Brand voice
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Introducing our brand voice
Our brand voice guides how we speak and write, whatever we’re talking about. It helps us get our message across in a way that builds relationships with our readers and helps us get the response we want. It creates a unique tone for our brand that will help us stand out and makes us consistent, so people will recognise us whenever and however we’re communicating with them. We need to use it everywhere our brand speaks, no matter what channel or platform — be it social media, web, internal events, videos, brochures or white papers.
This section contains details on our brand persona as well as tips and tools on how to write in our brand voice.
Please watch this short video to find out more about the Experian brand persona and brand voice.
Our brand persona is an expedition leader — and it drives our brand voice
At Experian, we want to power opportunities to create a better tomorrow for both people and organisations. It’s a big ambition to live by, so we created a brand persona to express the idea of this ambition. This persona guides how we talk, express and present ourselves both verbally and visually. Our persona is an expedition leader.
Whether we’re helping people navigate to a brighter financial future, showing a business the way to new opportunities or taking young graduates on their first steps to a new career, we’re there when people need us, guiding them forward. That’s why we’re like an expedition leader. Expedition leaders are always working to guide people through challenges and opportunities, helping them get where they want to be. They also exist all over the world. This means that our brand persona works across all the countries and cultures we work in.
Help
By providing the right services, tools and resources or by responding and acting on issues, an expedition leader will look to positively influence and empower people, supporting opportunities and guiding them towards a solution.
Explain
Expedition leaders look to clearly communicate out information to educate people, create coherence and extract meaning from areas that might seem overly complex.
Inspire
An expedition leader will look to demonstrate impact, evoke emotion, communicate a sense of purpose and create anticipation. They encourage people on their team at every level to not only see the opportunity but to grasp it and bring it to life.
Want a summary of our brand voice?
Click the link to download this guide or watch the video above for more assistance.
To write in our brand voice, we take inspiration from our brand persona, the expedition leader. We take their human, empowering characteristics to talk to people in a way that’s more friendly and relevant to their lives — that doesn’t just communicate, but supports and connects. Whatever you write, ask yourself is this how an expedition leader would say it?
Helpful
Inquisitive
Smart
Resourceful
Confident
Optimistic
Work out who you are writing for
An expedition leader is always working for the people they lead. Everything they say is to guide those people. As a result, they do all they can to make sure their communication is meaningful, relevant and valuable to those people. People don’t care about the products we’ve created or what technology we use; they care about whether we understand their challenges, what we can do to solve them and what results we can bring them.
So, start by asking yourself who you’re writing for. Are you writing an email to a client? A product sheet for a large audience of technically minded people? Or website copy for people who might not have heard of Experian? Working out who you’re writing for will help you decide how much detail you need to go into, what information is relevant and which terms you need to explain.
Work out what you’re trying to do in your writing
Wherever we’re communicating, we should always be able to explain, help or inspire. So, ask yourself what you’re writing and why you’re writing it? Are you trying to explain something complicated? Are you trying to help someone achieve their goal? Are you inspiring someone to have confidence to do something differently? Knowing what you’re aiming to do will help you work out what to include, what to cut, and how to express your message.
Use our traits and tools to express your message
To help us take inspiration from an expedition leader, we look to the six personality traits they demonstrate. Our writing tools show you how to put these traits into practice (helpful, inquisitive, smart, resourceful, confident, optimistic).
Is this communication helpful?
Have I explained my point well?
Will someone reading this be inspired to act?
Helpful
An expedition leader will always describe the team’s journey in a way that’s easy to understand and easy to follow, so they know where they’ve been and where they’re going. We explain things clearly and guide our readers through our writing.
1. We guide our readers with useful headings to signpost what’s coming next.
2. We make sure our writing is clear and easy to understand to make it easier for our readers to follow.
Inquisitive
An expedition leader is interested in the world and especially in how their team members see the world. We find out all we can about the challenges people face, and we shape everything we do around helping people overcome those challenges.
1. We start with our readers’ world and the issues they face.
2. We approach things from a problem-solving perspective.
Smart
An expedition leader uses their expertise to speak to their team in a way that connects — they speak in their team’s language so everyone is clear where they stand. We choose words that make us sound human and help us build relationships with our readers.
1. We choose everyday words that make us sound more like a human than a big organisation.
2. We think about who we’re writing for and make sure we explain any terms they’ll be unfamiliar with.
3. We say ‘you’, ‘your’, ‘we’ and ‘us’ to put people in our sentences, to make it clear who we’re talking to and about.
Resourceful
An Expedition Leader will always find new ways to get problems solved. We find alternative approaches to explain and express ideas, to help readers understand what we’re talking about and to show them what they can achieve.
1. Zoom in and out so granular details build up to a big picture that’s meaningful to our readers.
2. We explain unfamiliar things with familiar ideas.
Confident
An expedition leader is confident in their instructions and explanations. We’re confident in what we have to say, so we make our points clearly, and we don’t repeat ourselves.
1. We get to the point quickly and make sure every sentence has a purpose.
2. We use strong verbs to describe actions to give our writing energy and movement.
Optimistic
An expedition leader is always optimistic about the journey and what’s coming next. We help people today so they can be optimistic too and look ahead to a brighter future.
1. We frame things positively to show how we’ll help people work through challenges.
2. We connect today to the future so our readers understand how the small steps they take today will help them achieve their goals.
Tools in detail: helpful
An expedition leader will always describe the team’s journey in a way that’s easy to understand and easy to follow, so they know where they’ve been and where they’re going. We explain things clearly and guide our readers through our writing.
An expedition leader signposts everything their team needs to know — so they know where they are, where they’ve been, and where they’re going next. We break up our writing and guide our readers through it with helpful headings. Each heading should give our readers the gist of what’s underneath it. This way they can skim through the page and find the information they need. If there are steps or stages in the piece you’re writing, say how many steps there are in your heading.
An expedition leader communicates in a way that’s easy to understand. They make sure their team is on the same page. They won’t continue until they know everyone is up to speed. We communicate in the same way — we help people understand and follow. We do this by writing in a way that helps our readers figure out exactly what we’re talking about — avoiding business jargon, abbreviations and technical language to make it as clear as possible for our audience.
Tools in detail: Inquisitive
An expedition leader is interested in the world and especially in how their team members see the world. We find out all we can about the challenges people face, and we shape everything we do around helping people overcome those challenges.
Expedition leaders don’t choose the destination. Their team does. The leader guides them to make sure they get there. So, an expedition leader puts their team’s needs and interests ahead of their own. We show our readers we’re interested in their world by putting them first and showing them what things mean for them. For instance, we focus on what we can help people do and what benefits we can bring them, rather than the technical features of any particular product or service. The technical features might be more interesting to us than them.
Tools in detail: Smart
An expedition leader uses their expertise to speak to their team in a way that connects — they speak in their team’s language so everyone is clear where they stand. We choose words that make us sound human and help us build relationships with our readers.
An expedition leader uses their expertise to speak to their team in a way that connects. They speak in their team’s language so everyone is clear where they stand. We use everyday words that our readers use in conversation. These are words that mean something to people and resonate with them. ‘Assist’ and ‘help’ might mean virtually the same thing, but ‘help’ resonates more. Nobody ever reassures someone by saying ‘Don’t worry, I’m here to assist.’ Try saying your sentence aloud — the way you’d say it in conversation is how you should write it.
Expedition leaders don’t need to prove how smart they are by using long and complicated words. They wouldn’t be a good leader if their team didn’t understand what they were saying. Their job is to make sure everyone is on the same page, and no one is falling behind. In our world, we know what CCJs, ECS, PowerCurve, Tallyman and Prove ID mean. But the people we’re writing for might not. We make sure that, if we’re ever using terms that our readers might not be familiar with, we always explain them. We put each term in context by showing people what it can help them do.
Everything an expedition leader does is to lead the people around them. They talk directly to their team, making it clear who needs to do what so they can all achieve their goal together. We write directly to our readers by putting them in our sentences. Writing ‘Experian’, ‘customers’ or ‘clients’ keeps people at arm’s length. Talking about ‘us’, ‘you’ and ‘we’ brings them closer. Putting people in our sentences helps us connect with them. It makes it clear who we’re talking to, who we’re talking about and who’s doing what. It also helps us take credit for the good things and responsibility for the bad things.
Tools in detail: Resourceful
An Expedition Leader will always find new ways to get problems solved. We find new ways to explain and express ideas, to help readers understand what we’re talking about and to show them what they can achieve.
An expedition leader takes their team on a journey by explaining the general direction they’re going in and where they'll end up. But they also need to go into more detail — about where the team will sleep and what the temperature will be. We do the same in our writing. If we’re talking about big ideas, we zoom in to illustrate them with granular details like facts and figures or practical details about how a process will work for our reader. If we’re talking about granular details, we zoom out to make sure that these details build up to a big picture. We bring things to life so what we’re saying is meaningful for our readers.
An Expedition Leader knows that not everyone on their team will be familiar with every part of the journey. They put themselves in their team’s shoes and find new ways to relate the situation back to everyday life and ideas that are easier to imagine. We use ideas or principles from other aspects of life to help people understand concepts that might be unfamiliar to them.
Tools in detail: Confident
An expedition leader is confident in their instructions and explanations. We’re confident in what we have to say, so we make our points clearly, and we don’t repeat ourselves.
Expedition leaders deliver instructions and explanations succinctly. They tell their team what they need to know, when they need to know it. We say the most important thing first. We cut words we don’t need. And we make sure every sentence has a purpose. This doesn’t mean we have to strip out every colourful detail. We just need to make sure we don’t pad our sentences out with words that don’t add anything.
Expedition leaders give their team authoritative advice using strong, inspirational language. Verbs like ‘run’, ‘decide’, ‘apply’, ‘pay’, ‘build’, ‘help’ and ‘explain’ have a clear action attached to them. Some are clearer and stronger than others: ‘help’ is stronger than ‘assist’, ‘start’ is stronger than ‘commence’, ‘check over’ or ‘work out’ is stronger than ‘assess’.
We also choose actions (verbs) over things (nouns) where possible, especially nouns that end in '-tion' or '-ment'. We use the verb ‘to communicate’ instead of the noun ‘communication’, ‘to collaborate’ instead of ‘collaboration’. We choose ‘to improve’ over ‘improvement’ and ‘develop’ over ‘development’.
Tools in detail: Optimistic
An expedition leader is always optimistic about the journey and what’s coming next. We help people today so they can also be optimistic and look ahead to a brighter future.
Expedition leaders will come across challenges along the way. But challenges don’t stop them. They make sure their team knows how to overcome them. We frame things positively to show how we’ll work through challenges together, rather than endlessly talking about the problem. This doesn’t mean we can’t talk about the bad things, but we always show how we’re working to make them better.
Expeditions can be long, tough and tiring. Sometimes people lose sight of the end goal, and they find it hard to motivate themselves to keep going. An Expedition Leader helps people see the bigger picture by connecting the small steps they take now to what they’ll achieve in the future. We do this in our writing by using subtle journey metaphors. This just means using words like ‘find a new way of’, ‘set out’, ‘next step’, ‘go even further’, and ‘change direction’.
We don’t overdo it, though. We just use these words to give our writing drive and direction.
Brand guidelines
Giving you the information you need to implement our brand across a range of channels