Case Study: Krayon’s Tone of Voice
The Brief:
Krayon was founded to create an online marketplace for listing, searching, and booking offline, hands-on workshops. Specky Scribbler was approached by Krayon’s co-founder, Keith Farrell, to develop a complete tone of voice guideline to complement the existing visual brand guideline and create a verbal brand that adhered to Krayon’s vision.
The Process:
Over many, many cups of coffee, I sat down with Keith to discuss some of the key elements that Krayon would need and want their tone of voice to include. These meetings were fairly informal, which allowed us both the opportunity to brainstorm ideas. This also provided us with a chance to iron out the process and how it would work.
We decided that I would travel down to Galway where the Krayon stakeholders were based, and run a two-hour workshop with the stakeholders to get an understanding of what they felt Krayon was, and how it should communicate with everyone else. However, prior to the meeting, I would send out some questions for discussion, so everyone had some time to think before the workshop.
The process was as follows:
Many cups of coffee to work out preliminary plans
2-hour stakeholder workshop
Specky Scribbler takes these findings and starts to create a tone of voice guideline
Final tone of voice guideline created
This is a simplified version of the entire process, but these are the key elements of the process, which is collaborative at each step of the way.
The krayon tone of voice
One of the most important things for Krayon was to encourage learning and community building for teachers and students. This meant that Krayon wanted all communications to be friendly and accessible. English is the main language for Krayon users, but with an increasingly multicultural world, it was important that we stayed away from Irish slang or colloquialisms. We also made sure to adhere to Plain English usage, so that language or literacy issues would be lessened.
Krayon’s tone of voice guidelines were substantial and covered a broad range of application uses, including social media posts, internal and external emails, and also had different tones for use with Krayon users, and Krayon investors. The final Krayon tone of voice guideline was a 30 page document which included examples of how to respond to emails, what type of social media posts work for the brand, and what type of word usage was acceptable.
Krayon already had a brand guideline in place, so the tone of voice guideline was slotted into the brand book for Krayon, to make sure the entire team knew about the complementary guidelines for visual and verbal brand symmetry.
The guideline is used by the entire Krayon team, and applies to any and all communications sent out on behalf of Krayon. The guideline will remain the property of Krayon, and this case study is written with their kind permission.
Each Process is different
Each brand is different and that means every tone of voice guideline I create is different. Some brands don’t want or need social media sections in their guidelines, others don’t want detailed dictionaries or glossaries. Some brands request one voice to be used for all communications, and others want a quick synopsis guideline that outlines their brand’s personality.
These requirements mean the process is fully tailored to each brand, and the desires and requirements are outlined in advance of any stakeholder meetings. However, every brand voice I create for clients is done through a collaborative and communicative relationship with the stakeholders and C-level executives.
If you’d like to find out more, please contact me: michelle@speckyscribbler.com