Copy Spectrum | Verbal Design System Series Part 6

What if I told you that you could write copy that's aligned with your brand voice in days instead of weeks, or weeks instead of months?

What if I told you that you can end the endless back and forth dance of draft and revision to get exactly the tone needed to satisfy all parties involved?

That's what the copy spectrum is all about.

Let's talk about it.

So you have your brand persona. Now what?

Let's say you've defined your brand persona and communicated it to the client or internal stakeholders. How do you now translate it to actual copy that aligns with their expectations?

Do you work on the copy all day, tweak it to perfection, then present it, only for them to go back and say, "Oh, that's not really the style or voice we're after"?

There's a better way.

Exploring options systematically

The idea behind the copy spectrum isn't new. I've seen it used in one form or another in agencies that do verbal branding work. I just gave it a name because having a shared taxonomy makes our concepts and processes easier to discuss, remix, and enhance.

Basically, we write variants (also called studies in creative circles) of the same message along extremes of opposite characteristics, e.g. funny vs. serious or formal vs. casual.

How do we choose the dimensions?

Norman Nielsen created a useful tone-of-voice framework consisting of 4 dimensions:

• Funny vs serious
• Formal vs. casual
• Respectful vs. irreverent
• Enthusiastic vs. matter-of-fact

You could go beyond this and define your own dimensions, but this makes for a good starting point.

Using each of these dimensions, you can then create variants of a given piece of copy or message to help your team and your clients find what fits you best.

Example: grocery delivery app

For example, we're writing UX copy for a grocery delivery app. We can take a few situations from the user journey and refine them using the copy spectrum to create the verbal identity for the product.

• Choose store location
• Loading screen
• Success ordering
• Logout message

Enthusiastic vs. Matter-of-fact

Let's start with the Enthusiastic vs. Matter-of-fact dimensions and plot the copy spectrum:

• Choose store location: (1) Pick a store location to start your shopping adventure! (2) Pick a store location and let's get shopping (3) Choose your store location to continue
• Loading screen: (1) Hang in there! Just getting our ducks in order (2) One moment, please (3) Loading
• Success ordering: (1) Oh yeah! Your order will be with you by 4-6pm (2) All done. You should receive your order by 4-6pm (3) Order success. Your order will be with you by 4-6pm
• Logout message: (1) Aww, you're leaving? Byee! (2) It was nice to serve you. Come back soon. (3) Goodbye. Come back soon.

As you can see here, I've written variants of the same message but going from most enthusiastic to most matter-of-fact. By doing so, it allows the team and other stakeholders to identify how enthusiastic or how matter-of-fact they want the tone of the product to be.

Once you've done that, you can do the same exercise for Funny vs serious, Formal vs. casual and Respectful vs. irreverent to determine how funny, how formal, or how respectful you want the brand or product's voice to be.

When should you use this?

You don't necessarily need to create a spectrum for every bit of copy in the product. Just take a good representative sample to align expectations and define the brand or product voice as a whole.

But if you find yourself getting vague comments like, "it's not what we're looking for" or the dreaded, "I just don't like it", then this becomes a valuable tool to hone in and find something that satisfies your project stakeholders.

Conclusion

Getting the brand voice right requires feedback from many stakeholders. Use the Copy Spectrum tool to speed up the back and forth and build a shared understanding of your verbal brand.

Related articles

This is part 6 of the Verbal Design System series. Check out the other articles in this series on Linkedin.

• Intro - What's a Verbal Design System?
• Part 1 - Verbal Landscape: Competitors
• Part 2 - Verbal Landscape: Audience
• Part 3 - Naming Scheme Canvas
• Part 4 - Brand Persona Canvas
• Part 5 - Verbal Palette

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