Tone of voice: how your brand can talk a customer into bed

If there’s one way to stand out from the competition, it’s to have a clearly defined voice. A tone of voice is what you say and how you say it. Without tone of voice guidelines Sainsbury’s risk sounding like Dave in aisle three in one exchange, and Margaret on the tills in another. The brand message would sway from sounding like a kid who spends his weekends putting gas into his brain via his jumper and stealing hubcaps, to an aging lady with a warm smile who has all the time in the world, despite being the cause of the world’s longest queue. There would be no consistency. Sainsbury’s shoppers would end up dribbling into the shelves, bumping into each other and collapsing in the streets clasping the sides of their heads, screaming make the voices stop, make the voices stop.

Individuals who have used their voice as a promotion tool are memorable: close your eyes, and it’s easy to hear Michael Buffer saying let’s get ready to rumble at a live boxing event. Morgan Freeman; his voice is in your head. You can hear him eating toast right now if you want. That’s familiarity. People trust the familiar. If Morgan Freeman offered you toast in his buttery voice, you would say yes without thinking. And you would enjoy it.

If you’re an MD thinking the voice of your brand doesn’t matter, then your customers are wandering around in a confused daze, slowly being magnetised towards the smooth voice of your competitors. And it’s your fault entirely.

Here are 4 simple tips on writing effective tone of voice guidelines:

It’s OK to use humour in internal documents. In fact, if you aren’t going to use humour internally, when are you? Humour is a key way of making sure your employees actually read the guidelines. It’s a way of getting your message across. It also increases the chances of your employees talking about the document, and accepting the instruction instead of rebelling against it.
Keep guidelines witty and human, but keep them concise.
A witty/ballsy headline increases the chances of everything else being read.
Don’t be too complicated. TOV guidelines shouldn’t read like the IKEA instruction manual for the Nornas glass door wall cabinet. Which, let me tell you, is fucking insane.

The list of advice could keep going, but will do for now. If you think you need tone of voice guidelines for your business, drop me a message [email protected]

Copywriting tip #142: kill all lizards.

Lizard words appear from the cracks between sentences like weeds; destroying all hope of growing a productive phrase or inspiring meaningful exchange. Lizard words are unnecessary words that cannot be trusted. They are reptilian markers that point a webbed claw at a paragraph and scream all of this is nonsense.

People don’t trust lizard words, so don’t exaggerate when a statement of fact contains already impressive information. There is no need. Show the reader what you want them to see and allow them to think for themselves; don’t tell them how to think with lizard words and phrases like absolutely essential, new innovation and best in the world.

If the product is essential, it’s already absolute. If the product is innovative, it’s already new. And if the product truly is the best, the world will know about it.

Write bold. Write vivid. Write interesting.

And then make sure in the edit you remember to remove all signs of the lizard; like dead bugs, tiny poos and massive lies.

To discuss content marketing and how it can help you and your business, email [email protected]

The most concise way to write better business copy

Don’t.

*Write for humans. Write for people. Write in a language that people speak in; human is the language people understand, it’s the language that wakes potential buyers out of their slumber, and it’s the language that bonds teams together and connects us all. To try and write in a deadpan tone full of superfluous language for no other reason than to sound like a business speaking, is to lose the heart of the company to fear. Keep it simple. Keep it straightforward and direct. But keep it human.

To discuss content marketing and how it can help you and your business, email [email protected]

Cadbury is dead. All hail our new creative overlords, Ribena.

Ribena. You tickle me pink. You turn me over and rub my belly, you make me believe again in the creative process; you are a beacon of hope in what feels like a time of perpetual creative darkness. A wizard with a full erection at the contest of bearded men with semis.

This is the era of putting up walls and maintaining steady growth at the expense of making friends and brands worth billions. Turn on your television and every advert is so safe they’re teetering on the edge of pointlessness. Advertising is eating itself. It’s becoming redundant by towing the line of somebody else. Are the people signing off on television adverts so out of touch that they don’t understand we can now fast forward the ads? To stay safe isn’t enough, the modern day TV advert needs to be so good in its own right that it makes someone hit the pause button and actually watch it. The modern TV advert can’t just fit in, or it will be fast forwarded over - it needs to stand out. Someone at Ribena understands this, whereas the people at Cadbury now appear to have the same gorilla that used to be in their ads in charge of marketing. Now, the gorilla can play the drums, for sure, but I wouldn’t put him in charge of marketing because he likes Phil Collins. On the up-side you could pay the gorilla bananas. But, overall your brand would suffer. The gorilla would make pretty good security too. Terrible on the phone, but great at getting rid of PPI calls. Could possibly pull a human apart limb by limb in a board meeting, or punch a shark to death. Overall, it's a business no no. Anyway, I digress...

In 2011 Cadbury recorded a net income of £447,545,760 [1]. I didn’t mind. Cadbury gave us the drumming gorilla. It gave us those two kids with the twitchy faces. Even when their ads didn’t quite work, they were trying to push the envelope. They earned their profit. But fast-forward to 2016, and Cadbury are no longer pushing the envelope, they are filling it with cash and stuffing it into their pockets. Today, Cadbury avoid paying UK tax [2], and have cut the size and content of their chocolate bars. Their adverts are now so cheaply produced they’re slapping their logo over old You Tube videos, like some first year art college project. Cadbury has become the 16 year-old art student with potential who runs up to his teacher with a terrible picture of a sunflower on it, and we are the parents sticking the drawing to the fridges in our homes, and saying things like it’s the most beautiful sunflower we’ve ever seen. NEWSFLASH: the sunflower looks like a depressed stick and the student is taking the piss. He can do better, but he treats you as stupid. Remove the picture from the fridge, ask for a better sunflower, stop buying Cadbury products, demand better adverts.

Cadbury have decided to please their short-term financial overlords over their brand. Well, step aside Cadbury and hello Ribena, you lovely round-faced blackcurrant legend.

The Ribena advert forces people to hit the pause button when skipping the adverts because it’s something worth seeing. Being a successful TV advert is no longer about being the one good advert in a series of ten during the traditional ad breaks…it’s about being the one advert people stop to look at out of five hundred adverts skipped. That’s the new power of being creative. That’s the new price of maintaining the status quo and not looking after your brand. The brands that reach this understanding first are the brands that will thrive.

I can see the Ribena creative pitch now…

Creative: So, we have flying hedgehogs, an owl with human lips that fires lasers from its eyes, a rabbit pops up near the end wearing sunglasses and a fake moustache, we’ll have robin’s riding blackcurrants, hedgehogs on balloons, maybe someone who looks a bit like Beyoncé carrying a flag on the back of a swan…A goose with a bow tie, who isn’t afraid to be different…
Ribena Executive: NO.
Creative: We thought you might say that. But you haven’t heard the soundtrack yet.
Ribena Executive: Security. Hi. Can you come into my office immediately; I’ve got some crazy creative from Riben…
Creative: ZIBBE DOO ZIBEE DOO ZIBBEE DOOO ZIBEEE DOOOO ZIBEE DOOO ZIBBBE DO.
Ribena Executive: Hang on security. I've got to make another call...Chuck! Chuck, it's Marvin. Your cousin, Marvin Berry! You know that new sound you're looking for? Well, listen to this!..

^^ That should also be the follow up advert. Ribena, get in touch.

So, there you have it. Cadbury, you melted our hearts through great advertising and product, but then you got greedy. You cut the budgets across the board to line the fat little pockets of your board members.

Cadbury is dead. All hail our new creative overlords, Ribena.

To discuss content marketing and how it can help you and your business, email [email protected]

Source [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cadbury
Source [2]: http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/adf59a06-9c24-11e5-8ce1-f6219b685d74.html#axzz4AEWdVSM2

How to avoid the Grombumarak of business

Choosing the right content marketing expert is tricky: get it wrong and your business will be eaten alive by The Grombumarak. The Grombumarak will eat your business head first, then keep your feet in a trophy cabinet to remember the experience. It will clean its teeth with your toes and fart shop windows, desks and employees' bones.

On the upside, choose your content marketing expert carefully (AKA hiring me) and ROI can whack the The Grombumarak right in the eyeballs with a pointed spreadsheet which clearly indicates increased profits, which in turn will go onto breathe new life into your business.

Here are some thoughts to consider when choosing the right content marketing person, and consequently avoid your feet becoming part of The Grombumarak's trophy cabinet.

The 'lost at sea one sandwich between two' test

You wouldn't travel in a boat across a vast ocean with only one sandwich to share between you and a stranger. You would want to meet them first. Get to know them. Talk about some sort of sandwich arrangement whereby you both share half each. You would want to know that you could trust them, that you won't wake up one morning with the sandwich missing, or worse, with the person sailing away on the tiny sandwich, having seen some type of escape.

And like you wouldn't travel the ocean with one sandwich and a stranger, nor should you agree to let a business take over your content marketing without meeting the actual person who will be doing the writing. Not the manager, not the face - you need to meet the writer. You need to trust them, to know they won't eat the entire sandwich, and leave you and your brand to starve to death, lost in an ocean you are unable to navigate.

Just because Dave wants to shag you doesn't make you a singer

The entire internet thinks they are a social media and content marketing star. But just because Dave clapped you off the stage that one time after you sang Celine Dion pissed in the local pub doesn't make you Celine Dion. It doesn't even make you a singer.

If someone says they know how to launch your business on Twitter to drive sales, check their Twitter following. If they only have 50 followers, you might think it reasonable to ask how they are going to do it for you if they haven't done it for themselves. The same logic goes for everything - look at their content, if they have a blog, find it and read it, if they have a business website, read it. Look at their CV. Look at their clients.

Up above. Down below. Oh look, Kaleidoscope

Everybody loves a Kaleidoscope. You put your eye to the lens and it's like walking into John Lennon's brain three days before he wrote Strawberry Fields. When he was likely on heroin and running naked around a field being a rabbit. But the thing with Kaleidoscopes is yes, they look lovely - but they make money. Lots of it. It's a beautiful absorbing experience, with a purpose.

Content Marketing has to have a clear point to it. Have it clear in your mind what you want to get out of your marketing campaign, explain, and it will happen. Most companies want ROI - just make it clear to your expert that you are all up for swirling colours, but only if that's what your audience are buying.

The truth based on experience is a wonderful thing

A ‘yes’ person is not a good person. They might make you feel like a King for a day, but they are just looking for an easy life and not helping you with advice that might push your brand forward. No can be a powerful word, but it's never used when money is exchanged. As the employer, it's all too easy to get a nod of the head and a 'no problem' when sometimes what you need is the truth. A response that explains the pros and cons of a content strategy, and how it could be tweaked to better improve results - the trust based on experience - is a wonderful thing. Value it - because the content marketing expert that can explain himself to you, is the same person who can explain himself to shareholders and the bosses of bosses.

To discuss content marketing and how it can help you and your business, email [email protected]

Slap the world in the face with talking rainbow fish

You’ve nailed your brand. It looks like a hamster eating a marshmallow. The words read like Shakespeare on crack. Your brand defines you, aligns your people and makes you feel all warm and fuzzy inside, like you've just eaten a furball from the nether regions. Now what? How can you get your message out to the world? How can your company inspire others, enter the psyche of the collective consciousness, drive business and influence?

It's easy...Just grab a massive talking rainbow fish, and slap the world around the face with it.

Here's what I mean, in more detail, plus some other tips on how to get people talking about your brand...

Open ears lead to Kent peanut factories

Sit at the bar of a busy pub on your own and wait. Overhear conversations. Eat the odd peanut. Then, when a conversation comes along about a subject that you know all about, drop in an additional point that nobody has thought of. Suddenly, you are the conversation. There are people standing around you. As the new leader of knowledge on the subject, people will buy you drinks. Before you know it, you own a peanut factory in Kent and tell stories to thousands in the beat poetry tent at Glastonbury. You get the idea, a good content marketing expert doesn't just know how to begin a conversation, they know how to find conversations already happening around them and move them on.

Avoid long stories about two reasonably priced bags

A postman orders a bag on Amazon, and it's meant to turn up the next day and doesn't arrive. So after sending a few emails, he cancels the order and decides to go shopping. He eventually buys a bag from John Lewis for a reasonable price. When he returns home, he discovers the bag he cancelled has been delivered, and his debit card has been charged for the bag. Livid, he sits in a chair thinking sad thoughts about bags and communication - NOBODY WANTS TO READ THIS. BE INTERESTING OR BE IGNORED.

Slap the world in the face with talking rainbow fish

Everything anyone has ever told you about being safe, and testing the water and not offending anyone and not taking risks is all bullshit. Offend people. Wake them up. Write content that opens their eyes. Write content that inspires. Write content that you care about. Write content that will make a difference. Be bold. Be brave. Opening up your own business and walking away from standard employment was a risk. It was a bold move. Don't believe yourself if the voice in your head is telling you to act like somebody else just because you have reached a point where you have something to lose. Push on. Continue being yourself. Write the content you want to read.

Explosive content doesn't have to involve beans

It's nice to tell a story. It's nice that there is an arc, that everything has a beginning, a middle and an end. But not all content has to be that way. Don't get stuck in a pattern where everything is the same. An article that states facts that your audience cares about can be just as explosive as a story about how someone purchased your beans and won the 2006 Texas farting contest.

Want some free pointers on how to tell the world about your brand?

Download free 'Stop Throwing Dead Pigeons at Strangers: a guide to content marketing'.

To discuss content marketing and how it can help you and your business, email [email protected]

Test the chair before you tame the lion

A good marketing expert has to capture and communicate the truth: what is at the heart of your brand? Who are you, why do you do what you do and why should anyone care?

So how does your business become a success? How do you use marketing to your benefit, while protecting your brand and making loads of moola?

Here are 4 tips on how to become better at marketing:

Carpet bomb London with 10,000 bananas

There's no point being the best at something and only letting your Mum know. And there's more weight behind showing you are the best, than shouting in peoples' faces I'M NUMBER ONE. If you sell the best bananas in the world, you can wait for the first person to buy one and eventually word of mouth will spread. By the end of week 1, you might be selling 10 bananas a day. OR, you can hire a plane, wear a Bananaman costume, and carpet bomb London with 10,000 free bananas attached to tiny parachutes that have your contact details on. By the end of that day, you'll be the number one banana distributor in the world - and it won't be you saying it, it will be everyone else.

More BLAM, less SPAM.

Nobody likes spam. Back when it was a food, it tasted horrible, ubiquitous and inescapable. And today when people receive spam emails, they get a horrible taste in their mouth, see spam everywhere and can't escape it. If you have an emailing list as a business, this list is gold dust, but it will soon crumble into complaints and thin air if you fail to be interesting to your audience. Never email the equivalent of your business taking a selfie with a load of money - think before you email. Send only emails that are going to interest your audience. Interesting articles on subjects they like. Link the articles back to your website. Drive traffic, and increase sales through being interesting.

Embrace the age of authentic marketing

This should really speak for itself - stop bullshitting. Stop lying. If you are selling a car, you can't say that it can fly and talk the language of cows...because you will soon be found out and your brand will be harmed. Focus on what you are selling, and if you can't think of something good to say about your product, then you need to improve your product. Never lie. Never exaggerate. Classmates.com told the world it would find your classmates, and sent emails to people telling them a lost friend was trying to get in touch. This was a lie. Classmates.com was sued for false advertising for almost $10million. When considering time has moved on since then and that we now live in the social media age, one lying advert and your business could die.

Test the chair before you tame the lion

You wouldn't become a lion tamer without testing a few different chairs out on a few different lions first. Likewise, in modern marketing everything can be tested...So there is no need to throw £100,000 behind a campaign and hope it works. You can show a select group various types of copy. You can run email tests and see what appeals to who and when. You can write articles to drive awareness, and measure what articles are the most popular. You can run campaigns on Twitter and Facebook, tweak the demographics and messaging and learn from your audience what they best respond to. You can do this for small amounts of money - figure out what you know is going to work, and then spend big.

To discuss content marketing and how it can help you and your business, email [email protected]

The longer stride of smaller steps

Spending a month carving a swan out of ice carving a person carving a swan out of ice, to promote IBM, might be creative - but the idea has to work for the business, not the marketing expert. It might be a laugh to put someone in a bunny costume and get them to walk around the world to raise carrot awareness, but if the budget is small then it might make more sense to write some articles that pack a rabbit punch, and place them in areas with a large carrot loving audience.

Delivering the right content is all about the relationship between content expert and business owner. The route taken of a thousand smaller steps over a single giant stride cannot be underestimated in business. A business owner who takes a single leap, misses the journey of learning a thousand things. Each little step, is a learning curve for the business owner, and without an intrinsic, in-depth understanding of business, target markets, the wider industry and the full spectrum of marketing disciplines and how they integrate, business owners are at risk of spending money unnecessarily.

An entrepreneur who has walked up every step knows their employees because they have been on the journey together, which helps communication and builds culture. Communication between business owner and content writer is key, and if the owner has taken smaller steps to reach his goal, then his knowledge makes his strides longer. He or she is able to communicate in a clearer fashion what they want to achieve through content, and because they have travelled a thousand steps, they can tell everyone who will listen what step 1001 will look like, and how the business will reach it.

So if you are a business owner, remember you don't have to explain why you want to take things one step at a time. You've come as far as you have for a reason, and the approach of one step at a time means that you have likely taken a lot of people who care about your business on the journey with you.

Download free 'Stop Throwing Dead Pigeons at Strangers: a guide to content marketing'.

To discuss content marketing and how it can help you and your business, email [email protected]

6 tips on how to avoid creating T-Rex culture

Culture matters. Not the cultivation of bacteria and tissue cells in an artificial medium containing nutrients. People culture. Work culture. Human achievement regarded collectively culture. Culture sustains that first week enthusiasm for an entire career. If a business owner gets their culture right, the result is peace of mind.

Employees should look forward to going to their jobs. They should enjoy the challenges, their co-workers, and the atmosphere. Careers shouldn't provoke stress in employees. The working environment should not close down the mind, heart and spirit of a person.

While the work may be difficult, the culture should be designed to alleviate the work related stress: a window with a view will always be more powerful than a motivational cat poster pinned to a brick wall.

Business culture can be a Tyrannosaurus Rex that will eat morale alive and swallow your business whole in a single gulp. Or it can be the cement that glues hearts and minds together, so they work with you forever.

Here's a few tips on how to avoid T-Rex culture:

Avoid square peg in round hole syndrome

The US Government didn't employ J. Robert Oppenheimer to head up the Manhattan Project, then insist he spend his time in the cutlery department trying to create a spork. They put him where he best fit, then let him go to work. OK, so his work murdered hundreds of thousands of innocent people - but that was what he had been employed to do.

Feed, water and leave your people in light

Humans are not designed to sit at a computer all day hitting buttons with letters on. A human with no plan is a lion without eyes or teeth, sent into a ballpit with violent children: full of frustration, with nowhere to release it. In the beginning the lion hates himself. But after a while, he hates the ballpit. In short, if you keep an employee in the dark and let them think that they can't grow in the company, if a person thinks that what they are doing today is what they will be doing for the rest of their life...Eventually they will hate your company. They might even stay working for you while hating you - which is the mentality at the heart of all customer complaints.

Just say no to motivational cat posters

Don't take the piss out of your employees intelligence by insulting them with fluffy kittens playing with balls of elastic, with embarrassing out of date wisdom from the 80's. Just. Don't.

Do not micromanage

You created the business from scratch, but if you aren't prepared to let your people do what they can, then your business is never going to grow beyond your own limitations. A business that is micromanaged is the extension of one mind. This is the DNA of a small business. A business led by a visionary who empowers his staff to become autonomous becomes the extension of many minds. This is the DNA of an empire.

Beards are good

Don't tell your employees how to dress or look. Just because you think suits should be worn, and ties and suits and polished shoes are a must, doesn't mean they should be. Some owners run their business like the military and think this is good. NEWSFLASH: The military is an organised group of people who unfortunately sell their soul to the devil for a lie. It's really nothing to emulate.

Don't be a fuckwit

Well done, you created a business. You are making money. This doesn't make you a genius. Remember that your employees might not have your business head, but Mark in booth 10 once scored a goal from the half way line, and Margaret in booth 3 can fly a plane. You are the magnet that has attracted these people, but you are not the main attraction in their lives. So don't get above your station. A real leader lets others lead. Don't be a fuckwit.

To discuss content marketing and how it can help you and your business, email [email protected]

Great marketing sucks

It’s a sad thing that to many, the word marketing has never felt like a word about people or the imagination. To some, marketing is the 2am drunk slumped against the window of the limousine: the lost soul vomiting over the tinted window of the successful business visionary.

Imagination seems hidden beneath a pile of papers and legislation. Somewhere along the way leaders grew fearful of inventiveness, of creation and laughter. Through the cracks of this fear words like marketing morphed from essential business practice to unnecessary bubble wrapping. Greed replaced love. The need for profit at all costs suffocated the original magic of brand storytelling. There was a time when visionaries were less focused on pleasing shareholders and more interested in making beautiful work, and work beautiful. The most successful content marketing today is still about creating amazing content, and then sharing it with the world.

When HBO needed a marketing campaign for the first season of True Blood they sent vials of blood to popular horror bloggers, which led bloggers to a website where vampires were privately discussing whether they should reveal themselves to the world. None of this mentioned the TV programme. By creating a complex back story, True Blood became one of HBOs most anticipated shows ever.

The word marketing deserves a better reputation. More so when the truth is that content marketing is really all about offering to receive, not finding the neck of clients, taking a bite and then sucking them dry.

Download free 'Stop Throwing Dead Pigeons at Strangers: a guide to content marketing'.

To discuss content marketing and how it can help you and your business, email [email protected]