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Tone of Voice
August 13, 2024

Get Your Tone of Voice Right, You’ll Be Remembered Forever

What’s the half life of a marketing asset? A social media post is gone in moments. A radio ad might stick around for months. A website for a few years. 

But a good tone of voice? That’s something that can last for decades. Centuries. 

In fact, get your tone of voice right, make sure it supports your message and sums up your brand’s personality, attitude and character, and you’ll be remembered forever.

I can prove that. With one single word. 

Laconic.

A tone that’s lasted 2,369 years and counting

Laconic is a blunt, concise way of speaking. Think stereotypical Yorkshireman, Aussie cricketer, or American cowpoke. 

It’s a tone of voice that comes from Ancient Greece. It means “someone who sounds like a Lacedaemonian.” That probably needs some explaining. 

Lacedaemon is the part of Greece where the city of Sparta was built. 

We’ve got another English word along those lines – spartan.

It means no frills. Much like the laconic voice. 

The Lacedaemonians – the Spartans – are famous for three things.

  • One, they had a society built entirely around the concept of creating incredible soldiers.
  • Two, 300 of them had an epoch-defining battle with the Persian army in 480 BCE.
  • Three, the whole city state was all in on a specific tone of voice in a way that would make corporate branding experts weep with jealousy.

The Laconic tone gained iconic status during the reign of Philip II of Macedon (father to Alexander, of “The Great” notoriety) when the would-be king of all Greece sent a messenger to the city. In the interests of diplomacy, Philip pointed out he’d invaded most of the country already and would be coming to Sparta soon. Would the Spartans rather he come as friend, or foe?

Neither.”

Came the reply from the city elders. Rubbed the wrong way by this, Philip sent a second message. Similar to a parent warning an unruly teenager “not to make me come down there,” he made it clear that if he invaded Sparta, he’d burn it down and drive the Spartans from their lands. 

Another one word answer.

If.”

It ruins the story slightly that Philip duly came down there, burned the city and drove the Spartans from their lands, but even today, almost 2,400 years later, that tone of voice is synonymous with the “brand” of the most unusual of the classical states.

Laconicism isn’t just for Lacodaemonians 

If you make a film or a TV show about the Spartans, you know exactly how they should sound, even though Sparta as it exists in the popular imagination was long dead before the first Caesar. 

You can’t say that about many historical cultures, which is why people tend to default to a theatrical Shakespearianism for Romans and Tudors alike. You can’t say that about many brands either, which is why they default to a sort of corporate beige. 

But even though the Spartans are long gone, that Laconic tone of voice remains.

A good tone of voice needs to sum up an attitude, a personality, a character. And the Laconic voice is cultural shorthand for the sort of person who’ll take on odds of 1,000 to one just because the alternative might involve some kind of compromise.

Every Clint Eastwood character. Star Wars’ Boba Fett. Conan the Barbarian. If you want someone to sound dangerous and competent, you make them sound Laconic. Dirty Harry wouldn’t be as imposing if he talked like Oscar Wilde.

For a business, that translates to a straight talking voice, possibly with a bit of firestarter thrown in for added menace. Not one to try if you’re selling nightlights for the under fives, but a tone that’s often used in the B2C sphere to target a specific male demographic.

Even if you want to sell them make-up.

It fits the brand of dangerous bad-ass perfectly. And it backs up that key message of make-up, sorry, war paint being for dangerous bad-asses.

Get your tone of voice right, like the Spartans did, and much like your message, it’ll be timeless.

Get it wrong, and people won’t recall what you sounded like. If they remember you at all. 

If. 

Learn what your business should sound like with a Tone of Voice workshop from HNW.

Author:
Andrew Nattan
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