I sing karaoke at least twice a month. This is not a hobby. This is a spiritual practice. And last Thursday, watching a very drunk man absolutely commit to Bohemian Rhapsody at the Spare Room here in Portland, I had a brand strategy epiphany.
The best karaoke performers are never the best singers. They're the ones who pick the right song for their voice and then commit fully to the performance. They don't apologize. They don't hedge. They don't try to sound like the original artist. They make the song theirs.
Brands work the same way.
The biggest mistake I see in brand voice development is what I call Karaoke Impersonation Syndrome: brands trying to sound like another brand that's working. Every DTC brand in 2020 tried to sound like Glossier. Every B2B SaaS company right now is trying to sound like whatever brand last went viral on LinkedIn. They're doing karaoke but trying to sound exactly like the original recording, and it always falls flat.
Here's why: brand voice isn't about what sounds good in the abstract. It's about what sounds authentic from your specific mouth. Wendy's can be sarcastic on Twitter because their entire brand personality supports it. When a regional bank tries the same energy, it reads as unhinged.
Here's why: brand voice isn't about what sounds good in the abstract.
The karaoke theory of brand voice has three principles:
Pick the right song. Choose a tone and register that fits your brand's actual personality, history, and customer relationship. Don't pick the crowd-pleaser if you can't pull it off. Sometimes your brand is a quiet ballad, not a power anthem. That's fine. Own it.
Commit fully. Half-hearted brand voice is worse than no brand voice. If you're going to be funny, be funny. If you're going to be earnest, be earnest. The brands that flop are the ones that hedge between tones because they're afraid of alienating someone. You know what alienates everyone? Blandness.
Don't try to sound like the original. Your brand voice should be recognizably yours, not a cover version of someone else's success. If I can swap your logo for a competitor's and the copy still works, you don't have a brand voice. You have a category voice. And category voice is karaoke with the lyrics on screen and zero stage presence.
The drunk guy doing Bohemian Rhapsody didn't hit a single note correctly. But he had the crowd screaming along by the guitar solo. Because he committed. He didn't try to be Freddie Mercury. He was fully himself, performing Freddie's song.
That's brand voice. Your song, your way, full commitment. Everything else is just reading lyrics off a screen.