The value of having a brand voice that can speak up

Chris West, CEO at Verbal Identity, the copywriting and tone of voice consultancy, explores the topic, with examples from Nike, TOMS' Blake Mycoskie, HSBC and X, Alphabet's Moonshot Factory

A Nike athlete takes a knee. A razor brand takes a stand.

We instantly know why they’re doing it, so we waste no time piling on in social media, signalling our own virtue.

But even a ball player’s actions are clumsy, sometimes. And wasn’t Gillette merely enforcing ownership of the toxic masculinity it had invested in for so long? The problem with brand actions is they’re simplistic: how we interpret what a brand is doing depends on our worldview.

To change someone’s mind, to be on the right side of history – if that’s what the CMO and the brand owners really want - a brand can’t just act up, it also has to speak up. And that’s the problem for most brand owners. Because in an attempt to control their brand language, they opted to make it uniform rather than flexible. Their brand voice is...