Last Tuesday, I was in Dublin teaching my first workshop with Krayon. It ran for two hours and discussed how to find your brand voice and what exactly it is. This was a great experience and I had a wonderful group of people attend. It was a great way to share my love of brand voice and was a very worthwhile experience to hear some of the questions people had about brand voice.

My last blog was, suitably, about how to find your brand voice, what it is, and why you should have a tone of voice guideline that coincides with your brand guidelines. This was based on a hypothetical and dream situation, when a company or organisation is in its early stages and hasn’t had a huge written presence yet. However, more often than not, a tone of voice consultant is given a project when there has already been brand awareness and communication in place. In my experience, this happens when companies are going through a rebranding process, such as updating their visual identity, logo, website, etc. This then leaves clients wondering: how do I update my brand voice when my company is rebranding? How do I navigate this transition from my existing voice(s) to my new one(s)?

One of the most striking examples of rebranding in Ireland in recent years is FREENOW, which was mytaxi, which was Hailo. Of course, Aer Lingus have also rebranded but that wasn’t quite as striking…

FREENOW is a taxi-hailing app that users download and use to get taxis to/from wherever they need to go. Uber isn’t hugely popular (if at all) in Ireland, so FREENOW is everywhere. The problem here is that they had only just gone through a huge identity overhaul two years previously. Of course, there is nothing wrong with rebranding, and FREENOW made many statements about why it was rebranding - in this case, they were bought out and had to adhere to the family of brands they now came under. Luckily (or not), mytaxi never had a huge amount of written communication anywhere, their emails were scant and their website wasn’t copy heavy. However, the question remains: how to roll out a new tone of voice when one already exists?

Someone posed this to me during my workshop and the only answer I had was: there is no right or wrong way. Each methodology depends on the company in question. In 2017, Netflix set up a social media account for House of Cards in Brazil, and the woman in charge decided to use the account as if she were communicating with her friends. There was no huge build up to the change, she just did it. Now, Netflix has a social media team who all follow the same pattern: being huge fans of movies and TV shows. That’s all.

They’ve found the voice that works for them and their audience: people who binge-watch shows in one sitting, and who text their mates about the shows. There’s no explicit rules that the social media and content teams have to adhere to, in fact, they are explicitly told not to follow rules. Their ethos is to allow their employees to create content freely and candidly, and I definitely think it works. Netflix’s Twitter account, even though it lacks ‘a name’ or a sign-off on its tweets, is a hugely personal and engaging feed to follow. Netflix is a huge multi-billion dollar production company and media streaming company who speaks in a way that makes you feel like they get you.

Other companies sign their tweets, others will ease in the changes gradually. Whatever works for you and your clients is best, because your clients are the key to your success. If you think transparency and gradual transitioning is the best option, then go for that. Maybe explain some of the changes they might see visually and verbally, provide justification for them. At the end of the day, a copywriter and a tone of voice creator can create content and guidelines for your company, but they haven’t had the daily interactions with your customers that you have.

The process of creating and rolling out a rebrand opens you up to a new audience and is a very exciting time for a company. There is no definitive answer as to how to do it to make it most effective. Each company is different, each rebrand is different, each tone of voice is different and each member of your team is different. These differences are strengths and through a collaborative process with your stakeholders, marketing team, and tone of voice consultant, you will come to the solution that best works for your clients.

So if you’re rebranding, it’s the perfect opportunity to reassess your brand voice and make sure it still complements your visual identity. If you want to find out how Specky Scribbler can help, then drop me an email and I’ll get back you.

Changing Tone of Voice During a Rebrand