E.ON“Hello. You don’t know me but you’ve been recommended…” Getting a call from someone who’s already heard good things about you, is a great way to start a working relationship. That’s how we got to know E.ON. They called when they wanted to put some life back into a tone of voice project that had been slowly grinding to a halt. Tone of voice back to life Our task was to evaluate the extensive, detailed work they’d commissioned to help them in their transition from Powergen into E.ON, the new, forward thinking energy company. Back of the filing cabinet In our experience there are two kinds of tone of voice projects that end up at the back of the filing cabinet:
In just three words E.ON’s was one of the long ones. All the thinking had been done, but it had ended up as a vast, dense, overwhelming volume. We interpreted it and worked with the director of brand strategy and communications to reduce it to its essence: three words to describe E.ON’s personality and create a tone of voice that could be adapted depending on you’re writing or talking to. Lively workshops We developed workshops for writing and for speaking, lively, productive sessions that didn’t feel like work. They gave everyone who came along a set of language tools that they could go straight back to their desks and use. Everyone from a 17 year old customer services trainee to an experienced engineer could change the way they talked and wrote, getting better at it with practice. Tangible change in culture We trained around 1,000 people, then trained the trainers who then spread the new tone of voice to another 7,000. E.ON told us, “The change in our culture is tangible.” Tone of voice |
