How to find your brand’s unique voice
Introduction
When business owners start dabbling in branding, finding and crafting a brand voice doesn’t come easy. And I can certainly understand why. Branding is already an abstract, often confusing activity, so choosing a voice for a company might scare a few. After all, is that really important? What are the advantages of selecting a so-called voice for a brand? As you’re about to learn, there are quite a few advantages to choosing a brand voice.
In this article, I plan to demystify this concept and help you better understand and apply the theory of brand voice. I’ll cover the fundamentals to make sure we’re all on the same page, then I’ll move on to some brand voice examples to prove that it works. Finally, I’ll share the most common brand voice mistakes and my top personal advice so you’ll be well equipped to craft the right voice for your company.
Let’s begin by defining the basics: what is a brand, what is a voice, and why does any of that matter.
Understanding the basics
What is a brand
As its name suggests, a brand voice applies to the theory of branding. Therefore, it’s important to understand what a brand is in order to craft a voice that makes sense.
I often say that a brand is an alignment of values between your company and your customers or followers. A brand is a deliberate and unique way of doing business that is particularly compelling to a specific group of people—what marketers often call an audience.
What is a brand voice
A brand voice simply takes the parent theory—branding—a step further. A brand refers to how a business is conducted, while a brand voice refers to how that brand is communicated to its audience. Here is a visual representation of how a brand voice correlates to your business and your branding strategy:
Every explicit or implicit communication from your company to your audience is part of your brand voice.
This concept of explicit and implicit communication is crucial to understand when it comes to branding. You need to realize that every form of spoken or unspoken interaction between you, the business, and your customers must be taken into consideration.
A brand voice includes:
- Formal communication: when a business communicates with its customers through its website, social media, or email campaigns, it’s the most obvious and intentional expression of brand voice. This is where the tone, language, and messaging are most deliberately crafted to reflect the brand’s identity
- Marketing material: every piece of marketing collateral you create is another clear expression of brand voice. Whether through audio, photo, or video, a business publishes content for its audience to consume. These assets are often a brand strategist’s favorite tool, as they allow a business to showcase its identity in full—its design language, colors, and, of course, its voice.
- Products and services: the products or services you offer are also part of your brand voice. Though this is more apparent with tangible products, every product and service tells a story. Their complexity, features, packaging, and even the way they’re presented and delivered all contribute to shaping your brand’s voice.
- Pricing strategy: the way you price your products or services also shapes how customers perceive your brand. This perception depends on how they react to a given price point. A low price might suggest your brand offers budget-friendly or lower-end products. Conversely, a high price sets expectations of quality that your brand must live up to.
- Customer service: since most businesses build their brand around promises of stellar customer support, it’s sadly the component of brand voice that often leads to the most disappointment. Even though it’s a form of direct communication and should be treated as a key pillar of brand voice, delivering consistent, high-quality service remains a challenge for many companies. These inconsistencies can directly weaken your brand’s overall strength.
- Website UX: the way your website is presented also plays a key role in how your brand is communicated. The choice of theme, colors, design elements, animations, and even the site layout all have a direct impact.
- Brand partnerships: collaborations, by their nature, are an extension of your brand. You must hold all your brand partners accountable for maintaining their image, because if they face public backlash, you’ll indirectly suffer from it too. This is surprisingly common in business—a clear example is the infamous Adidas x Kanye West saga. Adidas partnered with West to launch the Yeezy line, only for him to become involved in multiple controversies, which led to the termination of the partnership in 2022 and a projected loss of $1.3 billion. Ouch!
As I hope you understand by now, your brand voice is likely the most important component of branding, since it’s the element that reaches the public. Understanding how your voice is implemented across all touchpoints is a crucial starting point for building a stronger, more cohesive brand.
Now, let’s look at some examples of brands with a stellar and unique voice.
Some brand voice examples
Apple
Apple is probably the easiest example to illustrate what a strong brand voice looks like. They’ve truly mastered the art of branding. So, what is Apple’s voice exactly? I’d say it’s simple, sleek innovation.
First, I’m sure you’ll agree that everything related to Apple feels easy. They’ve simplified every aspect of their business to the point where buying a $2000 laptop becomes an afterthought. How is this simplicity expressed in their brand voice? Just watch any Apple presentation or browse their website — notice how carefully they use storytelling everywhere?
From paragraphs to live product descriptions on TV, Apple focuses solely on the benefits you’ll gain as a user, not on the countless technical details behind their products. Buying an Apple product feels simple. The seamless interconnectivity between devices—laptop, smartphone, smartwatch, and earphones—further reinforces their commitment to simplicity.
Secondly, sleek innovation is the other key part of Apple’s successful brand voice. Their commitment to beautifully presented and packaged products shows how deeply they embrace a clean and intuitive design language. Even Apple’s iconic white packaging is a powerful brand voice element that helped elevate the brand to the very top.
This sleekness isn’t just seen in their packaging — it’s felt in their intuitive technology (iOS), accessible customer support, and the seamless integration across all their devices.
Wendy’s
To continue, Wendy’s is another great example of a brand voice done right. Their unique and humorous online presence allows them to stand out easily in the competitive fast food market.
I’d say Wendy’s brand voice is a blend of wit and authenticity. They use trends to their advantage, roast competitors like McDonald’s and Burger King with clever comebacks and memes, and actively engage with their followers.
Why does it work? Because people like the humanized version of Wendy’s. When they share a meme or roast a competitor, they act just like us. It becomes much easier to relate to them. Their strategy, internally described as a “challenger with charm,” is especially effective at attracting younger audiences who enjoy this kind of content.
Coca Cola
After Apple and Wendy’s, Coca-Cola is another company that has mastered the art of branding. Their clear focus on community and happy, shared moments is so deeply embedded in their brand that they even introduced a permanent line of bottles with names on them.
This kind of brand voice clearly shows how products themselves can become a brand’s voice by turning everyday interactions into personal experiences. Coca-Cola invites people to share a moment, gift a name, and celebrate connection — all of which help build a strong, lasting brand voice.
Common brand voice mistakes
Before we dive into the common mistakes to avoid, it’s worth recognizing that many business owners struggle with finding their voice because they misunderstand what branding actually is in the first place. If you’re still unsure about what defines a real brand versus the illusion of one, I highly recommend reading my other article Why Building a Brand is Surprisingly Difficult.
Now that we’ve covered the basics of what a brand voice is and how it’s applied in the real world, let’s shift the focus to you — the reader — who’s hopefully looking to craft your own unique brand voice. The next section will help you understand what to avoid when developing it.
Being too generic
The first, and most common, mistake I see businesses make when defining their brand voice is choosing one that’s too generic. In every market niche, there’s often a default voice that most businesses adopt out of habit or lack of creativity. This usually stems from preconceived ideas about how a business in that space should sound. Let me give you some clear examples so you know exactly what I mean.
Skincare for women over 50 is a particularly competitive market, since older women tend to spend more on these products than any other demographic. But did you know this segment is also one of the most misunderstood? Many companies, regardless of size, focus their branding on telling older women to look younger. Yet research shows that most of them don’t necessarily want to look younger — they want to feel youthful.
This is just one example from a single industry. But I’m sure you can think of markets you know well and how most businesses in those spaces approach branding the same predictable way.
Remember this: the core of branding is choosing an identity—or a set of distinctive values—that clearly sets you apart from your competitors. You need to go beyond what’s considered normal in your industry. If you’re playing it safe and copying what your five closest competitors are doing just because it worked for them, you’ve already shot yourself in the foot.
Inconsistency
Having an inconsistent brand voice is a critical mistake. Consistency is a key pillar of successful branding because it reinforces authenticity. From day one, it’s crucial to define what you can realistically commit to — that way, you can actually sustain the promises your brand makes.
Customer service is likely the most common source of brand voice inconsistency. It’s a frequent brand promise—serving customers well before, during, and after the purchase—but also one of the leading causes of disappointment due to negative support experiences.
The danger of inconsistency is that customers pick up on it quickly—and it never ends well. When your brand voice feels inconsistent, customers may see your brand as dishonest or manipulative, like they were just used to make money.
Here are some common examples of brand voice inconsistencies:
- Mix of tone: An ultra-formal, technical website paired with a casual tone on social media
- Brand value clash: Promoting sustainability while using excessive packaging
- Visual identity disconnect: Inconsistent use of logos, colors, or typography
- Mixed messaging: One campaign promotes luxury, another emphasizes affordability
Copying another successful brand
Copying another company’s brand just because they’re successful goes against the very essence of branding. Even setting ethics aside, mimicking someone else’s brand voice is pointless once you understand how branding actually works.
As you probably know, a brand is the alignment of values between a company and its audience. Even if you copy every piece of another company’s brand messaging, you can’t replicate the relationship they’ve built over time through shared ideas and trust. That’s why copying a successful brand doesn’t work — it only works for them because they continue to nurture and grow that relationship.
However, I believe it’s totally reasonable to be inspired by strong brands—so long as you focus on the substance (the concept or system) rather than the form (how they execute it).
Here are examples of how you can ethically draw inspiration from another company’s brand voice:
- Company A uses an animal mascot to humanize its brand. Company B understands the intent—creating a warm, familiar connection—and chooses to use cartoon-style visuals to achieve a similar emotional effect, without copying the mascot itself.
- Company A is known for its popular 2-minute wait time to reach a human agent. Company B recognizes the value of fast, real support and adds a chat box to its website that supports both text and calls, reinforcing its own commitment to customer care.
Forgetting the audience
The last brand voice mistake I want to share is crucial. When developing your brand voice, never lose sight of the goal: to clearly communicate how your business is unique and different—and why that should matter to your audience.
If you forget the central role your audience plays in your branding strategy, your voice loses all its value. Your brand voice should be so tailored to your audience that anyone outside your target group would feel out of place. That might sound extreme, but strong branding requires focus—and sacrifice.
A business can’t serve everyone — and a brand serves even fewer.
How to choose your brand voice
Now that you know what not to do, you might be thinking, “Hey Jacob, what the heck should I do?” This final section will give you two solid ideas to kickstart your brand voice the right way.
Start with your audience in mind
Building on the last point from the common mistakes section, it’s a smart move to start with your audience in mind when shaping your brand voice.
It’s a good idea for several reasons:
- Starting with your audience allows you to understand exactly who you are trying to reach.
- Starting with your audience allows you to understand exactly how to reach your audience.
When thinking about your target audience, ponder all the most effective ways to reach, communicate with, educate, entertain, and convince them that they belong with you.
Let’s say that I want to create a brand — starting with an audience in mind would require me to decide:
- Who should be my audience? Is it big/small enough?
- Where can I reach my audience? Are they active on Facebook? Do they read the journal?
- What kind of communication would they prefer?
- What tone would be most suited for my audience?
- What does my audience value in my products? How can I make sure they understand that my brand addresses it?
Always monitor and adapt
After doing the previous exercise, you should already be well-equipped to start putting your brand voice to the test. After all, your voice is only useful when it’s being used.
My last piece of advice is to remember that your brand and your voice are never set in stone. You’re always free to adjust anything that doesn’t align with your audience. The beauty of a brand is that it evolves over time, just like you.
Consistently monitoring and adapting your brand voice not only helps you course-correct but also allows you to please and surprise your audience—when done in a meaningful and tasteful way.
What you should remember
Having a strong brand voice should be a key part of your branding strategy. It allows you, the business owner, to bring your brand to life in everything you do. Watch out for common mistakes—like being too generic or losing sight of your audience—to make sure your followers stick with you for the long run.
Lastly, I invite you to take what you’ve learned in this article and use it creatively. Apple, Wendy’s, and Coca-Cola each have a unique brand voice, but they all share the same boundless creativity needed to build brands people go out of their way to support!
