There’s a misconception that brand standards begin and end with a logo, colors, fonts and graphics. A solid brand should also have a consistent voice that goes along with these visual elements.

Some brands have gained notoriety with edgy social media voices, like the clever roasts offered by Wendy’s or the surprisingly salty Merriam-Webster, who always has the right word for current events. Others have elevated their brand voices into ambassadors by naming or animating them: Bank of America has Erica, a virtual financial assistant, and nearly all of us have daily (albeit short) conversations with someone named Siri or Alexa.

Other brand voices are more behind-the-scenes, but they exist nevertheless. A solid consistency should inform all the copy that goes into a campaign, a website or even a restaurant menu.

It’s hard to say when Gene, the voice of our new website, materialized. Art Director and Webmaster Cynthia Hartness and Account Director Bobby Long, together with the Content Creation and Editorial team, first decided what they liked about how certain people they knew communicated. As they focused on certain traits, they started asking themselves WWGS (what would Gene say)? Gene is friendly, honest, straightforward, serious but a bit funny — Gene’s the person in the office who always has a joke on hand but also does the best work. Gene puts you at ease, and you can trust Gene.

A brand voice must speak for a whole team collectively but not ever seem like it’s coming individually from any one of the team members. A persona like Gene helps content come alive, with a consistent and engaging personality, as opposed to a wall of text that sounds like it’s been written by committee.

A recent article in PR Daily highlighted the importance of brand voice consistency. Social media posts from Cookie Monster, for instance, have to be unmistakably him — reflecting his core values, in his cadence, and on topics he’d be interested in. If any of those things isn’t quite right, it just feels false. Developing the voice of a firm like ours proved a bit more complicated than writing for a big, blue cookie-addicted Muppet, so Gene’s style evolved bit by bit.

Each graphic or copywriting choice became easier to reckon with by asking, “Would Gene like this?”

 “We were trying to figure out how to do this and we said ‘wait, let’s not try to guess what real people would think, let’s make up a person,’” Hartness said. “If you look at Imagine as a whole, thinking of something absolutely everyone would like is kind of impossible. Gene allowed us to have a filter to just run things through.”

Long said Gene’s personality was shaped by current trends in web development, too: Gene favors short, social-media-length bits of information over lectures. A dash of humor complements all the expertise and data Gene can offer. And being on the client side of this process was also eye-opening, he said.

“When trying to develop a brand voice, clients sometimes say they won’t know until they see it, and now I get what they mean a bit more,” Long added.

The true test of Gene’s authenticity was when company founder Alex Raffi checked out the website’s refreshed look and voice.

“I’m looking at the work and it’s giving me nostalgia goosebumps, because it 100% makes sense to me,” Raffi said. “It called back to discussions and philosophies we’ve shared over the years…a lot of what I really believe was in there, and yet I wasn’t involved. It felt like that old show, ‘This Is Your Life.’”

Good job, Gene!