Expressing Your Brand Through Content

When you’re creating content for marketing, it is really important that you reflect your brand voice.

What does this mean? It means that you should ensure any content you create, whatever type, fits with your brand tone. Sports hero Serena Williams talks in the video above about Nike’s brand tone during her appearance at Advertising Week with Verizon Media. She explains how Nike’s brand voice is very distinctive and consistent. She says Nike’s tone is about achievement and making a stand on issues that matter.

Think about this for yourself. For example, does your brand have a youthful, casual tone? Or a more formal tone? Do you use strong language or gentle language?

Let’s look at a couple of other examples. First, Ben & Jerry’s ice cream. Originally an independent business and now owned by multinational company Unilever, Ben & Jerry’s brand tone has always been humorous, referencing pop culture but with strong social principles underpinning it.

This brand tone is expressed everywhere – in packaging, product names, adverts and also in content. Typical product names are ‘Karamel Sutra’ or ‘Fairway to Heaven’.

The brand currently has a range of ice creams called ‘Netflix Original Flavours’ which draws on pop culture jokes about the TV streaming service and its shows. One reference – Netflix & Chill’d – even references the phrase ‘Netflix & Chill’ which is slang for a very romantic night in.

This humorous, irreverent tone is carried on through Ben & Jerry’s content marketing too. To promote the Netflix brand range, the company has created a quiz for shoppers to identify their ideal flavour. The quiz is very informal and again perfectly meets the brand tone.

Brand tone is just as important for companies that sell services where humour or lively content is less appropriate. UK insurance company Direct Line has a brand positioning which is about fixing issues for its consumers. It positions itself as useful and reliable; it is a problem solver.

So appropriately, its content also follows the same brand tone. Its blog offers a series of how-to articles that are very practical and useful. The language is very plain and straightforward. The topics are all focused around common issues and problems (not necessarily associated with the company or insurance, but associated with homes and cars which are popular insurance categories).

So don’t forget to make sure you know your brand tone extremely well when you’re creating content.

Find an example of a brand with a really strong brand voice. Describe to your fellow learners why it is so distinctive. Does it maintain this brand voice everywhere?