Brand Tone of Voice:

J. Delin 15Brand elements are therefore created out of phrases that could otherwisejust be possessive inferrables (our text messaging service) or general inferrables(text messaging). Orange also brands strongly through colour andtypography.Figure 2 shows that the range of techniques of brand reinforcement caninclude significant ‘upgrading’ of what would otherwise be ordinary ‘lifeworld’language (cf. Habermas, 1984) to co-referential or brand elementphrases. The ‘specialness’ of these services when related to Orange is thereforeconstantly reinforced through a range of means of evoking the brand nameand its related concepts.By comparison, HSBC is a more reticent brand. In one 22-page brochure,HSBC is mentioned only ten times, and none of these references are inthe main body text: as part of the logo on the front of the leaflet, twice inimages, once in its address on the cover of the leaflet, four times in regulatorystatements, and twice in URLs 10 . The identity is not strongly reinforced bytypography, with the choice of the neutral Times and Univers as fonts. Thereis some reinforcement of the brand colour (the use of red for titles and bulletpoints).Where Orange services are branded by mentioning the brand name,the HSBC brand does not appear in the names of its own ‘special services’.Spacing and typography have been used to make service names differentfrom ordinary language, but these do not strongly evoke HSBC. Typographyand spacing are not used sufficiently consistently, either, to make ‘specialservices’ seem like any kind of set.ServicePlusTalk DirectTypetalkno space, both elements capitalised, italics on secondelementspace, both elements capitalised, no italics on eitherelementno space, first element capitalised, no italics on eitherelementConcepts and elements that are ascribed to the user are not branded, sopossessive inferrables (your Basic Bank Account) are used, for example, ratherthan co-referential phrases (your HSBC account). In addition to these fewpossessive inferrables that do weakly evoke brand, however, there is a muchlarger group of general NPs, often also possessives, that refer to things thatcould be had from any bank (your account, your branch). I have grouped these(perhaps controversially) as non-evoking general NPs, because the conceptsthey refer to could relate to any company providing similar services. Theresult is a set of much weaker referential evocations of the brand. These areillustrated in Figure 3.