What is a brand voice analysis?

A deep-dive into brand voice? What does that even mean?

Understanding brand voice is about being able to read a piece of copy and understand how to document the brand voice or write new copy in a consistent style.

How do you look at a piece of copy and understand the brand voice? Whether you’re trying to nail a new client’s brand voice, auditing a brand voice or researching for a brand voice guide, one important step is being able to recognise brand voice in action.

I’ve been checking out Berghaus’s new website and love the style of the product descriptions on there. So that’s the example I’m using to show you how I analyse brand voice. Word of warning, this could get a bit geeky.

Let's see what this product copy says about the Berghaus brand voice. Are you ready to explore?

First things first, here’s the copy (and here’s a link to it)

[product name]

Women's Trail-Nomad Synthetic Insulated Jacket - Brown

[subline]

All weather, no bulk, and oh-so durable – feast your eyes on the Trail-Nomad Synthetic Down Jacket.

[product description]

Stuffed with Thermore® Ecodown Fibers LOFT. That means it’s lightweight, and – you guessed it – warm. And as a synthetic down, you get a high warmth to weight ratio. Oh, and it’s made from 100% recycled plastic bottles. When the winds pick up, the internal cord in the hood keeps things snug; the hood also stays put as your head turns.

[one of the expander sections below the product description]

Features and Benefits

Top Features

Additional Benefits

Copy and brand voice analysis

Let’s look at some of the stats to get us started:

The stats

Reading grade: 4-5 (depending which app you use). This is the lowest I’ve seen in a product description in a looong time. The copy is really easy to read, the sentences are short, simple and straightforward. This is not a complex technical description. Other than mentioning the technology name at the start, the copy focuses on user benefits.

The most technical it gets is ‘synthetic down’ and ‘high warmth to weight ratio’. A lot of outdoor brands love to get technical in their product copy, whereas here Berghaus are intentionally avoiding that, going for words like ‘fluffy, springy insulation’. It’s like a friend is describing the jacket, keeping any explanations as non-technical as possible.

The word ‘you’ features 4 times in 76 words. Plus there’s an imperative in the subline, which addresses the reader directly.

Exclamation marks? none

Questions? zilch

Contractions? Yes, lots

Other grammar features? There’s a cheeky semi-colon in there, that's an interesting one, it keeps the pace of the copy casual, but also makes it appear more formal.

Structure

The product title is very standard, just says what the product is, there’s a subline which aims to showcase some of the product features and benefits to draw in the reader. The copy itself is a single paragraph, just 60 words in total. The Features and Benefits expander section is structured in a way to be easy to read at a glance. The copy itself is casual and chatty, in the same style as the description.

Tone words: active, chatty, direct, bold, relatable, approachable, casual, confident, colloquial.

Content

The subline combines a few different concepts: weather protection, lightweight, durable, and how it looks. What’s interesting is that the copy itself mentions warmth and wind protection, and doesn’t mention durability at all. I’d say there’s an opportunity there to echo and reinforce some of the subline concepts in the copy itself.

The product description gives priority to the lightweight warmth, by repeating this concept in the second and third sentences. This may have been a conscious decision, or it may just be that the copywriter didn’t have a lot of info to go on. Either way, the focus is definitely on user benefits rather than technical details.

Emotion

This isn’t an enthusiastic or excited brand voice, note the lack of adverbs or emotive words like ‘great’ or ‘brilliant’, it’s neutral and confident. I love the line ‘the hood also stays put as your head turns’ - that line really draws in the reader as if it’s saying, ‘we all know how annoying it is when you turn your head and can’t see out your hood’ It brings the brand and the reader close together. Also, there are no exclamation marks in the copy.

Pace

The sentences are generally short, and the copy is full of discourse markers, like ‘– you guessed it –’ and ‘Oh, …’ So rather than have a short and punchy pace, these discourse markers slow the copy down to give it a more relatable and conversational feel.

What’s the overall voice?

This is very much a ‘friend’ voice, There’s an element of a straight-talking, explain-things-in-simple-terms voice too, but this is secondary to the casual, friendly tone of the copy.

This is just one piece of copy. If I was doing any copywriting or brand voice work for this brand, I would look at other copy too, looking for common themes and see which of the elements above are consistent in other product copy.

Conclusions

Brand voice isn’t just a vibe. It isn’t just the vocabulary you use, or how long your sentences are. It’s a combination of so many elements. Once you learn to break them down and recognise them, it makes it so much easier to keep your copy on brand, or to edit copy to keep it on brand.

Or you can just ask me to do it for you ;-)

If you’d like to suggest a piece of copy to analyse in another blog post, send it my way.

If you’d like to work together on your brand voice, come this way.