When a brand wants to stand out, the first thing it usually does is look different from everyone else. Think of Monzo’s coral card, Apple’s minimalist white packaging, or IKEA’s signature blue and yellow colors.
Some brands also pay attention to how they sound—their tone of voice.
Oatly is a great example of this. Their quirky language has helped them go from a niche option for those with lactose intolerance to a dominant player in markets across Sweden, the UK, and the US.
Other brands like Innocent, Virgin, First Direct, Paddy Power, and Monzo (again) have also built a strong tone of voice, and it’s no surprise that these companies have seen transformative success.
But beyond these few examples, it’s hard to think of many others who have truly nailed their tone of voice. Crafting a unique tone and using it consistently is tough, or at least it was—more on that later.
The Pros and Cons of Tone of Voice
People often think of tone of voice and a brand’s visual identity (like colors, logos, fonts) as opposites, but the relationship isn’t so clear-cut. With visual identity, a small team of designers can make significant changes quickly and easily.
Tone of voice, on the other hand, is everyone’s responsibility. Since everyone writes every day, it can be hard to keep the tone consistent. Even if you create a few perfect examples of your brand’s tone, they’ll soon be overshadowed by the everyday communication that either ignores it or doesn’t manage to execute it well.
You can try to improve this by running training sessions, getting leadership on board, and rewarding great writing during performance reviews. But now there’s a new player in the game: GenAI.
The Potato Principle
One of the main reasons so few brands manage to establish a distinctive tone of voice is because it’s hard to write consistently that way.
But GenAI can handle any level of complexity. You can make your tone as unique and detailed as you like—whether that means having every 27th word be “potato,” writing in iambic pentameter, or mimicking the rhythm of a Stormzy song.
Not only does GenAI make creating a complex tone of voice easy, but it can also help rewrite all those long, outdated communications. It’s at least twice as fast as a human, according to research we did with an Australian pensions company.
It’s a win-win situation—think of it as having your cake and eating it too.
So, is this the end for human writers?
As a writer myself, I’m biased, but I believe the role of writers is more important than ever.
As Andrej Karpathy said, “The hottest new programming language is English.” So, for writers, the demand for our skills is only going to grow.
Until now, we’ve had to hold back our creativity, adjusting our tone to fit people who either didn’t have the skill or the motivation to adapt. With GenAI, we’re finally free to unleash our full potential.
Old, bloated communications have often been left unchanged, but now, thanks to GenAI, companies are revamping them with the help of skilled writers to oversee AI-generated content.
While many writers might feel concerned about the future, I think this is the most exciting time to be someone who truly understands how language works.
What’s Next?
If you want your brand to be more distinctive, consider using your tone of voice to make it stand out. Here are five tips for taking advantage of AI’s potential:
- Hire a tone of voice specialist
Anyone can write, but a true tone of voice expert will take it to the next level. Since tone of voice will shape everything your brand says, it’s worth investing in a specialist. And even better, look for someone who understands AI. - Create plenty of examples
Have your best writers come up with strong examples of your tone in action. Then, use these, along with your tone guide, to create a prompt for your AI. Even better, get hundreds of examples and use them to fine-tune a model so it produces content that’s on-brand without needing additional prompts. - Train your team
Your team still needs to understand and apply the tone of voice. Offer training on both tone and prompt engineering. For those in charge of writing, make sure they’re up-to-date on AI. Their role will shift from creating content to overseeing and maintaining AI-generated material. - Create a private AI environment
To really take full advantage of AI, you’ll need more flexibility than a standard GPT model can offer. You’ll need a platform with a larger character limit and advanced capabilities, like Anthropic’s models, which have proven to deliver better writing results in tests. Look for tools that can handle longer texts and generate content that fits your needs exactly. - Host a writing amnesty
Encourage your team to bring all those outdated communications they’ve been meaning to update. Use your AI, plus human writers, to produce fresh drafts that match your tone and are up-to-date. Measure the impact of these revised messages and use the results to show skeptics just how much tone matters.
It took Oatly about 15 years to achieve success, but by following these tips, you could do it much faster.
