How can digital production teams maintain a consistent brand voice across all channels?

On top of the usual mission statement, values and traits of personality, I always find useful to create with those who produce brand content a very simple operating principles one pager with on one side "what we are" and on the other side "what we are not" . It helps those team feel empowered with the brand platform and confident enough to produce any kind of content. When in doubt they can always go back to that North Star document.

You do not need to recreate the wheel here. Your brand voice will often be apparent within the company culture, communication channels (internal and external), company values. It is also important to bring the wider team along for the journey - encourage participation from the wider team on what defining characteristics there are to your brand and develop your voice from there. Involving the wider team are aligned with your definition ensures a consistent perception across market.

Digital production is one arm of a business. The business should always have a brand guideline that goes beyond aesthetics to encompass brand voice and language. If there's a disconnect with how you present yourself online to how you engage in person or via your service, there's a gaping issue!

A good start is being expertly, and ideally passionately, briefed by a guardian of that brand. That sets the tone; then committed communication needs to be maintained between the team to keep up a unified output.

Have one large shoot. Give each medium equal time. And be very flexible but disciplined on-set. We called this “the dollar multiplier” production shoot at The Coca-Cola Company. Where we captured content, not just a :30. The lesson I learned, managing Agencies was the hardest part. But, after years of doing it. It can be done. It means one look and feel and money saved for Brands.

Brand voice guidelines can serve as a reference for the team, ensuring a unified and recognizable communication style. They should include key elements like tone, language style, and messaging principles. For instance, if a brand aims for a friendly and approachable tone, the guidelines may specify the use of conversational language and avoiding overly formal expressions. Consistency in visual elements, such as color schemes and logo usage, should be emphasized.

Remember, a strong brand voice is not just about what you say, but how you say it – consistently and authentically, across all channels. Allow for some flexibility across platforms: Highlight how to tweak your brand voice for different social media platforms or communication channels. What works on LinkedIn might need a different approach on Instagram.

In my experience the brand persona is very important in digital space since the audience in infracting with your content or brand regularly in this space. Here the brand guidelines which not just define fonts, colors and logos but defines the persona, the tone of communication etc is important. The brands I have worked with had brand guidelines defined in detail while creating a character of the brand and building a persona. With creative agency, brand person and so many stakeholders it’s great to have brand voice guideline which in turn develops brand persona over digital or physical space.

In addition to documenting brand identity elements (like tone of voice, brand colors, logo usage), it is incredibly important to have a media kit with branded templates, logos, icons etc. This enables usage of correct branding assets.

Once you've defined your brand voice, documenting it is crucial for seamless implementation. Share your brand voice guidelines with your digital production team and stakeholders. These guidelines should summarize your brand definition, describe your target audience, provide a list of dos and don'ts for using your brand voice across channels, and include examples in action. Additionally, offer a checklist or scorecard for evaluating content against these guidelines. Ensure accessibility, clarity, and practicality for the team. Regular updates are key to reflecting changes in strategy or audience feedback, maintaining a consistent and impactful brand voice.

It’s key in social to not have “throwaway” posts. Every draft post needs to be evaluated before publishing to determine: 1) does it serve brand objectives? 2) does it reflect the brand voice? Too many social posts fail to meet these two conditions. Finally, training on voice is not a one time activity. It needs to be taught, re-taught, and post-mortem-ed again and again as production team members are typically in flux

Una de las formas más efectivas y sencillas de formar a tu equipo en la creación de contenido de marca de manera cohesiva es a través de la definición del Brand Voice. Dentro del Brand Book de la empresa es importante dedicar un capitulo o varios, a la voz de la marca. Del mismo modo que se define qué colores y fuentes deben emplearse en el diseño de creatividades, es importante determinar el tono comunicativo que queremos transmitir como marca en cada uno de los canales de los que se disponga y con qué objetivos. Este manual de estilo facilitará enormemente su adopción por parte de todos los empleados favoreciendo la creación de contenido coherente con los valores que se quieren transmitir.

Treine a equipe de produção digital para garantir a aplicação correta da voz da marca em todas as comunicações. Ofereça sessões de treinamento interativas, como workshops e webinars, que elucidem a voz da marca com definições e exemplos práticos. Nomeie mentores para acompanhamento constante, fornecendo feedback construtivo. Estimule a troca de ideias em espaços colaborativos e promova um ambiente de reconhecimento, onde o uso efetivo da voz da marca seja valorizado e recompensado.

Don't be scared of using templates and predefined structures to create your content and assets. This can give you the operating space to crete work faster and at the same time reduce the number off errors. This can then free up time to be more creative in other areas.

Regular communication, training and collaboration within the team are also essential to ensure everyone understands and implements the brand voice consistently across various channels.

Data is key. Data driven insights aren't subjective; if properly analysed and the subsequent data driven campaigns properly executed, your brand voice will resonate with your target audience. A useful tip (whilst trying to understand the impact of your data driven campaigns) is to perform A/B testing. Analyse, refine, relaunch, repeat until you achieve the levels of engagement and ROI to realise your business goals.

Measuring your brand voice performance is hard. Web analytics will not give you the answer. You need to ask your audience - one effective way is to survey website visitors. Start by identifying your top pages by volume (from analytics) and the key pages that deliver the main messages. Make sure these pages are being carefully monitored. Consider adding a page-level survey - could be as simple as 'rate this page' but better if a more specific question eg. 'did this content change your perception about *topic*?' Go one step further and collect some segmentation data eg. 'what is your role?', 'why did you visit?', 'was your visit successful?'. Then you can see which messages/pages are working best for different audience groups.

In my opinion, maintaining a consistent brand voice is similar to crafting a compelling story. The Brand guidelines serve as the plot, defining tone and language aligned with our identity. Regular updates keep it relevant. Ongoing team training ensures everyone tells the same story. While automated tools analyze sentiment, human review is vital to keep it real. Feedback guides improvements – it's like refining our plot based on audience reactions. Monitoring trends and competitors keeps the brand voice not just consistent but in tune with what the audience wants.

É bastante útil o uso de pesquisas de Brand Health Tracking tanto com clientes como com mar aberto para entender quais pilares são as fortalezas de marca para continuar dominando esses territórios, e quais são os pilares que são pontos fracos para conduzir melhor as ações. Isso pode ajudar a manter a voz da marca consistente. A comunicação mais efetiva não é aquela que a marca diz, mas sim aquela que o cliente entende e sente.

Just remember you are there to help brands ultimately drive sales and awareness not to tick brand compliance boxes. Guidelines exist to help speed up the process and ensure that the brand resonates with the audience but if you are going after different audiences or experimenting with new channels this needs to be taken into account and to evolve the brand and messaging you should always consider AB tests or champion challenger tests to see what performs the best and then evolve the guidelines based on results.

Read your content out loud. What might read okay to the eyes that wrote it, the ear can pick up on tone and rhythm. If your target audience couldn't read it aloud and understand the point of the content, you missed the mark.

GenAI is being talked about a lot. You can get it to imagine it is a specific audience and then test your content against it to test, refine and create new ideas. It is surprisingly good so don't be afraid of experimenting with new tools.

In our experience, simply documenting brand guidelines is not enough. For example, providing a definition of a particular brand personality trait doesn’t deeply indoctrinate a team member into how that trait came to be important for the organization, and a brand story usually doesn’t do the trick either. We had a global client that struggled to reflect one of their brand personality traits, ‘humility,’ in their assets. A traditional brand guides wasn’t enough. We had to introduce into their brand guide the rich backstory as to why ‘humility’ was crucial. By blending historical context with implementation strategies, the client’s content team could finally embody the true essence of ‘humility’ in every digital asset.

Há uma diferenciação por canal. Mesmo criando um tom de voz base é importante adequar aos canais escolhidos. É como na vida real, nós mudamos um pouco a forma de comunicar no ambiente profissional, similar ao LinkedIn, e no pessoal, similar ao TikTok ou Instagram. Um e-mail é um outro formato, mas em todos um direcionamento guia é necessário para manter a unidade, saber que é a mesma pessoa ou mesma marca. Como um mineiro falando uai e trem.

It's important for your brand to understand that its voice should sound like a person. Even though you may be the same human, you wouldn't talk the same way to your friends as you would to your colleagues at work. While maintaining the same essence, it's necessary to find ways to customize your communication style to fit your audience and the medium you are using.