Expanding into international markets is an exciting opportunity, but it also presents unique challenges – none more critical than maintaining a consistent brand voice. Your brand’s tone, style, and personality define how you connect with your audience, and ensuring these elements translate seamlessly across languages and cultures is essential for global success.
A professional copywriting service like WordHound plays a crucial role in establishing brand voice for your business. A good copywriter is invaluable to linguists working on international marketing campaigns – they’ll lay the foundation for the whole process of internationalisation.
Before we dive into the challenges and solutions, it’s important to first define what brand voice is. Brand voice refers to the tone, style, and personality of your messaging; whether it’s formal or casual, witty or serious, professional or friendly. It’s the way your brand communicates with its audience across various channels – advertising, blog posts, social media, emails, and customer service interactions.
Why consistency matters
- Brand Recognition: A consistent voice creates a sense of familiarity for your audience. When your messaging remains consistent across languages and regions, customers can easily identify your brand, no matter where they are.
- Trust and Credibility: A unified tone helps build trust. Discrepancies in voice between languages can make a brand appear disjointed, unprofessional, or untrustworthy.
- Emotional Connection: Brands that maintain a consistent voice are more likely to forge emotional connections with their customers. A relatable, human voice can enhance loyalty and increase customer retention.
When you’re dealing with multilingual content, a few key challenges to maintaining a consistent brand voice arise: language structures and nuances, for example, can be tricky problems.
Every language has its own structure, syntax, and idiomatic expressions. German often requires longer sentences than English, and French tends to have more formal constructions compared to other languages. These structural differences may force copywriters to adapt the tone or style, potentially altering the original voice. A playful, informal tone in English might come off as too casual or unprofessional in some languages, while a more formal approach in English might sound distant or stiff in others.
Brand voice and cultural norms
Cultural differences in tone and expression are also important things to be aware of. Different cultures have distinct norms regarding communication style. For instance, humour, irony, and sarcasm may translate poorly across languages, and certain phrases may not resonate in the same way due to cultural context. In some cultures, humour might be delivered more subtly (or not at all) in marketing messages, while in others, a cheeky or humorous tone is highly effective.
What works in one market may not necessarily work in another. For instance, what is considered professional in one culture could be seen in another as too casual, or even inappropriate. Marketers and copywriters need to be aware of these variations to ensure that the voice they use is suitable for each target market. Consider a casual brand voice that appeals to millennials in the U.S. It may not be as effective with a more formal or conservative audience in Japan or Germany.
A good copywriter, paired with a good linguist, can make sure your messaging packs the same punch wherever you take your business.
How to build a cohesive global voice
Consistency is essential for building a strong and recognisable brand. This is true not only for visual elements like logos and design but also for the tone, style, and personality of your content. When expanding into multiple languages, maintaining brand voice across all markets is critical to ensure your messaging remains cohesive, authentic, and true to your brand’s identity.
However, achieving this level of consistency across various languages and cultures can be more complex than it might seem at first glance. Copywriters and marketers need to work together to keep the brand voice intact when translating and localising content.
So how do we put all this into action? Let’s take a look at the process, step by step.
Step 1: Develop a comprehensive brand voice guide.
A strong brand voice guide is key to maintaining consistency. This document should outline the specific language, tone, and style to be used in all communications. It must also provide clear examples and rules for translating the voice into different languages and cultures. The guide should be followed by all teams involved in the content creation process, whether they’re in-house copywriters, translators, or external agencies. Include guidance on tone (e.g., formal, friendly, authoritative), style guidelines (e.g., use of contractions, sentence length), word choices (e.g., colloquialisms, jargon) and examples of how the brand voice should sound in different contexts (website copy, social media posts, customer service messages, etc.)
Step 2: Collaborate with native language experts like KOMZZ
A professional translator or multilingual copywriter who is a native speaker of the target language will better understand the nuances of the language and culture. They can ensure that the tone remains consistent with the brand’s global messaging while still resonating with the local audience. Work with native linguists who understand the cultural context and idiomatic expressions that will help keep the message aligned with your brand’s voice. Native speakers are crucial for avoiding direct translations that might lead to awkward phrasing or unintended meanings.
Step 3: Emphasise “transcreation” over direct translation
While translation is about converting words from one language to another, transcreation is the process of adapting content in a way that conveys the same meaning, emotions, and tone in the target language. Transcreation is particularly important for creative content like advertising, slogans, and social media posts, where maintaining the original voice and intent is crucial. A slogan or tagline that works well in English may need to be completely re-imagined in another language to preserve its emotional impact and brand personality.
Step 4: Test your content with local audiences before rolling out content globally
Consider testing your messaging in different markets to gather feedback. This can include A/B testing, focus groups, and surveys. Local audiences can provide valuable insights into how well the brand voice resonates with them, and whether any adjustments are needed to maintain consistency.
Consistency across languages is more than just a practical concern. It’s about building trust, creating emotional connections, and ensuring your brand’s authenticity shines through, no matter where your customers are. A strong, unified brand voice will set you apart in a crowded global marketplace. Wherever you’re at on your internationalisation journey, get in touch with KOMZZ here to discuss the next steps for your business.
Komzz is proud to be part of WordHound’s Overnight Agency Toolbox, where I share how web designers can integrate our services to help their clients communicate effectively on a global scale.
