A brand’s voice has more similarities to a human persona than people give it credit for. 

You’re a human. We’ll use you as an example. 

You have an attitude, a sensibility, a way of speaking. You probably lean into certain words more than others and are known for expressing ideas and opinions with a particular perspective. But likely, your tone shifts based on your audience. Consider how you speak to a grandparent versus your best friend, at a work dinner versus happy hour. Your core persona stays the same—your energy, sense of humor, and the intractable qualities that make you you—but your tone is tailored to the appropriateness and expectations of the situation. 

These intentional shifts in tone are what allow you to be adaptable, relatable, and approachable. Without them, you’re a robot.  Siri and Alexa have empathy limitations for a reason.

Brand voice isn’t created; it’s embodied. It’s a living energy. You don’t just do this work before you launch, touch it up during a five-year rebrand and call it a day. Imagine if your voice peaked at five-years-old. The world your brand lives in changes daily. Language evolves. Awareness matures. The savviest brands embrace the shifts and sway in culture and communication and evolve their voice with the same reverence and intention as their personal voice. 

We recommend brand tone checks every quarter and a broader strategic voice review every year. Think of the difference between Q1 and Q2 in 2020. Your audience wasn’t even living in the same world. How utterly bizarre if your brand’s voice and communication had just...stayed the same. 

When you’re conducting a tone check for your brand (or yourself—humans need tone checks, too), consider these questions: 

• What’s going on in your audience’s lives right now? How are they looking to you for help? 

• What keeps them awake at night, worrying about the day ahead? 

• How do they relax? 

• How do you want people to feel when they connect with your brand? 

• Who are you potentially alienating, and how can you better connect to that audience? 

• What is your audience responding to on social? What isn't capturing their attention? 

• What hesitations have you observed? What causes them to drag their feet before purchasing your product or engaging your service? 

• What about your brand is different from last year? How have you matured? What are your goals? 

If you regularly ask these questions, you’ll be sharply ahead of your competition.  Use the answers as the lens through which to review and edit your messaging. Adjust your positioning to solve for your audience's problems, and imbue your copy with the energy your audience favors. These measured micro shifts will help you grow organically with your audience and stay connected in a more authentic way à la real life. 
 

Want a more in-depth tone check? We’ve got a process clients really respond to, and we suss out your competition, too. We’d love to walk you through.

Antonym turned one yesterday. You don’t know this, but I stared at that sentence for about twenty minutes. It’s wild. We made it official by (officially) joining Instagram. Follow us if you like. We have big plans for that space. 

My gratitude for our visionary clients and collaborators is untranslatable via blog. Thank you for igniting our first year with blazing creativity. 
 

Today I’m coming at you with core values. One of the reasons I founded Antonym was to offer brands an intentional, strategic process to ground their copywriting and messaging. Through this critical lens, we interrogate its stated purpose and collaboratively determine its tone and voice. Too many brands do not do this work. It shows. 

Throughout this current and urgent encore of the Black Lives Matter movement, the sheer mass of brands that do not operate in alignment with their core values has been laid bare. Brands people love. Brands people will no longer support because of how egregiously they professed one value system and lived another. 

Did you, too, witness how easy it was for audiences to see through empty statements of solidarity and rise up with receipts proving the barrenness of their proclamations?

Core values: you have no messaging strategy without them. They are your gut check against every piece of copywriting and identity strategy your brand requires, from your positioning statement to a tweet. 

They are not what your brand hopes to achieve, but rather, your brand’s core compass, defining what it stands for, who it advocates for, and how it intends to make people’s lives better. You need at least three, no more than five. Each value backed by deliberate language expressing why it is a non-negotiable element of your brand's moral code. Company-wide buy-in is essential because as the adage actually goes, one bad apple spoils the entire barrel. 

At Antonym, our most revelatory moments with clients are when we excavate their core values. We devise their brand identity strategy around those values and illustrate how much richer their vision, mission, and marketing copy becomes when it is relentlessly reinforced by these ideals. If you need a plan for aligning your values with action, we create that, as well. We do this work with a strategic, diverse team to ensure the people affected by your values are in the room when you’re making them. 

If you’re interested in our signature core values package, reach out, and we'll make a plan. 

Last week, I had the humbling experience of attending a Black Lives Matter support group at The Wing. Allies were invited, and as a white woman, that was the capacity in which I attended. It is critical to acknowledge this: that non-Black women were allowed to join the experience was ultimately so triggering and traumatizing The Wing has since restructured the offering to ensure a safer space, making it available to Black members only.

I was ignorant about my presence there—what it meant and what it would do—and have thought about that hour every day since. There is no adequate way to express my gratitude for the women who put their bodies on the line that day to educate me and people like me. That was not and is not their job. 

I have spent the past week mulling over the right offering for this space, and I can't stop thinking about something shared at the meeting. A grieving woman expressed that she was out of words and didn't know what else to say. If language alone could eradicate virulent anti-Black racism and profound systemic inequality, wouldn't the winning words have already been spoken by the millions of writers, activists, protesters, civilians, faith leaders, and philosophers who have devoted their lives to the cause? Many of them—Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X, James Baldwin, Toni Morrison, President Barack Obama, Langston Hughes, Maya Angelou, Zora Neale Hurston, Richard Wright, and innumerable others—some of the greatest voices and thinkers in world history. 

I believe in the power of language with the fire of 1,000 suns. But language alone is insufficient. It has to be attached to action. 

Black Lives Matter is not a brand strategy. It is not an advertising campaign. You cannot post a black square on Instagram, or offer vaguely expressed words of support and call it a contribution. Racism is not a comfortable conversation; it shouldn't be. Brands do not get to hijack Black lives for their feeds, campaigns, and messaging if there is no proven history of doing the work and no transparent plan of action for doing better.

The message is not just that Black Lives Matter. 

The message is Black Lives Matter
AND this is where we've failed or succeeded in supporting Black lives and anti-racism.
AND this is a detailed, transparent list of how we will live and act as allies moving forward.
AND this is how we pledge to use our platform and invite you, our followers, to join us.
AND this is how we will ensure every decision made from here on out supports equality, diversity, and inclusion.

Anything less than that is not enough.

Here is some other helpful advice:

Sharp, clear, unadulterated language is non-negotiable (sit with this smoldering statement from Ben & Jerry's for a second) and it has to be rooted in doing the work. If you have no work to show, that's where you start. Not with a messaging strategy, but with interoffice policies centered around diversity and inclusion. 

If you are a brand, you have a potent platform capable of changing and saving lives. Do not sleep on this. We are here to listen, to learn, and to help. 

It’s a question that’s come up with all our clients recently, filtered through various lenses. How, in this new world, do we talk about: SPF for a summer that won’t exist; lipstick for mouths hidden behind face masks; art for a museum-less world; anything, really, for a population that’s nearly 15% unemployed? 

The collective mood is grim, and rightly so. The borders of our individual worlds have receded at a breathtaking pace, and we are unable to rely on the social and spiritual fuel of our previously contact-full lives. We can’t even envision the future. 
 

Antonym doesn’t offer quick, strategy-starved copy for a reason. It guts intention, and we know good communication is an art. As Helen Rosen Woodward—whose groundbreaking career in advertising copywriting allowed her to retire at the age of 43 in 1924 as one of the highest-paid women in the industry—said, “In writing good advertising, it is necessary to put a mood into words, and to transfer that mood to the reader.” 

The internet is the cornerstone of our new social lives. Coincidentally, it is also the only place where brands can currently exist. People are flocking to its pages and applications, desperate for fresh ways to engage and interactions that make them feel less hopeless. Words unattached to a meaningful mood are senseless. 

Think of it this way. When your friend’s having a tough time, and you want to do something special, you don’t just have them over for dinner, plop some food in front of them, and unpack all the reasons they should feel better. You lower the lighting, put on some music, arrange vibrant flowers, spend a few extra bucks on wine, make sure the temperature’s just right. You set a memorable mood because it shows you care. And it always outlasts the taste of the food. 

This is the world now. The food is cooked. How will your brand use language to magic a new mood for your customers? We're not talking spinning out content for content's sake. Think fresh editorial platforms, social campaigns, winsome email offerings, and connected platforms that help you solve your customer's problems tout suite. 

Want help? Contact us, and let's strategize. 

One week into quarantine, I received an unforgettable recommendation. I was listening to the New York Times podcast, The Argument, hosted by Opinion columnists Michelle Goldberg, Ross Douthat, and at the time, David Leonhardt (now, Frank Bruni). Their viewpoints span the political spectrum, and the point is that they gather to "argue" (they're polite; it's hysterically refreshing) about a current critical issue. The civilized exchange wraps up with a recommendation, an apolitical indulgence that cleanses the mental palette, say Szechuan food, or an out-of-print midcentury magazine. 

On March 19, at the end of this episode, it was David's turn to share a recommendation. He revealed that on 9/11—during which his wife emerged from the subway and witnessed the World Trade Centers being felled by planes—he and his wife realized they were experiencing history and made a long recording about what they had seen and encountered. His recommendation, prescient at the time, was to acknowledge that we are living an unprecedented global experience and to document it. 

"However you want to do it," he says, "sit down with a physical journal, make physical recordings of yourself, but understand that you're basically living through history right now. Record even the small things, how you're spending your days, what you find frustrating, what you're eating, what little joys you've managed to work in. Because my guess is, in the future, our kids and grandkids are going to want to understand a lot more about what this period is like."

Weeks after I took his advice and began a nightly ritual with my husband, wherein we share a recorded conversation about our days and moods over a glass of wine, the advice popped up again, in Cheryl Strayed's new podcast "Sugar Calling," during an interview with author and educator George Saunders. "This has never happened before here — at least not since 1918," he shared, quoting a letter he'd written his students. "We are, and especially you are, the generation that is going to have to help us make sense of this and recover afterwards...Are you keeping records of the emails and texts you're getting, the thoughts you're having, the way your hearts and minds are reacting to this strange new way of living? It's all important."

Here's the point, and I'm stealing it straight from David and George: document this moment. For yourself, because it restores, and for your company, because it's smart. Do not be the brand that builds a marketing strategy based on gaslighting consumers into thinking that everything will go back to normal. It will not. Do not be the company that nationally proclaims, "we're all in this together," when that reality is so false it's fatal. Use this time to collect your audience's stories and to concept a messaging strategy that speaks to what humans have missed in quarantine, and what they're craving upon reintroduction. How will your company contribute to the collective recovery? 

It's effortless and costs nothing. Use the tools at your disposal, and implore your audience on social, via email, in the chatbox on your website:

• How can we help you right now? 

• Which brands are currently making you feel like they care? 

• What are you most looking forward to when society reopens?

• What has been the hardest part of all of this? 

• What brightens your day? 

Use their answers to revise your target audience profiles, and embolden a new perspective on campaigns (holiday gifting in a recessed economy) that demand a fresh approach this year. 

You are our people. How can we help you right now? Get in touch, and let's have a brand messaging therapy session. We could all use it. 

Amanda

It feels impossible. How do you sell things, and speak to people at a time like this? Many are doing it wrong, and their tone-deaf response resounds. But those doing it well are telling stories we'll never forget, with just a few simple adjustments. 

Don't ignore the pandemic

It may seem ludicrous to point this out, but many brands have not adjusted their messaging since the quarantine began. It reads as careless, off-base, and honestly, just plain bizarre. It doesn't matter what you sell or to who—coronavirus is the number one thing affecting everyone's lives right now, and addressing it is imperative to your brand messaging. We've seen brands send beautiful, heartrending emails that have nothing to do with sales, create new forms of connection on Instagram or through Zoom, and transparently share how the pandemic is affecting their company and what they're doing to shift priorities. It feels infinitely saner than those strutting along like it's business as usual. 

Speak like a human, talking to other humans 

We usually instruct our clients to speak relentlessly on-brand, using sharpened lexicons and structured strategies. The brief has shifted. People are in crisis, and a human-centered approach is paramount. Email marketing and social are efficient, affordable ways to connect with your people, and the bonus is: they have an actual impact. People have more time than ever, and they're reading literally everything that comes into their inboxes (we had one friend tell us the other day that she had "officially finished reading the internet."). This is an unprecedented opportunity to make a new impression on your clients. You're no doubt affected by this. What are you anxious about? How do you want the companies you love to speak to you? Say that.  

Shift your strategy

Your 2020 marketing strategy likely did not consider a global pandemic. For right now, at least, you need a fresh approach. It doesn't mean that you have to forego new product drops, or stop talking about your services. It does mean that you have to incorporate the current environment into what you're selling. M·A·C Cosmetics shifted the money raised from their legendary VIVA GLAM Lipstick to support COVID-19 relief. Everlane has reframed its philanthropic model as well, and created a new "Lounge Shop" on its website, featuring their coziest items. The Wing concocted a new newsletter and online events platform designed to connect people digitally, and opened it up to non-members. M·A·C is still selling lipstick, Everlane, apparel, and The Wing, womxn-centered connection. But the strategy shifted, and swiftly.

How will you shift yours?

If you'd like to talk about your company's messaging strategy right now, let’s have a proper chat. We won't make you Zoom, promise.