3 Mistakes to Avoid When Crafting a Brand Voice
8 MIN READ
Lifestyle brands are important. We hope you're not sick of hearing it because we never tire of saying it. In a world of continuous commerce, these companies that offer valuable products or services associated with a particular manner of living or identity often focus on providing a carefully curated experience for their customers, rather than just pushing individual products. They prioritize purpose over everything and seek to reach an audience equally as eager to truly stand for something, be it sustainability, social issues, or all of the above.
No matter the specific industry, an essential element of a successful lifestyle brand is the ability to create that cohesive brand identity. This includes everything—from the design of the products, to the advertising campaigns, to the brand’s online voice. It’s a strong brand identity that helps to create a sense of familiarity and trust with customers, allowing a lifestyle brand to stand out in a crowded market.
A successful lifestyle brand has a strong connection to their customers. This can manifest itself in many ways, like creating a sense of community through events or online groups, providing audiences a holistic customer experience, or engaging with customers and cultivating loyalty through social media.
In addition to the obvious offering of products or services that speak to the needs and interests of a particular group of people, that cultivation of connection with a consumer online is the most important part of a brand’s image. It’s also the single easiest element to screw up on social media.
Lifestyle Brand Voice
The key challenge for a lifestyle brand’s social media marketing is maintaining consistency and, even more important, genuineness. Too many brands try to take the quick-and-easy route when it comes to creating an online persona and voice—simply parroting the latest phrases and “trending” tones, rewording generally accepted ideas, and sticking to the most obvious and accessible audience segments.
And all of these things, inevitably, lead to a loss of trust by an audience, not to mention a total indifference to a brand.
To help you avoid some of these pitfalls, let’s explore those three mistakes that we referenced above in a bit more detail and what you should do instead in order to embody a genuine brand voice that truly resonates with audiences and drives online actions.
TRYING TO SPEAK FLUENT “GEN Z”
We don’t need to put anyone on blast in this blog by dragging out the screenshots of brands (tragically) attempting to appeal to Gen Zers by “adopting” their native tongue, but you’ve definitely seen them out in the wild.
It sounds like an obvious rule-of-thumb, but when you don’t use words like “the ick,” “delulu,” or “rizz” in real life, it does not behoove your brand to co-opt them as a means of marketing. It’s also worth noting that many of these terms or phrases are appropriated from AAVE (African American Vernacular English) yet their popularity is frequently attributed to white influencers.
It’s not hard to sniff out a narc in the feeds of your favorite social platforms, and Gen Z is particularly adept at spotting bullshit online, so, please, don’t even try unless you’re fluent in words, phrases, and emojis. Not only does it signal your inability to do the work of crafting a meaningful brand voice that actually has something to say, but it exposes your willingness to misrepresent your brand for the sole purpose of profit.
Instead, allow your brand to be its true self. As we continue to see across channels, content and social copy that is unpolished and emotionally vulnerable outperformed its polished counterparts. Embracing your message and communicating earnestly—no bells and whistles required—will continue to be the best way to connect with your audience.
PRETENDING TO BE DUOLINGO
Nearly every brand we talk to dreams of having the online success of Duolingo (previously Wendy’s was the gold standard but times have changed). This green bird mascot is at the scene of nearly every cultural trend happening on social media.
While we encourage every brand to be as trend conscious as Duolingo, it’s important to understand that their unhinged behavior and tone of voice doesn’t make sense for most brands. Because not everyone can be a Duolingo or a Wendy’s, brands instead come off as sarcastic, somewhat cynical, usually fishing for easy win by stating sentiments more or less shared by everyone.
Being a purpose-driven brand means being a transparent one. Audiences are more likely to trust and resonate with a social voice that prioritizes originality. So if you’re looking to inject a playful element to your brand’s social channels, go for it, but do the work. No one said social media was easy, and audiences are unlikely to reward a brand that’s just jumping on the bandwagon, avoiding using their voice to stand for something. Even if it is divisive.
Forgetting Other Voices
A brand’s voice isn’t actually one voice. When done right, it’s the voices of many amplified under one umbrella. Now, this does not mean that you can go wild with your social copy and throw your voice & tone guidebook out the window.
Messaging that comes from the brand itself should remain consistent. However, it’s important to amplify the voices of others, fully representing your target audience. This can look like sharing posts from your employees or quotes from interviews. But the most effective way to include different voices is to activate content creators to share their opinions on your brand, which you then can amplify on your marketing channels.
User-Generated Content (UGC) is becoming increasingly valuable in honing your brand voice. In fact, over 80% of consumers are more likely to make a purchase from a brand that uses UGC. By intertwining the voices of real people into your brand voice, you’re able to tell a richer, more diverse story that better represents your audience.
Conclusion
Your brand’s success relies heavily on its ability to appear genuine to an audience—an audience that has increasingly high standards and expectations. And rightly so, in our opinion.
The ideal way to do this is to cultivate a brand voice on social media that is comfortable in its online persona (or willing to create one that is genuine), wholly original but able to add their own spin on trends, and dedicated to amplifying diverse voices.
Here’s the best part: if you have no idea where to start or if you’re concerned you may be making one of the mistakes above, well we know an award-winning agency capable of collaborating with you to create your authentic brand voice to appeal to the right audience. Contact them today…it’s us. That award-winning agency is us.
Originally posted January 30, 2023. Updated May 29, 2024.
