Chris West, CEO of tone of voice agency Verbal Identity looks at how brands have changed their language during Covid, and why it's time other brands did the same.

​A single gigantic societal shock changes how we expect to interact with each other – and how we expect brands to interact with us.

When something like that happens, it’s a big enough reason to make a marketer reconsider how their brand can speak credibly in an altered society. But Covid, BLM, new heights of climate disaster and never-seen-before depths of economic devastation were four big societal shocks all heaped on top of each other.

Some brands froze, sticking their fingers in their ears and singing the same old tunes. But a few brand guardians saw the need to change how they spoke, sensing that their brand voice is much, much more than just their ‘tone of voice’.

What our brands to say and the worldview they say it from, express as much as the personality our brands try to voice.

At Verbal Identity, we...