Tips for tuning up your Brand Voice & making it a reality
We’ve been going through the exercise of capturing our brand voice.
Re-capturing to be more precise.
It is something we’ve done before, but in the world of internal documents, regardless of your formatting skills, they like to be reinvented. Layers are added, and the perspectives and experiences of new team members make their way in.
The King of Pops brand voice is something that I feel intimately connected to. It’s one of the few places where as a founder I still don’t really feel like I can be “wrong.”
That’s fun, but also a problem.
It’s a problem because while I enjoy not being wrong, I also enjoy seeing our business grow. And maybe, just maybe, it doesn’t make sense for every thought I have to be recapped through a quasi-popsicle lens.
I go through spurts of writing on the company channels about workplace culture, building community and more recently the value of enjoying your work.
These are areas that I’m passionate about, but might not be the first thing someone who is first learning about King of Pops should come across …
Don’t get me wrong, I think it’s smart for some brands to operate outside of their lane. Two of my personal favorites are Ben & Jerry’s who despite their size remain an aggressively outspoken advocate for polarizing social issues, and Patagonia, who I think does it better than anyone else, and feels like it’s lapping the competition when it comes to advocating for our planet.
Both of these examples are brand voices that started with founders, but have been matured and refined over decades.
The layers that their talented teams have provided have simultaneously amplified messages and helped their respective businesses grow. I couldn’t really tell you how they are getting these messages out there, but I certainly know what the messages are.
And that is all that really matters.
That’s where the King of Pops brand voice needs some work. Our last document focused on the language we use, and the tactical things we want to say.
For example, we say our voice is ‘quirky,’ ‘optimistic,’ and ‘fun.’ We think through what content we should post about: ‘product announcements,’ ‘behind the scenes,’ and ‘where to buy.’
But we haven’t gotten to the most important part.
What thing(s) do you want the world to remember.
Here’s the trick. The more things you pick, the less they will remember.
In my mind King of Pops is not just a frozen novelty brand. It’s a lifestyle brand.
I want our lasting memory to be a reminder that kindness still exists, but I also feel compelled to talk about all this other stuff. Where does environmental sustainability, healthy eating, and buying local fit in?
In writing, the ‘greats’ (William Faulkner, Oscar Wilde, Steven King, etc.) advise you to “kill your darlings,” which means to ruthlessly remove all that does not serve the overall story regardless of how much you love it.
I’m convinced that we need to do this same thing for our brand voice. We need to boil our message down until it is reduced to a single core message.
It is so much more difficult to think about what you are really trying to say, vs. saying something clever or posting a pretty picture.
Once you’ve landed on the message you want to share, you have to commit to finding new ways to share it over and over.
Your emails, social media posts and ads should all come back to this message as often as possible.
Talk about your product.
Talk about your core message.
Talk about how your core message and product are related.
That’s basically it.
