Four brands, four voices

Color of Vietnam owns four brands, and each one speaks in its own voice. PLAY Nutrition belongs to active days. PLAY Protein Bar is the protein line in the same PLAY family. Natural & Healthy lets the ingredients, above all Vietnamese cashews, tell the story. Let's PLAY is rice crackers and snack jars made for sharing, with an Ô ăn quan board printed on the jar. This article describes how the four voices differ and what keeps them in one house.

Why four voices instead of one

Someone opening an energy bar before a run and a family opening a snack jar on a Saturday night do not want to be spoken to in the same way. If we used one voice for all four brands, it would be roughly right for everyone and exactly right for no one. A house of brands, meaning one company that owns several independent brands, lets each brand have its own eater, its own occasion and its own way of speaking.

Voice is not only words. It is the colour of the pack, the way a flavour is named, the length of a sentence, and what a brand chooses not to say.

PLAY Nutrition and PLAY Protein Bar: two voices in the PLAY family

PLAY Nutrition speaks to people on the move. Short sentences, information first: what the bar is for, what is inside, that you can eat it anywhere. The tone is brisk and decisive, because the eater is walking, getting into a car or just out of a training session. There is no room on the wrapper for a long paragraph.

PLAY Protein Bar shares the word PLAY but talks about something more specific: protein. Buyers of protein bars read the number first, so this brand's voice is straight and clear, with the nutrition facts up front and the prose stepping back. The two brands share the PLAY name so that eaters recognise the same spirit, and stay separate on the product so nobody has to guess which bar is for them.

Natural & Healthy: the ingredient speaks

At Natural & Healthy the main character is the nut. Vietnamese cashews, peanuts, oats, cranberries. The voice is a beat slower and talks about origin: which nut, how it was roasted, where the richness comes from. On the pack we want the buyer to see the nut before they see the logo.

Because it talks about ingredients, this brand has to be the most careful with words. Natural and healthy are both in the name, and we read them as a promise about what is in the bar, not a promise about the health of the person eating it. Every line on the pack is checked against the recipe before print.

Let's PLAY: a voice for sharing

Let's PLAY is the most playful brand in the house. Rice crackers to open in the middle of the table, and Cheese Ball and Maize Ball jars with an Ô ăn quan board printed on them so the snacks become playing pieces. The voice is an invitation: open it, play a round. Sentences can run longer, the copy can joke, the colours can be brighter.

Playful does not mean loose. Ingredients, weight, best-before date and allergens on a Let's PLAY pack are written as seriously as on any other brand. We keep a clear line between the place for jokes and the place for reading.

Keeping four voices with a team of a few people

A small team writing for four brands can easily blur them. We keep them apart with a few plain habits:

• Each brand has a one-page voice note: who it talks to, what it talks about, three words to use and three to avoid.
• Before writing anything, even a one-line social caption, we reread that page.
• Someone else reads it. The person writing for Let's PLAY does not approve their own post.
• The mandatory part of the pack follows one standard, whichever brand it is.

A typical example from the office: after a tasting day, marketing wants to post one line per brand. For PLAY Nutrition the line says the new bar is ready for tomorrow's morning session. For Natural & Healthy it says a batch of freshly roasted cashews has just arrived. For Let's PLAY it invites everyone to open a jar and play a round. One event, three tellings, and each brand's readers see the brand they know.

What ties the four voices together is the small stamp in the corner of every pack: A brand of Color of Vietnam. It says something simple. Four brands, four voices, one company, one set of product standards and one habit of telling the truth.

If you work in brand or content and like the challenge of writing in four voices without mixing them, have a look at our Careers page. If you are a distributor trying to work out which brand suits which of your channels, get in touch and we will talk it through and send samples.