2 Verbal identity
Verbal identity is essentially the brand character as expressed in the language produced by and associated with the brand (via, for example, websites, customer service calls, social media posts and customer-facing emails). It can be seen to complement visual identity, although the two often overlap and interact in interesting ways, for example in typography or websites.
A helpful analogy might be to think about novels or films: what a character says, precisely how they say it, and how they build and maintain relationships with other characters using language, contributes to their ‘personality’ – how we as audiences interpret their character and how we feel towards them (see Culpeper, 2001). In the same way that the language of fictional characters contributes to their characterisation, the language (verbal and visual) that brands use largely determines the personality that we attribute to them – this is often referred to as ‘verbal identity’ or ‘brand tone of voice’ (e.g. Barattin and Latusi, 2025; Delin, 2005) in the business world. This, of course, involves figuratively thinking of brands as if they were people. For example, a brand that uses lots of verbs denoting vigorous activity (e.g. run, soar, jump) might be seen as dynamic; while a brand relying more on verbs denoting mental processes (e.g. believe, stand for, value) would be seen as more thoughtful or reflective.
In the audio that you are about to listen to, Chris West, founder of branding specialists Verbal Identity [Tip: hold Ctrl and click a link to open it in a new tab. (Hide tip)] talks about verbal identity and how he uses language analysis in his work.
Activity 2 The need for verbal identity
Listen to Chris’s description of verbal identity at the beginning of the audio. Make notes as you listen using the box below.
Please note that this audio was recorded in 2013 so some references may now be out of date.
Transcript
CHRIS WEST
My name is Chris West. I’m the founder of a brand-language agency called ‘Verbal Identity’. And we say that we create language which creates value for our customers.
So, we’re called ‘Verbal Identity’, but the discipline of verbal identity is a distinct function within branding. It’s the way a brand uses language to make itself known and to stand for something. And the easiest way of understanding it, perhaps, is to say that verbal identity is the complement to the visual identity of a brand.
So, most people will know a brand logo, a brand colour palette, and a brand’s font, and they’re consistent, and they help people understand what the brand stands for.
In the same way we would look at language that the brand uses and makes sure that that language is consistent and distinct. The concept of ‘verbal identity’, as a discipline in branding, is relatively new. When I started in ad agencies at the beginning of the 90s, I was at Saatchi and Saatchi, one of the biggest and best ad agencies, and we were working on British Airways. And you didn’t really need a strong idea of a verbal identity for the brand. Because you would have a great piece of communication, because maybe the idea was great, or maybe the photography was great. So, tone of voice or verbal identity, you didn’t really need to have, because the ad would stand out anyway.
What we see now is nine out of ten channels that a brand communicates with a consumer are dominated by language. So it might be the email newsletter, it might be the customer-satisfaction survey, it might be a consumer looking for the consensus of opinion on social media. So, suddenly, a brand needs to understand: How does language work? How does language allow us to build bridges with people? How does language work to persuade people?
INTERVIEWER
So those are the three parts to verbal identity?
CHRIS WEST
Yeah. So the three parts to verbal identity are: tone of voice; the specific language that would be used – the key phrases, the key words; but also the messaging structure, as well. So, normally, when we talk to people about verbal identity, they say ‘What, like visual identity? The word equivalent?’ We say ‘Yes. Absolutely.’ And they say ‘Well, where does that make a difference?’ And, unfortunately, the answer that most people understand is ‘Innocent Smoothies’, because suddenly a mashed-up fruit product had this voice that would speak to you, and it’d be slightly cheeky and it’d say ‘Drop in at Innocent Towers’.
And the reason I say ‘unfortunately’ is that the best example of verbal identity was created about 15 years ago. So I sometimes think that our industry really needs a boot up the bum. Because we’re referencing something that happened 12 years ago.
Chris says that, at the beginning of the 1990s, it was easier for great pieces of communication to stand out than it is now, so they didn’t need strong verbal identity. Do you agree with Chris? Why do you think it might be harder for communications to stand out nowadays?
Discussion
One reason Chris mentions why it might be harder for communications to stand out nowadays is that the number of different ways that communication between brands and consumers happens has increased and diversified – and has become more dialogic. Consumers are able to respond to and initiate communication with the brand rather than it only happening the other way round. Most of this communication is also more language based (i.e. more verbal). Another reason might also be the overall increase in the number of pieces of communication that people in general are exposed to. Think about all the pop ups, ads, images, soundbites, emails, banners, and so on, that you encounter every day. It becomes harder to stand out when the environment is so crowded.
In the rest of the audio, Chris talks about how he uses language analysis in his work, and specifically, corpus linguistic analysis. First, let’s explore what this means. A corpus is a large collection of language – often billions of words – which is organised in a systematic way and stored digitally. It can be written language – often scraped from internet sites – or spoken language which has been transcribed. Researchers of language who use a corpus are known as corpus linguists and they use a corpus to explore how language works in context. For Chris, corpus linguistics is an important tool for analysing the language used in creating a verbal identity for a brand.
Activity 3 Corpus tools
Now listen to the rest of the audio interview with Chris West.
Transcript
CHRIS WEST
We use a variety of linguistic tools in our process, and I think this makes us different to what a lot of creative agencies are doing. So, in the 20 years I worked in advertising, there would come a point where I had to stand up in front of the CEO and say ‘This is one of the words we want to use about your brand’, or ‘This is the end line that we want to use about your brand’, and the CEO would say ‘Chris, why’s that?’ And I’d have to shrug my shoulders and say ‘I’m the writer, that’s what I think.’
And we were in a situation a couple of years ago where we … I had to stand up in front of the CEO of a multinational hotel chain. And he’d asked us, specifically, ‘What are the three words that we should use internally to describe our brand?’ And we presented a word, and he said ‘No, that’s not it!’ And we said ‘That’s okay, we have this other idea for a word.’ And he said ‘Hey, that’s interesting. Why that word?’ And because we knew about corpus linguistics, we were able to say ‘Well one of our great linguists has gone off and looked at four-and-a-half billion words in American English and seen how this word is used. And it’s most commonly used in this context. And, so, whilst there may be 12 different opinions about this word in the room with you now sir, this is how the outside world thinks of this word. And when you say this word this is how they’re used to hearing it.’
But I’ll give you an example of how we’ve used corpus linguistics recently. We were recently using text analytic software with a supermarket. And one of the themes that emerged was people’s discontent with the manager. And the typical expression would be something like ‘The manager was incompetent.’
So we asked our skilled linguists to help us understand what was in the meaning of the word ‘manager’. And, in fact, we found there are two meanings of ‘manager’. One is ‘the manager’ is almost the brand’s representative on Earth. He or she is the person who’s put there to make sure everything works properly, and to make sure all the wrinkles are smoothed out. Now, there’s another use of the word ‘manager’ – which we all experience – which is pretty much everyone in an office these days is called a manager. And it’s become a professionally hollow term.
So when I want to find the German bread on the shelf at the supermarket – which was there last week, I’m pretty sure it was – I speak to someone, and he says ‘I’m the manager, how can I help?’ And I think ‘Well, this is great. Here’s the guy that’s the brand’s representative on Earth, and he’s going to help me.’ And he doesn’t know where the German bread is. So, suddenly, I think ‘Well, hold on, he’s the guy – or she’s the guy – and they’re incompetent.’ And then my brain switches in to the other meaning of ‘manager’, which is ‘They’re not the manager. They don’t have a manager round here; everyone’s a manager. No one does anything.’
And, of course, in Britain there’s a third use of ‘the manager’, common, in everyday language, which is the ‘football manager’. And what happens to a football manager if he loses three games on the trot? He’s fired. So this manager that can’t find my German bread, my lactose-free milk, or my chocolate-covered rice cakes, he should be fired!
So what we were finding by using corpus linguistics was not just what people thought, but what people really meant and what was a deep-seated belief about this person that was being presented as a manager.
There’s another example of how we use the skills of linguistics to help our clients understand. We were asked by the manufacturer of an engine-oil lubricant to help them. Their situation was, for about 20 years, they’d been using one word in all of their marketing communications. And that word was ‘performance’. So we asked our linguistic analysis team to conduct a corpus linguistic study on what ‘performance’ meant.
And they came back with some interesting results. They said, first of all, there are slightly different meanings between British English and American English. In American English ‘performance’ means mechanical performance. So that’s good; that suits the manufacturer of an engine-oil lubricant.
In British English, ‘performance’ has another connotation, which is human performance. ‘The actor gave a good performance’, or ‘The MP’ or ‘The PM’ … ‘The prime minister was credible, they gave a good performance.’ So that works for the engine-oil manufacturer in Britain as well, because, by luck or by design, they had always included the guys from the lab in the white coat in their communications.
So there was this understanding of human performance influencing the product. But there’s another connotation now, developing about the word performance. Corpus linguistics shows that the way performance is used more and more these days, particularly over the last five years – around about the time the word performance stopped performing for our client – is in ‘performance management’. This is a term that HR departments use.
And, really, they use it in a way to say ‘This is a standard up to which you can never quite get yourself.’ Or, actually, you’re on ‘performance management’, or ‘performance measurement’, shortly before you’re fired. So whilst the engine-oil manufacturer was talking about the performance of this engine oil, and the people that do it and what it does in the machine – and they expected that to work – as soon as they said ‘performance’, someone was sitting at home going ‘Oh no, “performance management”! Oh no! That’s the stuff that happens when I get fired.’
So corpus linguistics had helped the client understand why a word that they’d been using for 20 years wasn’t suitable anymore because the meaning of the word had moved on.
In what way does Chris make use of corpus tools? How does this help in his conversations with his clients?
Discussion
Chris uses corpora (more than one ‘corpus’) – and the services of trained linguists who interpret the output of corpus software – to investigate the associations and connotations of individual words (what contexts they occur in and what other words are used with them). He also uses corpus analysis to investigate differences in the usage of words in American and British English (broadly speaking) and to investigate how word use might be changing over time. This helps him to make decisions about which words are more or less appropriate for a particular brand at a particular point, and it also helps him to explain certain attitudes that might be conveyed with words or expressions. In the case of ‘manager’, for instance, he was able to explain why customers generally do not have high expectations of someone with this job title. Chris summarised how the results of a corpus linguistic analysis are helpful to him:
It is interesting how it works: the presence of an independent voice [of the corpus analysis and its interpretation] gives weight to the shared intuitions, and also magnifies important meanings that we might have rushed over. The fact that manager is now such a cliché to the point of becoming vacuous, for example, was perfect in illuminating some of the reasons why people want to speak to a manager but expect him to be ineffective.