How Verbal Identity Helps Everyone Speak Brand

Talk isn’t cheap

Brand communication is exploding. Today brands have to face an often “infinite loop” of consumer-brand interactions – so they need to say more than ever, in more places than ever. And increasingly more voices are speaking on brands’ behalf, with a steady increase in user-generated content and a quarter of brands using chatbots.

In this world, a clearly defined and actionable verbal identity is essential. If brands don’t have a guiding light for how they speak and what they say, how can they effectively communicate across their ecosystem, guide third parties on it, or produce prompts for AI tools?

That’s where verbal identity comes in. It’s a holistic system of expression that spans brand voice (the style of communication), messaging (the story being told in that voice), naming, and the actual copywriting that supports it all.

In a landscape that’s wordier than ever, having a strategic approach to every word a brand says can be the difference between effectively connecting with customers and getting lost in the noise.

It takes a chorus to cut through the noise

The good news? As we see it, verbal identity is a highly effective tool that everyone at an organisation can – and should – use. The time has come to challenge the conventional wisdom that brand language is the sole domain of the marketing team. Customer support agents, talent recruiters, people managers, product developers – all can become mouthpieces of brand. They just might not know it.

Not everyone designs graphics or experiences, but everybody speaks. And language plays an essential role in how a brand connects to audiences: whether it’s showing thoughtfulness and empathy, elevating the functional, creating clarity, or leaving audiences with a powerful sense of what you stand for. Handing the baton of verbal identity to a whole workforce has the potential to transform an entire team into brand ambassadors by helping employees use their words strategically to support that more connected, comprehensive brand world that consumers now expect.

Looking within

Practitioners who are going to speak on behalf of a brand should play an active role in shaping its approach to language. They have valuable boots-on-the-ground insights to share, whether they’re writing job descriptions, crafting social posts, or reviewing someone else’s copy. By building foundational verbal brand elements in concert with practitioners, we can pressure-test voice tactics, try voice on in different languages, or deep dive on particular questions like: what’s our brand’s approach to humour? What kind of challenger mindset are we trying to adopt? What does “premium” sound like for us?

In that development process come questions of priority and the need to make decisions. If one social creator thinks that the brand should go totally Wendy’s-on-Twitter while a sales rep can’t stop using the word “empower,” and you put those people in a room together, there will be, hopefully not blood, but likely some colourful discussion. How much do we flex on social? Is our elevator pitch utterly trite? By negotiating these nuances and defining what should rise to the top, a verbal identity becomes battle-tested, reflective of the most pressing contradictions or gaps that had been bubbling under the surface of a brand’s speech.

Transcending the toolkit

Once the elements of an authentic, relevant verbal identity are created in tandem with those who live and breathe the brand, it’s essential to translate them into guidance that’s easy to use and roll out across an organisation – so that these expertly distilled pieces can be fluently and flexibly brought to life by anyone and everyone.

At Wolff Olins we lead with a ‘tools not rules’ mentality so that communicators can see them as a launchpad for a brand expression that keeps evolving. And guidelines are just the beginning. Workshops, launch summits, office hours – all help lead away from PDFs and frameworks and toward a living, breathing brand that’s truly embodied by team members. With this approach, verbal identity helps everyone at an organisation sing their different notes in harmony. By starting from that unified point, brands are ready to truly engage in conversation with their audiences.

There’s enough talk out there. When the people behind a brand have a say in how that brand speaks, that’s when real conversation can begin.

Katherine Pisarro-Grant, Associate Verbal Director and William Rauscher, Verbal Director