Core level seminar – Finding your agency’s voice

INTRODUCTION

Your agency creds are an essential new business tool. Even before the client’s met you, they’re sitting at their desk forming an opinion of you. It’s the words you use – and the way you use them – which engage (or fail to engage) the client. Your language and tone of voice gives the client a framework to judge you by and are the very first steps in setting out how highly a client should value you.

But it’s not just in your agency creds that your verbal skills matter. It’s everything you write or utter, from the way the phone is answered, to the social media comment, to the home page on your website and to the very first words out of your mouth when you begin the pitch.

Too often, an agency with a clear point of difference fails to express it: they say the same things as everyone else, and they say them in the same way as everyone else.

If you think your agency’s writing could be improved, if you ever wondered how to define your tone of voice and how to create a distinct verbal identity, how to guide everyone in your agency to follow best practice and whether grammar matters anymore, then this is the ideal seminar for you.

Seminar overview

You’ll have practical advice, solid theory, workshop activities and 1:1 consultations. You’ll see:

• How it’s your company values that most influence your tone of voice (and how to focus on which of those values are most important for your agency’s verbal identity)
• How you can see language from 10,000ft, 1,00ft and all the way down to ground level
• How to see if you already have a great tone of voice lurking in your agency somewhere
• How to develop your tone of voice without tears
• Once you’ve developed that tone of voice how to define it and expand it into a full verbal identity
• We’ll look at the different types of stories you can tell, and which one is right for your agency
• How to get everyone else to buy into your new verbal identity
• Together, we’ll create a foie gras of writer’s tips that you can take back

Benefits

• Understand how you do and you don’t write about your agency
• Create a ready-to-go voice development programme
• Stretch beyond what everyone else thinks is tone of voice, into something more advanced

Who should attend?

Anyone responsible for or involved in New Business or Marketing at their agency

About the presenter

Al Hussain is the Senior Consultant at Verbal Identity. He joined in 2014. He applies rigorous analytical thinking to strategic and creative problems and has written for some of the world’s biggest brands. He ran this seminar last year.

HOW TO BOOK

We open bookings roughly three weeks in advance of each seminar. To book a place, please email Ann-Marie confirming the name, job title and email address of your delegate and whether they’d prefer the morning or afternoon session.

NB: AAR seminars are exclusive to AAR subscribing agencies only. One place per agency, please!