The Huntington's Disease Association underwent a rebranding process to improve their tone of voice and better serve their audiences. They developed a tone of voice manual to guide all communications as more compassionate, experienced, and inclusive. Medical content on their website was rewritten in a warmer, more accessible tone based on the manual. User feedback was incorporated to improve the new site before launch. The outcomes included increased fundraising success, improved staff engagement, and enhanced credibility and communication of their complex messages to various audiences.

1. Bringing tone of voice to life:
the Huntington's Disease
Association
• Beth Taylor, former Senior Communications Manager, Huntington’s Disease Association
• Katie Brewin, freelance Public Relations, Communications Projects Manager, Editor & Copywriter at Katie Brewin Communications

2. About us and
the charity

3. Why a
rebrand?  Affecting fundraising ability
 Credibility of charity and its aims
 Misalignment between service
delivery and ‘head office’

4. Why is tone of
voice so
important?
 USP - information and advice
specific to Huntington’s care
 Accessibility of charity, information
and services
 Grow fundraising programme
 Communications imbalanced
between support and service
delivery

5. What we wanted
to change
 Perceptions of the charity
 Access to information and advice
 Diversify information provision
 Understand and cater for
audiences
 Identified website was major
priority

6. Our process  Understanding our audiences
 Seeking views of community, staff and
stakeholders
 Choosing agencies and freelancers
 Prioritisation of projects
 Based on organisation values from
rebrand
 Developed tone of voice manual

7. Our new
tone of
voice
o Tenacious
o Experienced
o Compassionate
o Inclusive

8. The brief
High quality, professional medical and service-delivery content
 tailored for an external, non-specialist audience
 in line with HDA’s tone of voice and brand guidelines, and good
practice: warm, friendly tone of voice and plain English.
 charity to supply source material
 content to be supplemented by HDA with calls to
action and links, downloadable factsheets, blog etc
 estimated: 55 pages, approx. 18 days’ work
 delivery: 12-week timeframe

9. How we worked together
 dividing up the work
 agreeing processes including managing approval
 flexibility
 getting the brief, getting along

10. Writing the content
 role of the Tone of Voice document
 prioritising the audience; ‘wearing their shoes’
 writing isn’t just writing: research; additional sources of help & links;
changes to the website wireframe; edit, edit, edit some more
 approvals
 estimating and delivery: how close did we come?
 other learning?

11. Before
What is Huntington's
disease?

12. After
What is Huntington's
disease?

13. Before
Psychological symptoms
Sometimes, psychological problems, rather than the
physical deterioration, cause more difficulties for both
the person with Huntington’s disease and their carers.
Some changes are definitely part of the disease
process although they made be made worse by
other factors. It is depressing to have a serious illness
and extremely frustrating not to be able to do things
which previously seemed simple.

14. After
Psychological symptoms
Sometimes the psychological and emotional sides of
living with the disease are more of a problem than
the physical side. It can be mentally difficult to cope
with having a serious illness, and extremely frustrating
not to be able to do more of the things that you
could easily do before.
However just because things are likely to be difficult,
this doesn’t mean there is nothing to be done. There
are many different kinds of support and help that
people with Huntington’s can try, to manage their
symptoms and live as well as possible.

15. User group
feedback
o Sought views on content before going
live with new site
o Tested language and sensitive content
o Incorporated into review before
o Adjusted wire frame and improved
user journey

16. Outcomes:
benefits
o Chance to understand our audiences
better and tailor our communications
to their needs for the first time
o Chance to standardise
communications within the charity
o Chance to improve external
communications

17. o Internal
o External
o Different audiences, complex
messages
o Limited resources and budget
Outcomes:
challenges

18. The
difference
made
o Web success
o Improved credibility
o Fundraising successes
o Internally - staff and trustee
engagement

19. Thank you!
Questions?

20. Visit the CharityComms website to
view slides from past events, see
what events we have coming up
and to check out what else we do:
www.charitycomms.org.uk

21. Tone of voice and
copywriting
North West networking group
22 January 2019
Manchester
#CCNorthWest