often so far from reality (and comprehension), and so far from how we actually communicate, that is becomes a barrier. It’s a wall to hide behind and that limits experimentation and growth. It also dramatically impacts on how well an organisation is actually understood. Rather than using language and communication to empower, it becomes a secret code.

There’s a pomposity to the language of business; a need to overcomplicate simple things with layers of confusion. But pompous language not only makes the writer look as though they’re trying too hard, it simply doesn’t communicate or inspire. It’s no more that a shield to hide meaning – either because there is none or because the message is unpalatable – right from customer service-speak to mission statements. “Baffle them with complexity and pomposity” becomes the mantra.

There’s a splendid quote in the programme from Peter Day on mission statements. “Everyone marches under that trivial, tattered banner… not believing a word of it.”

If any organisational statement should be rich in belief and authenticity it’s a mission statement, but so often it’s a selection of buzz words, strung together in a “tick all the boxes” bonanza. It becomes a weak reflection of something someone once believed, mixed with the watered-down approach risk-averse organisations have.

This raises another question, one which is larger and a great deal more complicated. If a mission statement is convoluted, or opaque in its meaning, then surely so too is the business that makes it. Not the individuals, but the “cause” of “why” that every organisation should have at the heart of it’s ethics.

If an organisation lacks authenticity in its mission, it will lack authenticity in everything it does. This raises questions over what, both internally and externally, it is there to do in the first place. Perhaps that’s one for another day…

Written by James Freeman-Gray

After a bit more ribbing, I asked what he did about brand language and making sure all the comms matched the brand. After all, getting the logo lined up makes sense, but what about getting the brand tone lined up too?

He looked at me blankly (and I suspect four pints of Hooky weren’t wholly to blame). He’d not even thought about it. No remit. There was plenty in his organisation’s brand guidelines about how everything should look, but nothing about how it should sound apart from a few vague phrases about ‘active language’ that everyone ignores.

It’s odd that brand tone – the way an organisation sounds – should be so far behind corporate visual ID. They’ve got the same aims, after all. And they’re both equally important. In fact, your brand tone is probably more important, simply because your customers see more of it, particularly once they’ve bought. Think of all those customer service letters. When was the last time any of those went to the Corporate Style Police for a check-over?

We’ve been doing some work recently for a high street fashion brand with a large mail order arm. The brand is friendly, upbeat, straight-talking. At least, you’d have thought so until you started reading their customer service letters and e-mails. They were full of third-person passive, legalese and jargon – but that’s easily fixed. The real surprise was how far off the tone of the brand the stuff was – it just didn’t sound like our client.

Getting brand tone right in material like this isn’t just a ‘nice to have’, it’s a key part of your marketing and comms.

People look at your brand writing – on your website, in letters and e-mails and texts – for instruction, but also reassurance. They want to know that the brand they’ve bought into is real. That you’ll live up to the promises you’ve made. Your brand tone needs to build authenticity and humanity. That’s what, in turn, builds trust & loyalty in what you say and the things you do.

It gives depth to your brand character which gives people more reasons to love you. It touches them on an emotive and personal level.

That’s why it’s so important to make sure it runs through every piece of written communication you produce.

Written by Mark McArthur-Christie