When Brands Start to Speak

Voice is becoming the primary interface, forcing brands to define how they sound, not just how they look.

After decades of swiping, scrolling, and staring at screens, the way we interact with technology in the future is set to be very different. As AI grows more conversational, brands are faced with a new challenge in how they communicate, that is how they sound. What happens to brand identity when voice, not images becomes the primary interface? 

This topic was a thread from a conversation I had with Rosh Singh, chief executive at the immersive studio Astral City, about Big Tech’s growing investment in spatial computing, and glass more specifically. 

“We've come through decades and decades of user interface, design and iterations, and development of what UI looks like. But we're at the precipice now of a moment where voice is going to be the next UI and understanding voice is going to be super important,” Rosh tells me. 

The Hardest Interface to Get Right

If voice begins to replace the screen, then brands face a new creative frontier. What does Nike sound like when it speaks? How should H&Msound when it answers a shopper’s question?

“Voice,” Rosh says, “is hard to nail.” Crafting an AI system that people can talk to  and want to talk to again is a delicate art. “A voice that is true to the brand experience that doesn't alienate people, that embodies enough humanity to give users comfort, but doesn't feel too human to feel eerie,” is what is required, he says. 

Unlike other user interfaces, voice either works or it doesn’t. “It's not like a UI which you can make beautiful, even if the experience feels kind of clunky. With voice, if it doesn't sound right, it doesn't work,” Rosh says. 

But get it right and voice interfaces can add a lot of value. “Let's be honest, a lot of us who work in this space are on the geekier side of things, and we like sci-fi, and you just look at all of the interfaces, whether it's K.I.T.T. in Knight Rider or J.A.R.V.I.S. in Iron Man, these voice interfaces feel magical, and when you nail them, they do feel like science fiction.” 

Astral City is already working with brands on this, but due to NDA’s are unable to name names. Rosh believes though that not enough companies are thinking about the rise of conversational AI and therefore not yet thinking about what their voice will sound like. “Are brands thinking about conversation assistance in their brand toolkits? Because if not, they probably should be at this point. It's going to be so fundamental to how people engage,” he says. 

Brands That Are Starting to Speak

Ralph Lauren is already experimenting with conversational AI, launching its Azure OpenAI powered shopping assistant Ask Ralph. The fashion label’s chief digital officer, Naveen Seshadri, recently said that AI makes a “huge difference to immerse yourself in your own personal sense of style”. 

The tool is designed to interact with customers just like an in-store associate where shoppers can ask questions about how to style certain products and can give recommendations and check stockists. Naveen has hinted that although it is currently designed as a styling tool, “the ultimate aim is to make it a more immersive, personalized and friction-free shopping experience.” 

It’s a glimpse of how AI voices could soon become part of everyday brand experiences. 

Designing a Voice from Scratch 

Behind the scenes, agencies like MassiveMusic are already pitching voice strategies to some of the world’s biggest brands. Voice Specialist & Account ​Director, Kim Aspeling, tells me in the past couple of weeks she has already worked on six pitches. “Right now I can tell you, it's been crazy – everybody's talking about it and has got wind of it,” Kim shares. 

Her team doesn’t write the dialogue but they design the sound of the voice itself. Kim describes the process as part science, part art.

“We would look at competitors, their peers, who's doing well in the industry, and why, from a voice perspective. Then work out okay the usual stuff you would do in a strategy, so where is this going to live and what is the brand tone of voice, based on the brand architecture,” she says. 

For example, would the brand need a voice with gravitas or should it be light and bubbly. Getting the tone right is crucial. “The voice has got that ability to connect with you in the first instance,” Kim says. 

That being said, although yes, brands are having these early conversations, she counters this slightly by admitting that there is still “limited knowledge” about the role of voice in brand comms. “It's not really spoken about in marketing where you get people saying this is something you need to think about,” Kim says. To her, it is counterintuitive to think about all other areas but not think about something as important as voice. 

Rosh agrees. Getting even deeper, he talks about how voice is a fundamental part of our communication and is instinctive to us as humans. A website or an app on the other hand isn’t instinctive to us, a website isn’t a core tenet of human communication.

As technology starts to speak back to us, voice may become the most crucial brand interaction yet. Brands that have spent decades refining how they look may soon be judged by how they sound. A fundamental shift in an industry that has always thought visual first.

And as Rosh mentions, get it wrong and you risk alienating your customers entirely.

Article written by Hannah Bowler