When Printed.com approached LoveGunn, they had a well-functioning transactional platform but it had no sense of community behind it. Already the UK’s leading printing partners, with over thirty years in the business, Brand Manager Calvin Todd approached us to make Printed.com relevant in the time of Instagram, TikTok and amidst the rise of side hustles and internet entrepreneurs. We set out to position them with a stand-out brand identity and unique tone of voice to help build a reputation for passion, quality and care.
In branding, tone of voice cannot exist in isolation. It demands a comprehensive approach that encompasses brand strategy and positioning. At LoveGunn, we firmly believe that a distinct creative strategy and differentiated positioning are needed to lay the groundwork for a brand's voice. That's why we merge tone of voice and visual identity into a comprehensive scope of work to create a unified brand experience that leaves a lasting impression. Printed.com won a coveted 2023 Transform Award for the visual identity work we created, but it is important to note the incremental role that the tone of voice plays in supporting the identity and delivering the overall strategy.
Printed.com had experience and expertise, providing great bones to build our work on. We kicked off with a series of brand strategy workshops and internal interviews to gain insight into the brand’s story and value proposition. Developing a brand strategy means identifying opportunities for differentiation and developing a unique voice. Through the workshops and interviews, it became clear that the Printed.com team cared a lot about their work and, despite being a digital platform, they really wanted to connect with their customers.
LoveGunn strategised around the key insight that Printed.coms core customers could truly take advantage of the passion, care and attention that Printed.com offered. We strategised around the concept of tangibility and focused on creatives and entrepreneurs. Our goal was to demonstrate to customers that the true offering of Printed.com is the opportunity for actualisation. Connecting the Printed.com brand to the ideas, emotions and creativity of its community, we positioned them as a supportive facilitator that makes things happen.
Following the creative strategy, we began work on a powerful tone of voice toolkit for Printed.com. The ‘Let’s make it real’ tagline also informed the tone of voice and we embedded it into the brand’s language. We developed five strong brand personality traits: Friendly, Helpful, Human, Positive and Professional – we then showed how these five traits are applied to Printed.com and across key customer touchpoints.
The new Printed.com branding prioritised having meaningful conversations with their audience, aiming to excite and inspire their community of creatives. This meant that the tone of voice was a particularly integral part of the work we delivered. We made sure that the brand had an extensive toolkit to manage the tone of voice across all touchpoints - including website, email, customer support and advertising.
A brand’s tone of voice is more than just words on a page or copy for a campaign. It works more like the voice of a living person. At LoveGunn, we build parameters around the brand’s personality and consider how they are likely to act. This means fleshing out an entire manner of speaking and structuring the language that best connects to your audience. To build out a toolkit, we codify the parameters of a brand’s voice, simulate scenarios that display how it would be used and give working examples across different assets and touchpoints.
The tone of voice toolkit we created was an extensive and in-depth document that provided essential guidelines for the tone of voice, covering what to say and how to say it. The aim of the guideline was to ensure a consistency that would truly embed the tone of voice into the brand’s culture. This toolkit was to be used as a guide for management, sales and marketing teams to connect with customers in a way that feels distinctly Printed.com.
The toolkit mapped out everything from brand personality, descriptors, and parameters to basic sentence structure, punctuation rules, and prescribed modes for all stakeholders. We included bad and good examples across webchat, order updates, presentation slides, webpages, social media, marketing emails, and more. Finally, we included a checklist along 10 tone of voice principles that apply only to Printed.com. The toolkit offers a comprehensive reference guide for new starters and long-standing staff alike.
In this case, we went a step further than the tone of voice toolkit and held another workshop aimed at ensuring that every member of Printed.com staff was empowered to take ownership of the brand’s voice across their different channels. The workshop provided in-depth tone of voice training for nine Printed.com team members whose role at the company made them guardians of the brand’s voice. LoveGunn carried out the training in the brand’s headquarters in Newcastle with two full sessions over two days. The workshop reviewed the tone of voice toolkit, worked through the pillars and sliding scale of the brand’s voice and used real working examples from each participant to translate the voice across every different touchpoint and format.
Following the workshop, we conducted a survey to ensure there was an unambiguous sense that the tone of voice could be carried forward and represent the brand. The team felt the session was highly engaging, enjoyable and educational.
The visual identity brought to life the voice we had developed – ensuring the brand would look as human and friendly as it would sound. In line with the brand personality and strategic vision, the creative routes were playful, fun and prioritised images of people. Our primary colour palette used a bold pink supported by neutrals and a secondary palette of fun primary colours to represent a broad spectrum of ideas and creativity. We developed everything from logos, fonts, usages and hierarchies to mailers, webpages, digital advertising, social posts and campaigns. The brand saw a 60% increase in CRM click rates since the rebrand and 50% reduction in unsubscribe rates. Now at 27.5k on Instagram, their following has increased 23%.
Since the rebrand, LoveGunn continues to have an ongoing relationship with Printed.com, working with the brand across multiple campaigns and activations. In March 2023, Printed.com won the Bronze Transform Award in the category of Best Visual Identity from the Retail Sector.
When Printed.com approached LoveGunn, they had a well-functioning transactional platform but it had no sense of community behind it. Already the UK’s leading printing partners, with over thirty years in the business, Brand Manager Calvin Todd approached us to make Printed.com relevant in the time of Instagram, TikTok and amidst the rise of side hustles and internet entrepreneurs. We set out to position them with a stand-out brand identity and unique tone of voice to help build a reputation for passion, quality and care.
In branding, tone of voice cannot exist in isolation. It demands a comprehensive approach that encompasses brand strategy and positioning. At LoveGunn, we firmly believe that a distinct creative strategy and differentiated positioning are needed to lay the groundwork for a brand's voice. That's why we merge tone of voice and visual identity into a comprehensive scope of work to create a unified brand experience that leaves a lasting impression. Printed.com won a coveted 2023 Transform Award for the visual identity work we created, but it is important to note the incremental role that the tone of voice plays in supporting the identity and delivering the overall strategy.
