TRAFFIC
WHAT DOES YOUR
CONTENT SAY
ABOUT YOU?
Nichola Stott of theMediaFlow navigates you though the process of crafting content that resonates,
rather than clashes, with the personality and values of your brand.
IN A FUN COMPETITIVE space like
online gaming, we’ve got to get crazy-
smart and creative to get the best links.
However if you’re pitching high quality
media outlets to take your story, your
content message has to adhere to similar
standards as your advertising campaigns.
The message you put out as a brand speaks
volumes about your organisation to your
potential customers. It has to resonate with
the same personality and values you are
looking to project via the brand.
So how do we balance creativity whilst
maintaining brand-fit?
Figure 1: Example of brand adopting discordant tone of voice and personality
Know thyself!
Your audience should be positioned front
and centre, and knowing who they are and
how they should be spoken to will dictate
the tone of your content and identity.
You may already have highly insightful
customer persona data to hand, which
can be used for setting that tone of voice.
Try to fix an ideal customer in mind and
work through some exercises with your
colleagues to set some of the real tone of
voice fundamentals; such as:
Are we formal or informal?
Is our language technical or plain English?
● Are we colloquial or diverse?
● Do we ever do little swears!?
Perhaps try using polarising viewpoints
to begin with when setting some of your
tone of voice fundamentals. Another
tactic to try is to take a well-known piece
of writing or handful of song lyrics and
rephrase a few lines into varying degrees of
formality, neutrality and informality. Pass
●
●
them around and try to get consensus as to
which your organisation would say if it was
a living entity.
So, work out if would be…
Morning has broken (formal)
It’s morning (neutral)
Yo! Sun’s up (informal/slang)
Cringe
Nothing is more grating than a brand trying
to project an identity it doesn’t possess
and to connect with an audience in a way
that it shouldn’t. For some brands in other
sectors, failing to nail your tone of voice is
a gamble that may or may not backfire and
can be recoverable, but we’d suggest that in
online gaming this isn’t a chance we should
take due to the requirements of credibility
and responsibility.
I’m reminded of McDonalds’ attempt
to get down with the kids in its campaign
from a couple of years ago (see Figure 1).
Not really what “the kids” mean when
they say “I’d hit it”, and definitely not
something to openly confess to doing
iGB Affi liate Issue 62 APR/MAY 2017
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