For our latest instalment of ‘HE Copy We Love’, we’re changing it up a bit. We’ve decided to draw your attention to a copywriting gem that wouldn’t normally be in the public eye – the only reason we even got to see it was because it won the ‘Women in Marketing 2024’ award in the Brand Copywriting category (as judged by copywriting mega-legend Vikki Ross, amongst others).
Brand voice guidelines are internal documents that harness the tricks and tools of the copywriter’s craft, and turn them into brand-specific, step-by-step writing guides that anyone tasked with writing for the organisation can use. Easier said than done.
The Confetti Institute of Creative Technologies in Nottingham turned to brand voice specialist Mel Barfield to help them pull together the guidelines their team needed to communicate consistently and engagingly.
Mel works across a wide variety of industries and sectors, so we thought it’d be interesting to get that slightly ‘outside’ perspective on the challenges of HE marketing.
We hadn’t seen Mel since CopyCon last year, so this was the perfect opportunity to settle in for a good long chat about this award-winning work, HE comms and online mansplainers.
All Things Words: Mel, lovely to see you again. What were Confetti hoping to change about their existing brand voice?
Mel: Hiya! Good to see you.
When they got in touch, Confetti didn’t really have an existing tone of voice laid out – it was more about documenting and defining what was already there, to enable them to be more consistent in their communications.
The website tended to be more formal, and then the socials were a little bit inconsistent. So they wanted to make sure what they were putting out there was bringing in some personality in both areas.
They were falling into that trap, like a lot of HE does, where it’s kind of a continuation of school formality. Yes, you’re still talking to parents, but you’re also talking to the young people.
It’s a very difficult balance to find – you don’t want to try and sound cool. If you try and sound cool, you’ll sound like an absolute loser, and then it becomes a cringe fest.
ATW: How much guidance did Confetti give you about what they wanted?
Mel: I was given quite a free rein, actually.
Something interesting that happened during the process, was that we identified a bit of a mismatch between historic and modern perceptions of Confetti.
They used to be thought of as being a really cool place to go. But over time, that changed because of a variety of things. It was partly because they broadened out their offering to cater for students who hadn’t achieved any qualifications.
They ended up with a broader range of students. So rather than it being this really niche music and arts place to go, somewhere that the cool kids went, it became the place where the ‘weird kids’ went – that was the way it was talked about in the local area.
Uncovering this change helped us identify that we needed a deeper dive into the core messaging. They wanted to lean more into the ‘being weird’ thing and actually embracing that – being proud of having students who were a bit different.
ATW: Good for them. So how did Confetti’s specialism in music and creative arts influence the brand voice guide?
Mel: They were quite clear they didn’t want to use certain metaphors and cliches…’turn up the volume on your studies’, or whatever. They didn’t want to go the same route as their competitors. We ended up agreeing that we could use a tiny amount of that, but only in blogs, not on socials, because everyone else does it on socials.
The tone of voice work ended up influencing some of their content strategy decisions. Because they’re music and creative arts people, they like to go for risky moves sometimes. So looking closely at the words they use and how they use them actually sparked more contemplation about how to show what they do, and the actual types of content they produce.
They’d already been putting a creative twist on things, like writing terms and conditions as a poem. The new tone of voice guide gave “permission” to go further still.
ATW: As a TOV specialist, you work with lots of different industries. Was there anything you had to do differently for this project? How does working with tertiary education clients compare to other industries?
Mel: You’re not just targeting one group of people, because you have to consider the parents as well, the schoolteachers, the careers advisors. There are so many people that will influence the decision of where a young person ends up going. It’s quite a split of audience – and that’s another reason not to try and use words that young people use.
That’s the biggest difference, really. A lot of brands will have multiple ICPs (ideal customer profiles), but they’re broadly similar normally.
Whereas in HE and FE, you’re talking about that massive generational gap between these two core groups. You have to be reassuring parents and influential adults, but then also appealing to the young people.
ATW: And for a lot of universities, it’s even wider than that, because you’ve got to appeal to external partners and research communities as well.
Mel: Exactly. I don’t know if there are many situations where you have such a massive chasm between your two or three main audiences.
ATW: Was there much back-and-forth between first draft and sign-off? Did you have to tone it down at all?
No, they were really supportive and enthusiastic.
I did get a bit of criticism much further down the line – ironically, it came just after I’d won the Women in Marketing Award.
I got a message in my DMs. Just some guy saying, ‘oh, hope you take this in the spirit in which it’s intended, blah, blah, but there’s a typo, and also, your client might not like you sharing their guidelines, and other writers might steal it, etc’.
Now, firstly – there wasn’t a typo.
And secondly – why do you think I didn’t ask my client before sharing it? How patronising.
I get that he was trying to be helpful. But I’ve asked Ben (McKinney) and some of the other men I work with, do you think he would have messaged you with that?
And the answer of course is no. I just don’t think a man would do that to another man.
ATW: So it’s good enough for Vikki Ross, but it’s not good enough for this random bloke on the internet.
Mel: I know, right? Despite these ‘issues’, I’ve had lots of work off the back of this award, some of which has come indirectly from Vicki’s recommendation, so there’s that.
ATW: What additional advice did you give Confetti’s marketing team to help them implement the brand voice?
Mel: They didn’t need a huge amount of additional advice through the process. We helped them focus on showing off the actual staff team’s track record a lot more.
Getting more specific was another thing – like, instead of saying ‘we use the same microphones as industry professionals’, we’d change it for more relevant references – ‘we use the same microphone as Charlie XCX’.
When people do that, I think it’s really, really powerful, and it’s one of the most underused tactics with copywriters. Not enough people go deep into the detail, and show the tiny, tiny snippets – so to return to the staff team, things like showing off what the lecturer staff have done over the weekend, in their professional music industry capacity.
I just think that that brings it to life. When you dig into the infinitely tiny, tiny minutiae, and go ultra specific on the detail – that’s what I love. I love doing that, and I love reading that.
ATW: Ok, last question, Mel – what advice do you have for HE marketers and comms folk who are trying to implement a brand voice?
Mel: I think my advice to anybody trying to write in a particular style is to write it how you would normally, then edit it.
I think that gets you going a lot quicker. If you’re looking at a blank page, then that’s much harder. You end up stressing over every sentence and editing each sentence as you go.
Having said that, there’s some voices where I can just switch into it. I’ve got a retainer client I’ve been working with for a year and a bit now, and I can just go straight into that.
Also, I used to work at various councils, local government stuff, and I can go into that immediately with no prep, because I’ve done it so many times, so I think it’s something that comes with practice.
But if you’re starting, if you’re trying to shift to a completely different voice you’ve never written before, just get the information down first.
Then when you’re editing, use a little checklist – having something like that is really handy when you’re implementing a tone of voice or you’re trying to train up marketers. They’re not necessarily going to want to reread a full set of guidelines every time.
A one page tick-list gives people the feeling of confidence. They’re also really handy for a team, or if there are multiple people doing it.
I don’t think writing together works, necessarily. I think people are best off just having their own little brain space to write. But certainly the editing should be a collaboration. Edit it together, and edit it against the tone of voice.
Talk together too, and have it going in all directions – up and down the chain of command. Have somebody who’s more junior editing their manager’s work. And make sure it’s a collaborative thing, because there’s no room for ego.
Mel Barfield is an award-winning copywriter, event speaker and co-host of the indie business club podcast with Ben McKinney.
As always, let us know if you’ve made, or seen, any brilliant HE marketing comms or campaigns you’d like us to unpick and share with the world. Get in touch, either on LinkedIn or at jo@allthingswords.co.uk.