One of the toughest challenges that any brand faces is getting all the various content stakeholders to consistently represent that brand. This is often seen on web sites where there are multiple authors but all representing a single brand. Unlike this site, where each blog author has his own voice, most commercial web sites would prefer to project a single brand voice on the web.
This is easier said than done. Getting writers to write in a common voice is a tricky thing. Several companies I’ve worked for have had extensive voice guideline documents. These guidelines attempted to lay out as many examples as possible for spelling, words to use, phrases to avoid and other tips and tricks for adhering to the brand voice. But in the end, these guidelines are more like a laundry list than a training manual. It’s hard to glean the gestalt (academic alliteration FTW!) from the individual parts.
So how do you train people to speak (or write) with one voice?
The answer is to create a persona for your web site’s narrator. The narrator is the person whose voice is “reading” the site’s content to the user. This isn’t as simple as it may sound on the surface. It’s quite a lot of work to do it well.
This subject probably deserves a book chapter more than a blog post. I’d love to be able to write a book some day, but until then you can console yourself in the words of folks like the Eisenberg brothers or the original, bald evil genius of Internet Marketing, Seth Godin. I’m just planting the seed for you to consider. If something sprouts, I’ve done my job.
So how do we get the chorus to speak with one voice? The choice of the word “chorus” is deliberate, because I believe there are examples for us to draw upon that range back as far as the classical age of Greek literature and drama. Show business is a wonderfully fertile field to draw from for the creatively inclined Internet Marketer (IM).
Jay Leno is going to host a new show, five days a week at 10pm ET on NBC (begins Sept. 14th 2009 – check your local listings as they say). He only held his old job for 17 years. The guy he replaced (Johnny Carson…you might have heard of him, kids) held the job for 30 years. The iconic portion of the Tonight Show for more than 40 years has been the opening monologue. It’s a pop culture touchstone that America has returned to again and again.
Although the audience feels as though the host is talking off the cuff or presenting a variant of a stand up routine, there is a veritable army of writers who script most of the words that are spoken. This is a situation that is very similar to the challenge faced by those of us who work in Internet Marketing for corporate America (whether it be B2B or B2C or some other acronym). Your web site is your “Tonight Show.” What many sites are missing is the host.
Unlike the TV host, the web site host is unseen. He resides only in the mental voice of the site’s readers. So how do you get your army of writers to project that same host into the minds of your site’s visitors? The same way the Tonight Show writers do it for Johnny Carson, Jay Leno and Conan O’Brien. The writers know who they are writing for. They don’t write jokes that they themselves would tell well. They write jokes that Conan will tell well. They know what works for Conan. Your web site authors need to do the same thing.
“But I can’t hire Hollywood talent to represent my brand!” you may exclaim in frustration. Settle down, Beavis. I’ll s’plain.
By using the same techniques that are used to develop customer personas, you can create a narrator persona for your web site. But there are some differences that I’d like to point out. Instead of coming up with a specific model to represent an important segment of your web site audience, you need to come up with a very specific, credible “character” to represent a single voice. I say “character” because I believe you can use well-known fictional characters as viable stand-ins for narrator personas.
The key is that whomever you choose needs to be very familiar to your web writers. Celebrities, well-known fictional characters, or pop culture icons can all work. You just need to select one that allows you to represent your brand online. Is your brand more like Sam Waterston from the TD Ameritrade ads or more like Bugs Bunny?
Inarguably, the best Bugs Bunny Cartoon. Ever.
Can you use a real person from within your own company? Yes, but with some serious caveats. It’s hard to have an idealized and standardized vision of someone that people may interact with at various levels. Your writers’ experiences with the real person behind the persona may alter their perception of that persona’s voice. In addition, what will you do if that individual leaves the company, retires or, heaven forbid, dies? New people coming into the company won’t immediately understand the persona of someone they may have only recently just met. But if you use a fictional character, celebrity, or whatever (living or dead!), chances are you can get a new person up to speed very quickly.
Tags: Bryan Eisenberg, Bugs Bunny, Internet Marketing, Jeffrey Eisenberg, personas, Sam Waterston, Seth Godin, web narrator, web writing
