5 Ways To Inject Brand Personality Through Language

We are familiar with slogans and taglines of companies, but the language of a business can be and should be so much more than a catchy title.

Can you match these common slogans to their respective brands?

Open Happiness.Oh what a Feeling!Talk to the TechSperts.The Fresh Food People.Just Do It.More Give. Less Take.

Know them all? I’ll put the answers at the end in case you missed any (so you can be sure to sleep tonight), but I’m guessing a few of these are pretty ingrained and are easy for you to recognise. This is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to brand language.

Having a successful slogan can be great in building brand awareness and can last generations if done well, and establishing additional language throughout a business can have profound ways in crafting the feelings your customers and staff have with your brand.

Finding the values and the essence of your company is the best place to start when building brand language. Is your business focused on compassion, care, respect and comfort or does it entertain and create fun, is bold and always charismatic? The language associated with these traits are very different and appeal to different audiences, and defining these traits can form a guideline for everyone in the company to keep in mind when they communicate internally and externally. This may sound restricting and stifling, but used appropriately it can feed an organisation.

Having constant reminders internally might sound over the top, but it influences people to use language in everyday conversations while talking about the brand to customers, and it becomes second nature. And once it’s established within the company, using it in your marketing activities is key to creating that feeling you want to leave your customers with.

Here are 5 ideas that can help you think about the areas of business you use language in and how tweaking it and creating conscious decisions about the words you use can help create a culture of language.

1. EMAIL SIGNATURES – When used well, I have seen fun companies bring a little bit of personality into their staff signatures. For instance, RedBalloon have their favourite activity their staff have recently enjoyed incorporated into their email signatures – this shows a little about what the person you are communicating with enjoys and also advertises what the company offers. I’ve also seen it for travel companies who explain their favourite trips and activities – it connotes fun and will be noticed by recipients. Of course everything needs to be checked before implementing, but you get the idea.

2. REMINDERS – Do you have a reminder service via text or email that gets sent to customers? It could probably benefit from a boost of personality on top of the professional stock standard message. Using enthusiastic language that matches your company can get people energised about engaging with your services – and after all, who doesn’t want customers turning up to an appointment excited and ready to go?

3. ON HOLD MESSAGES – Having engaging on-hold phone messages that don’t always sell but instead inform or even entertain can be a great way to make waiting less painful. Remind people what additional services you have, perhaps by telling them for instance that you have free delivery or that you have a reminder service for important products they might regularly need. If it’s some fun you want to share, why not mention strange and interesting facts about your industry.

4. GREETINGS – Having a particular style in which you introduce yourself in person, online or via phone is a way to make you stand out from the norm. Something Disney World staff say is: “Welcome to Disney World, we hope you have a magical day” which makes sense for them. What could be suitable for your brand?

5. MOVING MESSAGES – If you have a fleet of vehicles, having an interesting message on the back of a car or truck to talk to people in traffic might be a good way of spreading the types of conversations and messages your brand wants to share. I recently saw a Telstra vehicle mentioning that texting while driving is not OK (something along those lines). This is both a safety message and relates to the products they sell.

Oh and here are the answers to the above brand slogans, so you can sleep well tonight.

Open Happiness. (Coca-Cola Australia), Oh what a Feeling! (Toyota), Talk to the TechSperts. (Dick Smith), The Fresh Food People. (Woolworths), Just Do It. (Nike), More Give. Less Take. (National Australia Bank, NAB)