Marketing and Communications professionals often talk about "brand voice" as a nebulous characteristic of brand identity, but it will soon mean something more tangible--or audible.
As voice search becomes more advanced--Tynan (2017) says "today’s voice discovery tools are about as basic as a Yahoo search circa 1995"--so too will the opportunities for brands to break through the noise and make their voice heard. With the technology of devices like Amazon's Alexa, new opportunities to communicate will carve out new spaces for advertisers. Could companies pay to become the first recommendation Alexa makes, much like a paid ad to come up as #1 in a Google search?
But as the technology has opened up new access for consumers, so too has it opened up their cultural expectations. Tynan (2017) points out, "rather than optimizing for the top keywords, brands will need to focus on more complex natural language queries... [people] tend to ask more detailed questions with voice." In order for brands to meet consumers where they are asking for something, they will need to harness technology that understands complex sentence structures and is able to deliver on more than just key words by getting to the heart of what the consumer wants.
But for now, the technology still needs to catch up enough to avoid situations like these.
References
Tynan, D. (2017). Here's what marketers need to know about voice search. Retrieved from http://www.adweek.com/digital/what-marketers-need-to-know-about-voice-search/