Smile Train is proud to be a global organization, with locally managed programs in more than 75 countries. Yet this strength became a disadvantage when these multiple voices did not add up to one unified global voice. The issue extended beyond digital platforms to include all branded materials, including direct mail and one-pagers.
Every brand needs a consistent voice to build trust, but for a nonprofit like us, the stakes are simply enormous. Consistent language between handles can mean the difference between a family trusting our partners to give their child the free cleft surgery they need to eat, breathe, and speak clearly, or not.
This is also an equity issue. People with clefts, globally and even in America, often face discrimination. Smile Train stands for treating all individuals with clefts with the dignity and respect they deserve. Part of this means incorporating feedback from the cleft community into our communications, but their recommendations were not consistently reflected in all branded materials.
We knew we needed to align our global handles and vendors into one cohesive brand voice—one that would be universally recognizable as Smile Train yet flexible enough to adapt to diverse cultures and languages. Whether in patient stories, fundraising materials, PSAs, or social media posts, it needed to be consistent across platforms while still reflecting the diversity of our patients and medical partners and the cleft community itself.
The first step was to overhaul our style guide. The first version, published in 2018, was outdated, infrequently used, and inadequate for answering the questions that come up every day for employees and vendors writing about our work.
But it was also clear that a simple refresh of the guide wouldn’t solve the problem. Our employees are busy and their time is valuable; we needed to make training them in Smile Train’s style easy, fun, and fast—via as many touchpoints as possible.
The process began with two big meetings in late 2019 where a member of the Communications team asked representatives from every department about the details of their work and the best way to talk about it externally.
The plan was for the notes and recordings from these sessions to form the basis of a newly updated and expanded style guide. COVID and other urgencies took priority, however, and the guide wasn’t finalized for another three years. Though unexpected, the delay had the advantage of allowing the finished product to be even more comprehensive than it might have been otherwise.
The new style guide launched in January 2023 during a plenary at the annual Smile Train Global Meeting, so every Smile Train employee would be familiar with its major points and understand its importance. A few days after the meeting, we emailed all staff a link to the live document in SharePoint, along with a recording of the presentation.
We next ensured brand voice would always remain on colleagues’ radar by introducing “Style Train”: a featured tidbit from the guide in our monthly all-staff newsletter.
Step three came in the summer of 2023. At 56 pages, the style guide’s comprehensive was almost a handicap. Even with a clickable table of contents, finding answers usually required some scrolling. So, we abbreviated it into a PDF checklist featuring only the most common mistakes, plus some frequently cited stats. We launched it with another special staff meeting to underscore again that this is something the whole organization needs to pay attention to.
We were seeing results, but there were still inconsistencies, particularly on our international channels. So, we used our annual Global Comms Team retreat in October as another touchpoint to promote the guide and checklist and solicit feedback. The session exceeded expectations. As the only Smile Train Comms professionals who regularly interact with our patients and medical partners, our international communications managers had excellent feedback on issues that would have never occurred to the HQ team—and we were eager to incorporate them into the next version of the guide.
Across a world of platforms and genres, Smile Train now speaks much more in one consistent, identifiable voice that harmonizes the unique tones of our global teams, supporters, cleft community members, fundraising materials, and social media handles.
Internally, these efforts have made the entire staff feel more clued into the “why” behind the way we speak about our work, which has led to a greater understanding of what people do across departments and why it matters. In fact, in a survey meant to measure the effectiveness of the style guide, checklist, and Style Train one year after the guide’s launch, 86% of respondents said the style guide has made them change at least one thing about the way they write about Smile Train. Ninety-seven percent affirmed that they feel more empowered to communicate in Smile Train's brand voice because of these materials, and the vast majority of respondents from the Communications and Development teams said they have referred to it at least a few times, with most saying they use it at least once a month.
Externally, our universe of channels feels unified like never before—and readers are taking notice. 2023 was our best year yet for positive engagements on our articles and for brand perception, with our content analytics vendor Knotch reporting that our articles had a 78% favorability rating for the year—significantly above average.
