Silly phrase, isn’t it.  Outdated too – something we used to say in my distant schooldays.  But actually, something I still often find myself wanting to say when I read copy addressed to me by a great many service providers – financial and otherwise – who still haven’t given the subject of tone of voice (or “verbal identity”) a fraction of the attention that they’ve given to their visual presentation.

There are two obvious reasons, one good-ish and one bad, why verbal identity continues to be so widely ignored.  The good-ish reason is that it’s fearsomely hard to (horrible word coming up…) operationalise.  So many people, with such varying levels of ability and enthusiasm, are writing so much stuff within, say, a big financial services company that it’s extremely difficult to imagine how you could provide them with the initial training, let alone the ongoing quality control.  The bad reason is that, as I’ve bitterly observed on many occasions, the whole brand identity thing still remains – bizarrely – largely in the hands of designers, who only think of the words as the “grey lines” in their layouts. 

But against these considerations, think of the advantages in really getting tone of voice working for you.  For one thing, I do honestly think it’s probably the last available part of the competitive battlefield where significant differentiation is now possible.  If you get it right, you can produce writing which be massively more interesting, engaging and compelling for your target groups.  And this, in turn, will mean that many more people will choose to opt in to, not out of, your communications.  (Years ago, I used to rush to the front door when the postman came in the hope of finding one of those wonderfully readable newsletters that Charlie Fry used to write in his Johnson Fry days:  these days, I can’t think of a financial services provider’s mailings that even call for hastening, let alone rushing.)

And – looking at it from a defensive point of view – you will at the very least avoid the danger that tone of voice accidents or miscalculations will actively repel potential customers.  (Unfair to pick on an example, but I had been thinking quite seriously about shelling out to join the Financial Services Forum’s Practitioner Group until I read this stunningly unwelcoming copy:  http://www.thefsforum.co.uk/header-bottom/membership/Practitioner-Group-Membership/.)

I’ve been going on about all this for so long now, and with so little interest or enthusiasm in response, that I can hardly find the strength to flog what looks very much like a dead horse any more.  But still a flicker of hope remains.  Like those scientists sending radio signals out into deepest space and waiting year after year for a reply they’ve never yet heard, I still believe that there’s intelligent (copywriting) life out there somewhere.