Westminster Foundation for Democracy
Building clear brand voice guidelines that resonate with a thriving global audience
Services
- Brand voice workshop
- Brand voice guidelines creation
Their Impact
- Supporting people who are working to strengthen democracy across the globe
- Encouraging cross-political party collaboration and problem-solving
- Striving to create a fairer and more inclusive society
Meet The Client
Westminster Foundation for Democracy (WFD) is the UK’s democracy support organisation on a mission to create a world where freedom and democracy thrive. For over 30 years, WFD has worked to solve problems of democracy to enable them to address the challenges that people around the world are facing – everything from climate change to corruption. Through partnerships with parliaments, political parties, electoral bodies, and more, WFD works to help democracies grow and enable freedom and prosperity to flourish.
The Challenge At Hand
To develop a brand tone of voice that was reflective of the WFD’s vision and mission for the future. A brand tone of voice encapsulates not only what you say as an organisation, but also how you say it. It’s an essential part of understanding who you are as an organisation and offers clear guidelines to refer back to when creating any brand content, including; written communication, design, and even how you speak to people. When used effectively, it gives you an identity as an organisation and builds trust with your audience. Due to WFD’s global team, another main challenge was the limited available opportunities to get their team together in person for a workshop.
Our response
For this project, we wanted to facilitate an engaging and productive in-person session. We visited the WFD’s headquarters in London and gathered their team together for a collaborative brand voice workshop.
The workshop
To set the tone of the workshop and understand what the WFD team had in mind for their brand voice, we discussed some inspiring examples of brand voice together. From here, we considered what elements of these examples resonated with WFD’s brand mission and tone. We then discussed WFD’s brand values and used them to help define what their brand personality might look like. This included everything from what they stand for to the words they want their audience to associate with them.
To do this, we carried out various team activities and tasks that encouraged collaboration between their team members. From here, we could be certain that the result would reflect the team’s values, thoughts and opinions.
Building brand voice guidelines
Following the workshop, their brand voice guidelines needed to be developed. It was essential that the guidelines encapsulated key information such as who WFD is, their company values and personality, as well as offer clear guidance on how to effectively use their brand voice.
As WFD has a global audience, we had to consider communicating with international audiences. It was important to recognise that WFD has a variety of different global audiences, so their brand voice guidelines needed to be sensitive to each audience and their varying needs. The guidelines also included further information on how to have a consistent communication style and further advice for applying brand voice.
Handover training
The final step of the project was to carry out handover training with the WFD team to ensure that they understood their new brand voice and personality, how to use their voice in their work, and how to give constructive feedback on their brand voice. This session prioritised building confidence within the team, and ensuring they felt they had everything they needed to use their new brand guidelines effectively.
Outcomes
- Clarity around what brand voice is, its significance and how it influences all communications across the organisation
- Practical, bespoke brand voice guidelines that offer teams an invaluable tool to refer back to when creating communications on behalf of the WFD
- Team bonding, collaboration, and discussion around brand voice and its significance in company communications
- A point of difference for WFD which sets them apart from their partners and collaborators
- Improved communications across all channels, including social media, design, and written and verbal communications
