Welcome new readers. Usually, each Tone Knob looks in detail at a brand that’s doing interesting things with its language. This week it’s slightly different. If you’d rather mooch around the archive, scroll to the footer of this email for a super-cost-effective way to do that.

First: Anyone else interested in an ‘exploring your personal voice’ course? It’ll be for a small group. We’ll meet once a week for six weeks. There’s a fair few people interested already and I’ll likely do a couple of options to cover time zones in the US, UK and Australia. Hit reply and say ‘yes I’m interested’ if you are.

Second: Wanna hang for an hour and talk brand voice? I’m doing a webinar about how to create great brand voices, and demo-ing Voicebox, my tone of voice method. It’s for ProCopywriters on Tuesday 16th June at 12 noon GMT. It’s free, and don’t need to be a ProCopywriter member. Come along!

(If you’ve been thinking about pulling the trigger on buying Voicebox, there’s likely to be a chunky discount code, too.1 )

Third: Should we stop using the phrase ‘tone of voice’ altogether?

Over on Linkedin, Monzo’s former head of words Harry Ashbridge2 said we should stop using the term ‘tone of voice’, because it’s misleading, unhelpful and ignorable.

He points out that the phrase is ‘soft, indistinct’, and inside large organisations, too easily ignorable by the 97% of people who don’t work in brand as fluffily ‘making stuff sound nice’. This is a problem because ‘writing isn’t a brand thing, it’s an everyone thing. Writing well isn’t about sounding nice, it’s about being effective in your job.’

Harry says that before he left Monzo, he re-branded their tone of voice guidelines as ‘writing principles’, because it’s more serious, credible and helps get across the idea that ‘writing is foundational to how a business operates’.

In various ways, I notice I agree, disagree, am frustrated, and don’t care either way. Let’s go:

1. Harry’s right. Think about what ‘official’ name you give to ‘your brand’s approach to language’. Because, of course, it should be in your tone of voice! ‘Writing principles’ is a solid choice for Monzo. They’re a bank. And even a breezy neo-bank is a serious place where standards, regulations, and compliance are a daily reality. ‘Writing Principles’ would not cut it for, say, Palace Skateboards or the ‘care down there’ hair-removal brand WooWoo. (If their voice guidelines aren’t called ‘Wax Lyrical’ there’s no justice in the world.)
   

2. (A comparison: Think about the phrase ‘transformation programme’. If you’re running some kind of orchestrated activity to get an organisation using some new bit of IT software, or adopting a more ‘consultative’ approach to client relationships or whatever, it’s extremely handy to be able to refer to your behaviour-or-systems-change-orchestrated-activity as a ‘transformation programme’. But only an idiot would put up posters in the canteen saying ‘It’s Transformation Programme Time!’3. You’d call it ‘The Big Switchover’ or ‘Getting Closer to Our Clients’ or something.)4
   

3. Which is just to say – it’s also fine that we have a bit of industry jargon. Let’s not beat ourselves up about it. Like all jargon, it’s fine among consenting adults.
   

4. And remember, other jargon is available too. I tend to freely interchange ‘tone of voice’, ‘brand voice’, ‘verbal identity’, ‘language strategy’ and ‘language choices’. (Also ‘brand tone of voice’ if I want search engines to notice.) Each has a slightly different vibe. It’s always interesting to ask clients which term they prefer and why.
   

5. FWIW, I always really liked the phrase ‘verbal identity’. It highlights the job your language choices are doing (creating an identity) without making any presumptions about how they do that. John Simmons coined the term. John pretty much invented the idea of brand voice as a ‘thing you could deliberately craft’. He chose ‘verbal identity’ because it created an equal pair with ‘visual identity’. (Sadly, both terms now feel too ‘static’ for these more fluid digital times.)
   

6. But mainly! Remember, there’s power in the strangeness. ‘Writing principles’ and ‘language strategy’ sound crisp and logical and rational. ‘Voice’ sounds vague and strange and mercurial. But voice is weird. The best brand voices don’t just feel like we’ve applied ‘principles’. The best brand voices have an aliveness that comes from the strange brew of opinion, perspective, style, vocabulary, rhythm, status, and so much more. The best brand voices create deep connections with people – often not through ‘being empathetic’, but paradoxically by being slightly self-absorbed or self-referential. It’s entirely reasonable that Terry from Procurement doesn’t get it. Some days this doesn’t even make sense to me.

7. In fact, all writing is mercurial. Even within the narrow confines of ‘work writing’, writing is a complex, nuanced activity that blends a huge span of rational, emotional, psychological and aesthetic aptitudes. Becoming a ‘better writer’ requires sharpening your judgment like a lawyer, understanding human behaviour like a psychologist, cultivating your timing like a comedian, and opening your heart like a poet. Which means, among other things, that by learning to write more effective sentences, you’re learning to be a more effective person.
   

8. The problem isn’t that most organisations don’t get tone of voice. It’s that most organisations don’t get writing, full stop5. You’d think with all those mercurial benefits, businesses would be all over the practice of writing – they’re exactly the kinds of aptitudes they love to call ‘high-performing’. But most organisations are entirely blind to it6. (Indeed, right now, most companies are encouraging everyone to get AI to write for them. Sigh.)
   
   So, yes, call tone of voice something different. But if the only people championing the power of good writing in your organisation are the tone of voice team, don’t expect it to radically change things.

OK that’s enough pontificating. It’ll be back to pointing at great writing and going ‘ooh’ and ‘ahh’ next time.

Cheers, Nick.

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First! Welcome, new readers! There’s lots of you recently! Make yourself at home with 10,427 other folk interested in brands, language and creativity. Here’s how it works: There are new posts every three weeks or so. They’re always free. You can get access to the full archives for a small contribution. Details in the footer below. 👇👇👇.

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Welcome new people! Welcome and extra big love to the greatest humans on earth, my paying subscribers ❤️.

Before we start: American readers – what are your favourite US alcohol free beer brands? It’s always interesting as a new category reaches critical mass and there’s a load of fresh voices to compare and contrast. I know UK brands well1, b…

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