Your brand's voice feels out of sync with customer trends. How can you adapt effectively?
If your brand's voice feels out of sync with customer trends, it's crucial to realign it to maintain relevance and engagement. Here's how you can adapt effectively:
How do you keep your brand's voice in sync with customer trends?
Your brand's voice feels out of sync with customer trends. How can you adapt effectively?
If your brand's voice feels out of sync with customer trends, it's crucial to realign it to maintain relevance and engagement. Here's how you can adapt effectively:
How do you keep your brand's voice in sync with customer trends?
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Don’t mistake a fad for a trend. Understand the factors shifting in a society that lead to changes in values, attitudes, and lifestyles. This is not an activity that you react to but rather an evolution that you live into. Be mindful of changing demographic patterns, shifts in employment, and fluctuation in disposable income. Look at changes in media usage patterns. Update your attitudinal survey questions at the first hint that the drivers of societal values may be shifting. Build perceptual maps to understand where your brand appears relative to competitors, substitute products, and idealized providers. Test all aspects of messaging. Too often, executional subtext in advertising carries a more profound message than the copy.
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At The Das Media Group, I instruct our teams and partners to start with a brand questionnaire which will help record their answers so that we can deliver brand strategies that meet their own expectations. Analyzing social media trends is also very helpful.
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When your brand’s voice feels off-key, it’s time to listen closely and adjust. Here’s how to realign effectively: ✭Conduct Customer Surveys Go straight to the source. Understand your audience’s evolving preferences by asking what they want—and actually listening. ✭Track Social Media Trends Platforms like Instagram and TikTok are cultural barometers. Monitor what’s trending to ensure your messaging resonates with today’s conversations. ✭Revise Content Strategy Update your tone, messaging, and visuals based on feedback and insights. Relevance requires flexibility and a willingness to evolve. ✭The Goal? Stay relevant without losing your authenticity!✭
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To adapt your brand's voice to align with customer trends, start by analyzing your audience’s evolving preferences through social listening, feedback, and trend reports. Identify the tone, language, and themes resonating with them—such as inclusivity, sustainability, or humor. Refine your messaging to reflect these insights while staying true to your core values. Test your updated voice across channels to gauge reactions, and remain flexible to adjust further. This balance of relevance and authenticity keeps your voice in tune with your audience.
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As a brand strategist, I believe keeping a brand’s voice in sync with customer trends is all about staying connected and adaptable. Regularly listening to your audience, analyzing data, and evolving your messaging based on feedback are key. It's not just about following trends but aligning them with your brand's identity to maintain authenticity and build stronger connections.
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In my experience, adapting your brand’s voice starts with listening to your audience. First, look closely at your existing messaging to see where it might feel out of touch—whether it’s too formal or not resonating with current trends. Next, pay attention to how customers are speaking and what they care about, especially on social media. Consumers today value authenticity and relatability, so shifting to a more conversational and inclusive tone can make a big difference. Testing different approaches and tracking engagement helps refine your voice. The key is consistency across all touchpoints while staying flexible enough to evolve with changing trends.
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Regularly requesting for feedback, comments from our audience, analyzing data, and evolving your messaging based on feedback are key. It's very important to follow trends and needs, expectations from clients / sponsors. Aligning them with our brand's identity to maintain authenticity with experience, team capability to deliver the expectations of our clients. Communicate to give confidence and build stronger connections with concerned stakeholders.
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A great example is Burger King. In 2020, the brand shifted its voice to be more in tune with younger, social-media-savvy customers. They used humor, boldness, and a cheeky tone in their campaigns, like the #WhopperDetour campaign, where customers could unlock a discounted Whopper by using the Burger King app near McDonald's. This move reflected their target audience’s preference for interactive, fun, and digitally-driven experiences. By embracing trends like gamification and social media challenges, Burger King successfully adapted its brand voice to stay relevant and engage with a new generation.
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Voice is an attribute of your brand and, of course, needs to resonate with your audience. While voice, tone, and manner can evolve, ideally, the core values, personality, and strategic positioning should remain unchanged, or you risk losing established equity. If there is a shift in your audience requiring a change in voice, it's wise to be sure your primary value proposition (and other elements of your positioning, which includes audience definition) in your positioning still aligns with your audience. Your voice being out of sync could indicate a larger strategic problem.
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2025 will change a lot! Brands should focus on authenticity, sustainability, and innovative technology. Emphasizing genuine storytelling and aligning with social causes resonate particularly well with Gen Z, who favor brands that reflect their values. For example, companies like Patagonia exemplify this by integrating eco-friendly practices into their core identity. Additionally, leveraging AI for hyper-personalization enhances customer experiences, as seen with brands like Netflix tailoring content recommendations. Lastly, adopting motion design and immersive experiences—like IKEA’s AR app—can make brand interactions more engaging and memorable, ensuring relevance in a competitive market.
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