THE INFLUENCE OF PARALANGUAGE
“Paralanguage is a set of nonverbal “packaging” factors that contributes to or reduces a person’s credibility. Verbal messages such as “I am confident that…” are persuasive. Paralinguistic factors include dynamics such as volume, rate, pitch and pronunciation that have a strong effect on the receiver. The communicator’s voice is a major determiner of the receiver’s first and final impression.
Volume represents more than a level of sound. A person with a weak voice is usually perceived as lacking confidence, which lowers credibility. A strong voice, on the other hand, shows great confidence.
The rate at which someone speaks is vital to understanding a message and to the credibility of the communicator. If a person speaks too slowly, the audience will likely lose interest, and the speaker’s credibility will drop. Speaking too quickly may make a voice unintelligible, leading also to lower credibility. A speaker should, therefore, use a rate that is fast enough to keep the audience interested and show confident knowledge of the subject. But the rate should be intelligible to the audience and slow enough not to reveal nervousness.
The pitch of a communicator’s voice usually varies, depending on the subject. During a conversation, pitch almost always changes if the subject changes from, say, a sports event to abortion. Changes in pitch are expected by receivers and make a communicator more colourful and dynamic. A monotonous pitch throughout a conversation will be perceived as neither competent nor dynamic.
Pronunciation is vital to credibility because pronunciation is probably the most obvious dynamic feature of a voice. A speaker with poor pronunciation is perceived to be lower in competence, trustworthiness and dynamism than a speaker with good pronunciation.
If the qualities mentioned above are used while communicating, the communicator will have a “confident voice.” In a recent study, texts were read with confident and doubtful voices to observers. As expected, the speakers with confident voices were rated more credible. Also, a speaker with a doubtful text and confident voice was more credible than a speaker with a confident text and a doubtful voice. This finding shows how important the dynamics of a communicator are to perception by the audience.”
James P.T. Fatt
The Importance of Your “Brand Voice”
When branding pioneer Alan Siegel (www.SiegelGale.com) coined the term “brand voice” back in the mid-’80s, he labored in a command-and-control, print-dominated, single-screen media ecology where the Annual Report was king. Today, as the triple-screen universe converges with the next web, brand voice has emerged as the key to successfully engaging consumers whose light-speed social media networks can determine a brand’s fate virtually overnight.
With the meaning of a brand wide open to public interpretation, and prone to hyperbole and misconceptions, corporate managers must thread a thicket of sticky challenges to successfully communicate brand mission, values and philosophy. Moreover, as brands become the publishers of their own unfolding stories, they need intelligent editors who can provide stakeholders with a stream of high-value content that is packed with utility, seeded with inspiration, and that is honestly empathetic. Anything less will not suffice in a world where consumers can simply click away or spin around and mount a web-wide counter-attack on brands that refuse to walk their talk.
Content, the Foundation of Conversation
Content is the key to brand voice, but brands, to date, have a poor record of strategically engaging in meaningful conversations with consumers (aka people). Brand stewards must recognize that content is but a means to the end. Content drives conversations. Conversation is the way to engage people. Engaging with people is the only way brands will survive and thrive in a social mediated environment. And, it is the corporate, the brand voice that defines the brand personality for better or worse.
So how can marketers craft a brand voice that will inspire and support the brand mission? It starts with people, who project their expectations and aspiration onto brands and seek fulfillment through the brand relationship. Brands, like people, have characters that set the boundaries of potential relationships, in terms of appropriate content, style, voice and diction.
Talk Their Language
Start by listening carefully to your brand constituents, both to their voice and to their chief concerns, their brand expectations. To foster positive relationships a brand must cultivate a distinctive personality and then talk straight to its audience engaging them on their terms. The first rule – Put the consumer first. Learn to talk their language.
Next, determine the brand story line, your distinctive point of view based on the brand mission, its raison d’etre. If the brand managers don’t know, and heartily agree, on the brand text, don’t expect consumers to get it either. Before you take the first step toward engagement, get your story straight, edit it concisely and pledge to stick to the script as you enter the multi-channel media world.
So, who gets to tell the brand story? All brands need human voices, rather than a droning corporate Hal, whether the channel be television, Facebook, Twitter or a White Paper. Spokesperson recruits must project as peers of their audiences, no talking up or down. Enthusiasm backed by solid knowledge, prepped by proper media training, is required of all those who handle Twitter or customer service incomings, as well as the CEO who addresses financial stakeholders.
Focus on the Audience
The brand focus should be squarely fixed on the concerns of its audiences, not its own problems, if you hope to foster trust. Do the research. Determine what consumers want from your brand. Review the brand heritage; explore the brand essence. Then write stories that deliver brand truths in conversational, emotional tones. No preaching, no hard selling, simply telling with the goal of helping to ease some aspect of someone’s daily burden, whether its stress, home maintenance or financial planning.
The more people can relate to the brand as a distinctive, trust-worthy personality (read, individual), the more approachable it will become and a deeper the customer relationship (loyalty and engagement) will develop.