How to Create a Brand Voice With Video in 2023 [Brand Development Guide]
Have you ever watched a commercial or an online ad and immediately thought, “I wish I thought of that”? The most successful forms of advertising demonstrate a very clear brand voice. Since the average person spends 100 minutes per day watching online videos, it’s essential to pair your brand voice with a successful video marketing campaign.
But you can’t create an effective video unless you narrow down your brand voice first. Let’s take a deeper dive into how to create a brand voice and ultimately incorporate it into video content.
What Is a Brand Voice?
Simply put, a company’s brand voice is its personality. To gain a better understanding, think of a few of your friends or family members. They each have a unique vocabulary, sense of humor, demeanor, and mannerisms. The same goes for your brand.
How does your company stand out from similar companies? You need a brand voice, which is the personality your company has in all its communications.
Brand voice helps your company remain consistent across all channels, including:
- Print advertising
- Social media
- Blog posts
Even if a different person or team is creating content for each separate medium, having a solidified brand voice will allow anyone in your company to keep your marketing efforts consistent.
5 Steps to Creating Your Brand Voice
Creating a brand voice doesn’t need to be difficult, but it does require everyone on your team to be on the same page. If someone else envisions your brand voice as cheeky and quirky, but you see it as serious and professional, then you’ll have a long way to go to find a happy medium. Use these five steps to narrow down your brand’s personality and get everyone thinking similarly about your company:
1) Pull From Your Company’s Mission Statement
Your company’s vision or mission is a fantastic place to start. It will help you understand what your company is all about and how it helps its target market. Pull some key characteristics and values from your mission statement to get your gears turning.
2) Get to Know Your Audience
You can’t have a brand voice without understanding who you’re talking to. When you know more about your target audience, you can better understand how they communicate and what type of language they respond to.
Don’t be afraid to get nitty-gritty when finalizing your target audience. Consider characteristics such as:
- Age
- Income
- Gender
- Occupation
- Sense of humor
- Location
- Interests/hobbies
Once you have a clear idea of who your target audience is, you can perform surveys to see other brands they’re drawn to or what type of content they connect with most.
3) Analyze Your High-Performing Content
Unless your company is brand new, you’ve likely been creating content for a few months or years. Take a look at your top-performing pieces and decipher any common characteristics between them.
- Maybe each high-performing piece is humorous.
- Perhaps they’re all short, clear, and to the point.
- Or do they all have a visual focus?
If certain pieces are already resonating with audiences, you can glean parts of your existing brand voice (that you may not even know existed!) from them and use them moving forward.
4) Figure Out What You Don’t Want to Be
It’s helpful to figure out what you want your brand voice to be, but sometimes it can be even more helpful to determine what you don’t want to be. Brainstorm some ideas, characteristics, or companies that you don’t want to be like and avoid those characteristics in your own brand voice.
For example, if you know you don’t want your brand to be uptight, then that leads you to realize that you want your voice to be humble.
5) Create a Brand Voice Document to Share With Your Team
Once you’ve narrowed down your brand voice, you need to get your entire company on the same page. Create a document (or even just a few slides) that outlines your brand voice, and be sure to include:
- Your target audience
- Your mission statement (or a link to it)
- A list of adjectives that describe your brand’s personality
- A few example phrases or sentences in your brand voice
When you finish, send the document to everyone on your team and have a company-wide meeting to discuss it. Make sure everyone is on board with the new brand voice before moving forward.
Whether you use internal or external writers and designers, you’ll need to lead a training on how these key players can accurately write and design content in your brand voice.
Brand Voice Video Tips
When you’ve solidified your brand voice, it’s time to incorporate it into video content. Since 81% of marketers say video has directly helped them increase sales, you’re simply missing out on revenue if you don’t give video marketing a try.
Align the Video Tone With Your Brand Voice
Your video’s tone should be a direct reflection of your brand voice. After all, the point of having a brand voice is to ensure all content pieces are cohesive and connect with audiences on the same wavelength.
To make sure your videos align with your brand voice, start by scripting each one out before heading into production. This will give you (and your team) a clear understanding of what the video should look and sound like before anything is filmed.
During the scriptwriting process, keep these elements in mind:
- Visuals: How should the video be shot? Is it light-hearted or serious?
- Audio: What type of music or sound effects would work well?
- Language: What type of words and phrases will you use? If you need some inspiration, consider looking at other successful brands in your industry and see how they’ve aligned their video tone with their scripts.
If your brand voice is lighthearted and humorous, but you shoot a dark and moody video, the only thing you’ll achieve is confusing your audience.
Remain Consistent
Your brand voice should remain consistent regardless of the platform you use to share your videos. This can be a challenge if you post videos on multiple platforms, but it’s important to ensure each video sounds and looks like it came from the same company.
The easiest way to maintain consistency is to use the same team for every video project. If possible, use the same writer, director, producer, and editor for each one. This way, there’s a level of understanding and cohesion between team members that will make it easier to produce videos that fit your brand voice.
Another way consistency can show up in your brand voice is by using the same spokesperson. Take the GEICO Gecko, for example. That familiar green lizard has been gracing television screens for over 20 years, and no one ever has a doubt of who the commercial is for when they see that familiar mascot. ????
Create Different Kinds of Videos
There are many different types of videos you can make. Try your hand at:
- Long-form informational videos
- Short-form social media videos
- Live-streaming
- Interviews
- Internet trends
You’ll have more chances at success if you don’t pigeonhole your video marketing off the bat.
Utilize Help From a Video Production Agency
Don’t be afraid to leave your brand voice video marketing to the pros. There are agencies that specialize in this kind of content and can help take your videos (and brand) to the next level.
Just make sure you do your research and find an agency that specializes in video marketing and has a good understanding of your specific industry. The last thing you want is an amateur team who doesn’t know how to produce quality, on-brand content.
When you work with an agency, be clear about what you’re looking for and provide as much guidance as possible upfront. This way, they can hit the ground running and produce videos that perfectly align with your brand voice.
This is a great option to help you get high-quality video content off the ground if you don’t have an in-house video production team.
Successful Brand Voice Videos
Gain some inspiration by taking a look at some successful video marketing campaigns that have a clear brand voice!
Stringline Pictures & Marco Collaboration
Here at Stringline Pictures, we produced the campaign #DontLimitLinda campaign for Marco. Their quirky voice comes through loud and clear. Take a look at one of the commercial spots below and check out the rest of the campaign videos here.
Old Spice
How could anyone forget these classic Old Spice commercials? A sarcastic, deadpan brand voice is very apparent.
Nike
Nike has long been known as a motivational, epic brand thanks to its clear voice. This masterclass in video editing struck a chord among many viewers.
Trust Your Brand Voice With a Skilled Team
Not every company has the resources to make an effective, high-quality brand video. That’s where we come in. Stringline Pictures is a video production agency that specializes in producing brand videos from start to finish. We have the capabilities to cover everything in pre-production, principal photography, and post-production. Or, bring us what you have, and we’ll take it from there.
Our Minnesota-based team can travel across the country to produce content that will take your brand to the next level. So, don’t be shy! Tell us about your brand today!
