Brand Tone of Voice:

30 brand tone of voicegreater social distance is created and maintained between the ‘voice’ of the textand its readers.Analysing Orange and HSBC texts exposes differences in the way the language‘voice’ allows each to construct social relationships with readers. We haveseen something of this in the kinds of position that each company constructsfor its customers, and in how much they seem to know about customer lifestyles.There are other determinants of social relations, some implicit and someexplicit.HSBC texts, as we have seen, construct a position of authority for the brandin that they do not hesitate to mention statutory and legal obligations andexpectations, and the bank’s right to refuse services to the customer. In fact,the first body text of one new accounts brochure mentions just such a right inthe first few lines:£50 Buffer ZoneAlthough our buffer zone is not a right to go overdrawn, should youraccount dip into the red by £50 at our discretion, we will not charge youour unauthorised borrowing fee.In fact, terms and conditions, regulatory statements, and other boilerplateappear throughout the HSBC documents, reinforcing the position that the bankgives (or withholds) permission for the customer to use its services. Some of thebank’s actions are given as concessions: we will not charge you our unauthorisedborrowing fee, for example. Likewise, attempts to state what the customer isentitled to might reflect negatively on the bank: on opening an account, thecustomer is reassured that HSBC will pay you £10 every time we get it wrong.The final phrase presupposes that there will be such cases, and more than onefor each customer.This material solidly reinforces HSBC as relatively powerful and the customeras relatively powerless. I would suggest that the inclusion of legal elementssuch as this then constrains the coherent positions that the language ‘voice’ canoccupy: it is difficult to then be informal and friendly. However, HSBC doesattempt some ‘conversationalization’ through informal language use, such asby using clause fragments instead of full clauses:Easy to open. Simple to understand. Easy to manage.To help you keep track of your money.In the context of regulatory statements, however, any conversational, informalposition can come across as inauthentic and false.The Orange texts use informal grammar quite consistently. Sentences canbegin with conjunctions: