In recent weeks, Voice, you’ve made a few cameos in our social feed. 

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Our team has begun capturing our thoughts in the form of short videos. This more multi-dimensional medium lets us expand beyond our typical Memos and Q&As, revealing new aspects of our brand through people actually speaking.

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I have to admit, I don’t like the sound of my own version of you in my own ears. Maybe it’s due to my deviated septum, or some other tonal triggers. Yet despite my own hangups, we’ve seen a positive response to this new aural dimension of our storytelling. Beyond the visual expression we’ve established, you’re showing up in a new way.

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For years, dear Voice, I’ve praised your unique value in helping companies truly define who they are. So I’m glad you’ve found your way into helping us further our brand. Frankly, I can’t imagine sustaining a strong brand without your help.

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I’ve seen too many companies stay visually exclusive and leave you unattended. They stick to logos, design systems, and grand scale campaigns as fertile ground to get people to understand their brands. Seeing is believing, right? 

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These companies have relegated you to background noise—vaguely functional if not particularly exciting, and often hard to replicate. Visual guidelines and design assets can be deployed with consistency—but you, they’ve reasoned, maybe not as much. So such brands prioritize images and colors over words and tone. 

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But Voice, we believe that now’s your time to shine. You're not just a communication tool. You're a shapeshifter, a chameleon that can transform a brand's entire identity with just a few carefully chosen words. Everyone can recite the two- and three-word mantras that Apple and Nike brought the world decades ago. (Those slogans landed so profoundly, we needn’t reprint them here.)

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Yes, those were tagline versions of you, initially coined to anchor lavish brand campaigns. But more importantly, they sent clear signals of the strategic tone and expectations that each brand committed to follow from then on.

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Because of you, Voice, some brands seem to sing while others merely mumble. Honda doesn't just talk about cars—they speak of practical innovation. BMW doesn't just describe engineering—they articulate precision as an art form of exhilaration. IBM doesn’t just discuss cloud or AI—they communicate progress, intelligently. 

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Plus, in the lifetime of a great brand, leaders come and go. Individual figureheads can be great at capturing attention, but their idiosyncrasies and fluctuations can be risky to a brand’s long-term health. Where cults of personality might fade, you endure.

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And your load is a heavy one, Voice. You're not confined to a single commercial or a brochure. You're the consistent thread that weaves through every brand touchpoint—customer service calls, social media posts, product descriptions, training materials, internal and investor communications. 

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This workload makes it ever more difficult to track and sustain you across so many places. You're everywhere, but when managed correctly, your effect can be magical.

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Younger generations get this intuitively. They don't just consume brands—they have conversations with them. And those conversations are driven entirely by voice. A witty tweet, a compassionate support response, a well articulated statement of purpose—these are the new brand differentiators.

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But here's the real insight: You're not about being loud. You're about being yourself. Just like a great conversationalist knows when to lean in and when to listen, a great brand voice understands nuance, context, and genuine connection.

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Some brands try too hard. They adopt voices that feel borrowed and shallow—like a middle-aged executive attempting teenage slang. The best voices are the ones that feel effortless, that sound like a trusted friend or a respected mentor. You have an incredibly human role to play going forward, and we hope you keep fighting for independence.

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My partners and I at The Indelible are still finding our version of you for ourselves. But we’ve been very intentional in how to define your role in our business, aiming for a voice that reflects our expertise, our opinions, and hopefully, our personality. We also work hard to shape the significant role you play for our clients.

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We believe you to be one of a brand’s most precious currencies and the ultimate differentiator. You can make people laugh, inspire them, comfort them, challenge them, and naturally, connect with them to buy something—all through the power of words and tone.

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So here's to your role in making brands better, Voice. We salute your ability to transform a logo into a movement, a product into an experience, a company into a community.

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Stay bold. Stay original. Keep speaking.

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Indelibly yours,

Jeff