DISHOOM

We’ve been meaning to try Dishoom for a while, so last week we went to their restaurant in Shoreditch (there’s one in Covent Garden too). Right away, everything felt really well thought-through (and pretty slick, too). From the overall idea – it describes itself as ‘a Bombay cafe in London’ – to the food, the music and the sparky words on their menu.

We know how hard it is to write a good menu. There’s not a lot of space, and you have to balance some personality with getting information over quickly. Most do one or the other, but this does both well. So we asked the manager about their words. Who wrote them? Was it a branding company? Or maybe a writer we already know? It turned out one of the founders had written it himself.*

You can read their full menu here (it opens as a PDF).

There’s more. Other brands with words written by their founders:

STUTTERHEIM

Here’s the brochure from Stutterheim, our favourite if-only-we-could-afford-them Swedish raincoat company. Words by Alexander Stutterheim himself:

Most companies are obsessed with sounding ‘positive’ (it pops up in briefs we get all the time). Stutterheim’s idea – ‘Swedish melancholy at its driest’ – sets the tone for everything they write and design.

HELP REMEDIES

Who says pharmaceutical products can’t have beautiful branding? The co-founders of US-based Help Remedies worked together on their simple packaging – both of them used to work in branding and advertising.

HOWIES

Another ex ad-man, David Hieatt set the tone for howies a long time ago. He’s a good writer. But he left howies (and went on to start Hiut Denim, where he, the founder, pens the words again). The interesting thing about howies is that the spirit of David’s style stayed after he’d gone. Years later, the commercial director, the web team and their creative team all write in the howies way. David’s style stuck. Not through a big fat guideline that nobody read, but because howies are clear about what they stand for, and everyone who works for them gets what they’re about.

PEPPERSMITH

Peppersmith has a simple idea: chewing gum made from natural ingredients. And the words are as smart as the packaging (with a slip of paper for you to put your chewed gum in).

The founders of Peppersmith used to work at Innocent, the patron saint of blog posts about brand writing. And while Innocent’s creative director, Dan Germain, wasn’t one of the founders, he did work with them from the very beginning. Everyone else followed his wordy example, learning as the company grew, and as they left to set up their own companies.

That’s not to say all founders are good writers, or that you have to be. But good words and a good idea do go hand in hand. Writing is a good discipline: it forces you to keep your ideas tight.

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* Since we wrote this, Shamil Thakrar, the founder of Dishoom, got in touch with us to say that although he wrote the original menu and many of the words on the website, this latest menu was written by Elise Valmorbida (and Shamil edited it). We stand corrected, as does the manager of Dishoom Shoreditch! Nice work, Elise.

Big brands go to great lengths to convince you they’re part of your local community or high street. You see it on the community noticeboard of every Starbucks and supermarket chain, and CSR organisations like ‘Business In The Community’. But these sort of things rarely ring true: everyone knows that really there’s a head office and shareholders running things from afar.

KC, on the other hand, have been part of the area for over 100 years. So how could we show that KC were the real local deal, not another big company putting on a voice, just pretending to be from down the road?

Plusnet (a Sheffield company bought by BT) gave us a good case study of what we didn’t want to do.

Click to supersize me

We asked people from East Yorkshire what they thought of Plusnet’s tone and they said patronising. We don’t know anyone who talks like that, they said. People from Yorkshire don’t use ee-bah-gum and by heck speak anymore than Londoners use cockney rhyming slang. It’s a caricature. (And this tone jars all the more because it’s mixed in with direct mail sales patter, but that’s another story.)

So when it came to KC’s tone, we wanted to use words that people from Hull and East Yorkshire really say. And use language to show that KC is as local as chip spice. (If you’re from Hull you’ll be nodding at that bit. Sorry to everyone else.)

Here’s a sneak peek of what we’ve been doing for them and where KC’s words are heading next.

East Yorkshire has cream phone boxes not red ones. White Pages not Yellow Pages.

If you're not from Hull, it's Victoria Dock to you.

Old Faithful - Hull FC's traditional terrace song.

If you're not from Hull it's Princess Quay to you.

Mafting - a local word meaning hot or clammy.
'It's mafting in here!'

This project has been bit of a linguistic eye opener for us. There’s a fine line between taking the mickey out of people or how they speak and celebrating it. We tested all these to make sure they were all the right side of that line. Mimicking an accent for example was a step too far.

But what also interested us about this project is that we think this is the sort of tone only a proper local company can get away with. It’ll help them stand out against ‘vulgar outsiders’ like BT or Vodafone. We’d love to see more local brands being proud to celebrate their voice and put themselves into their words.

Here’s a list of questions people often ask. With some answers.

WHAT IS TONE OF VOICE?
Most brands have a logo, a colour palette and typeface. Tone of voice is pretty much the same thing, but for words and writing.

That’s the short answer. The long(er) answer is more complicated. For one thing, everyone writes. So you can’t be as strict about how to use tone of voice as you can about a logo (mind you, visual guidelines are getting less prescriptive, but that’s another story). On top of that, many writers and agencies claim to do tone of voice, but what a lot of them actually do is give basic and generic ‘how to write better’ rules, or come up with a tone that people can’t use.

Here are the nuts and bolts of a good tone of voice:
1. It fits with the brand – it’s why banks with chatty words don’t work.
2. It’s practical – anyone who writes needs to be able to use it.
3. It’s consistent – the same tone is used everywhere (from receipts and letters to signs and notices).

Ideally, a tone of voice should be distinctive as well. But that’s harder to pull off in big organisations with lots of people (especially if you want it to be practical). It’s why the handful of brands who have a brilliant tone of voice are either small, like howies, or act as if they are and have a small, full-time team of writers, like Innocent.

ISN’T TONE OF VOICE JUST GOOD WRITING OR ‘PLAIN ENGLISH’?
No, it’s more than that. It’s about helping a brand put across its personality in words. The Plain English Campaign has done a lot to get rid of gobbledygook, especially in the public sector. But it’s about clear writing, not about writing with personality. ‘Plain’ isn’t much of an aspiration.

CAN ONE TONE OF VOICE WORK FOR LOTS OF DIFFERENT AUDIENCES?
Yes. When brands mimic their audiences they sound like they’ve got a split personality. We used to do a lot of work for mobile phone companies. They’d try to write like Jay-Z when they were writing for teenagers and like an annual report when they were writing for business. It didn’t work. Customers got confused. We also worked on a project for a big art gallery. Oddly their best writing was for kids: it was clear and had lots of personality. But as soon as they wrote about conceptual art, the tone turned formal and the words became incomprehensible because that’s what they thought critics and academics expected.

It helps to differentiate between content and tone. To go back to the mobile phone example, teenagers want to know different things to business customers – but that’s all about content. You don’t need to start talking in text speak to teenagers or put on a corporate voice for business customers. The whole point of tone of voice is to find a tone that goes with your brand, and sounds like you, no matter who you’re writing to.

I’M WRITING ABOUT A SERIOUS SUBJECT, SO DOESN’T MY TONE NEED TO BE SERIOUS TOO?
Again, that’s the difference between content and tone. What you say can be serious, but how you say it can be just as clear as if you’re talking about what you had for breakfast.

We often hear a similar excuse for littering writing with jargon-y industry blah words. Something like this: ‘my clients are serious global such-and-such people, they understand our industry words’. Sometimes (at a push), you will have to use industry words but if every other word is in industry-speak it’ll be horrible to read. And don’t mix that up with using empty words like leverage or solution. They don’t actually add anything at all. In the end, no one has ever complained – or will ever complain – that something is too clear. And readers certainly won’t ask you to put more jargon in.

HOW DO I GET EVERYONE IN MY COMPANY TO USE A TONE OF VOICE?
It’s not easy. Companies often underestimate how much work is involved. You’ll need to invest a lot of management time to do it well and think of it as an ongoing thing, not a one-off. A lot like branding in general, actually. It helps if:
- at least one person in your organisation manages it.
- you give people hands-on training (trying it out is the best way to learn) and you keep topping that up.
- make sure managers use it and lead by example.
- make it something people aren’t scared to try (no school rules, no red pen).

HOW ABOUT PEOPLE WHO AREN’T AS GOOD AT WRITING?
Some people are bound to be better at writing than others. Tone of voice can’t change that. But it nearly always makes the standard of everyone’s writing better. And we’ve found that writing ability is rarely the problem. The biggest thing to get over is permission – giving people the confidence to write in a less corporate way.

WHAT ARE TONE OF VOICE GUIDELINES LIKE?
People like to close their eyes and hope that tone of voice guidelines mark the end of a project. But really they’re just the start. The most important thing is for people to write. Lots.

Still, we’re surprised how many big brands have pages about logo exclusion zones, but are happy to sum up their tone in a paragraph.

Our guideline guidelines:
- Give some overall principles, along with some linguistic tips that people can actually use when they write.
- Put together lots of examples of the tone being used for different things and in different situations. And explain how you wrote them. (If they’re rewrites it’s really useful to compare before and afters side-by-side.)
- Sometimes it helps to flag up some jargon-y words and alternatives, or write them up in a separate style guide.

CAN YOU COME UP WITH A BETTER NAME FOR TONE OF VOICE?
We wish. It’s better than ‘verbal identity’ which is what Interbrand call it. We’re certainly not wedded to it. Answers on a postcard.

MORE QUESTIONS?
Leave us a reply (at the bottom of the page).

Or take a look at our step-by-step guide to finding your tone of voice.

Or if you want more inspiration have a wander around our tone of voice hall of fame.

‘I really love this barbecue sauce. There are loads of layers of flavours that make it truly insane.’

Who wrote it?

Here are a couple more tasters, this time from the chef’s restaurant menus:

‘Our tasty Cornish field mushrooms and our whopping great beef tomatoes.’
‘Baker Tom’s bread baked daily and the best Puglian green olives.’
‘Crispy fried fish using the fish we should be eating.’

It’s Jamie Oliver. Easypeasy? Probably. You might have got some clues from Cornwall or Puglia. But spotting Jamie is nearly all down to his tone. They’re not just ‘beef tomatoes’, they’re ‘whopping great ones’. It’s not ‘sustainable fish’, it’s ‘the fish we should be eating’.

And this tone is pretty much consistent in everything he puts his name to. His restaurants, magazine, blog, iPhone app, pots, pans or books.

It’s one thing to capture a person’s voice in writing – but can you do that for a brand (with lots of writers)? We think so.
Jamie’s writing works so well because it sounds like someone speaking, not writing. Most brands would do well to just learn that.

But Jamie’s a busy man. And like any big chef nowadays worth his branded Flavour Shaker, he doesn’t have time to manage everything. That’s why he’s got a team to help write his words. Yet everything sounds like it comes from him. And he’s hugely popular. So if Jamie’s team can have lots of writers, but one distinctive voice – your brand can too.

Come to think of it, all companies – but especially food and drink brands – can learn a lot from food writers. It worked for Waitrose’s Cooks’ Ingredients: ‘A dash of light soya sauce…A sprinkle of vanilla sugar…Go gently with the chopped garlic.’

We’ve just been working on the tone of voice for a whisky brand. We used some of Nigel Slater’s words to show how food and drink writing sounds more appetising with simpler words and fewer adjectives. Try reading this without licking your lips:

“If there is anything better to eat than a plate of hot, salty chips with a bottle of ice-cold beer, I have never found it.” Nigel Slater, Real Food.

Pass the salt.

A SIDE OF TIPS.

1. Think homemade and real, not anonymous (you want to eat that bread because Baker Tom made it, and those olives because they’re the best ones from Puglia).

2. Spoon in generous voice (it’s better to sound like a person than a faceless company).

3. Think about how to add a splash of colour to your words like Jamie’s epic barbeque sauce.

4. But don’t ladle too many adjectives on top. Nigel Slater’s, ‘a crab sandwich by the sea on a June afternoon‘ says a lot, really simply.’

5. Add a pinch of passion (but don’t just say ‘we’re passionate about…’). Here’s Nigella Lawson talking about figs: ‘[They’re] beautiful but not in an art-directed way: the purple-blue fruits are cut to reveal the gaping red within, so that they sit in their bowl like plump little open-mouthed birds.’

Over the last few years tone of voice has become more common in the branding world, but a lot of those so-called tones are just guides to writing in Plain English. They’re generic. And that’s not good enough.

A proper tone of voice is much, much more than that. It’s about thinking about how words can work harder for you, so people (customers, investors, competitors) sit up and take notice. It’s about stamping your own style on every word you use, so people can spot your words even if they’re out of context. And it’s about making sure everyone in your company, from the CEO to the call centre’s newest recruit, gets your tone and writes in it.

Here’s how to make sure your words fit your brand and make you stand out from the crowd:

1. READ EVERYTHING

Start with your brand. What do you stand for? Why are you different?

Then read your words. Read anything and everything. Leaflets, adverts, welcome packs, job ads, signs on the fridge, stories on the intranet, notes on the back of the loo door, emails, PowerPoint presentations, websites, Tweets, visitor passes.

Do they match? What’s happening? Is there a pattern? Do you sound formal in some places and chatty in others? What? Where? Why?

2. READ EVERYTHING ELSE

Who’s your competition? What do they write? Read as much of their writing as you can. How does it compare? What’s the same? What’s different? Find out.

3. TALK ABOUT IT

The best way to get people thinking about writing is to talk about it. Get a group of about ten people in a room (if you need to get more people involved, run more than one group).

Don’t just involve your top ten brains. Ask the CEO, maybe (if you need his or her buy-in from the start, or interview them separately). Invite someone from the board. But someone from the shop floor too. Someone who writes. Someone who tweaks and sends templated letters. Someone from marketing – but not everyone. Someone from customer service. Someone on work experience. A pick-and-mix bag of brains from across your company.

And get the powers that be and the sceptics involved from the start. (Being sceptical in the room is better than being sceptical in the wings.)

4. DEBATE IT

Ask the group what they like about your words at the moment. Get them to bring examples. What don’t they like? Why? What’s working? What’s not? Whose words do you admire? Could you sound like that? (You could love Innocent’s tone of voice, but if it doesn’t fit with making paper clips, forget it.) Which bits of your brand do you want to bring out in your words?

Make notes. Listen. Watch what’s going on.

5. MAKE YOUR RECOMMENDATIONS

A good place to start is to point out what’s not working, and explain what you need to do to solve it. Give clear, bite-sized tips that will help everyone write in the same way (whatever their level and skill as a writer). As a minimum, you want everyone to write clearly, like ‘normal’ people, not formal robots.

But that’s just for starters. If you want your tone to stop you sounding like everyone else, your words will need their own style and spark. And your recommendations will show people how to do it.

6. DON’T INVENT IT

You can’t pluck a tone of voice out of thin air (or if you can, it’s probably not the right tone). The answer needs to fit with who you are, what you’re like and how you work.  Your tone should feel right for your company today.

So if your company is proud of being ‘adventurous’, your words should show it – by writing bold headlines, by adding lots of pace to your words, by surprising people with one-word paragraphs…and so on. There are lots of different ways to do it, but only a few might be (or feel) right.

7. MAKE IT STICK

Everyone writes. Not everyone’s a writer. So make your tone of voice easy to remember. A sticky ‘hook’ (a phrase, sentence or even a picture) that stays in people’s heads, so even if they don’t remember all the detail, they  know where to start.

But a hook is too broad to cover the whole tone. So explain what you want people to do with some principles. Three or four work well, and again make them simple. Don’t overload people.

Explain each principle clearly, with lots of linguistic tips so people really know what they need to do with their words (eg ‘make your words personal, use we, us and you’). If you’re asking people to make things punchy. Show. Them. How.

8. WRITE LOTS OF BEFORE AND AFTERS

Take some writing you do now and give it a tone of voice makeover. Dazzle people with dreary befores and sparkling afters. Explain what you’ve changed and why. What little linguistic tricks have you got up your sleeves? How do they work?

Suddenly, it’ll click.

9. SHARE IT

Not with long, boring guidelines, barking ‘do this, don’t do that’. Not grammar lectures etched into people’s brains with chalk. No exclusion zones or brand police. None of that. If you want people to use your tone of voice, write something they’ll want to read.

WHAM! Go straight in with what your tone is, how it works and then add your before and afters (customer letters, presentations, memos – things people actually write), explaining why you’ve changed the words and exactly what’s going on.

Words are interesting, exciting, provocative…they’re much more than a set of guidelines on a bookshelf. So do interesting things to get people thinking about them. Tell stories, run word surgeries, write haikus…there are all sorts of things you can do to get people’s attention – and help change the way they write.

10. JUST WRITE

This is a whole other chapter, but it starts with letting people have a go. Make writing interesting, not a chore. A lark, not a law. Give people permission to write. And start now.

11. GET A HEAD START

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