Tone of Voice
Australian banks tend to communicate in cautious and technical language. ANZ's new digital-first bank, ANZ Plus, was a challenge to this status quo – designed to be modern, transparent and supportive.

Designed the voice of ANZ Plus from the ground up – defining how we would communicate clearly and consistently across all touchpoints, and ensuring the successful implementation of this.
Finding the tone
Financial services operate within a heavily-regulated enviornment where language is scrutinised by legal, compliance and risk teams, and misleading content can have major business ramifications.

The ANZ Plus Voice needed to:
  • Simplify complex financial concepts;
  • Feel human and conversational without losing credibility;
  • Remain consistent from acquisition through product and to sensitive financial situations;
  • Deliver on business obligations and requirements; and
  • Survive the realities of governance processes in financial services.
Humanising the language of an old bank
The ANZ Plus Tone of Voice was built around four characteristics: 
Open & Honest
We're clear and upfront, what you see is what you get.
Clean & Simple
Focus on functional – don't sacrifice simplicity for style
Passionate
Empowering people to be financial fit – and proud of it!
Playfully Clever
Fun, playful, and a little irreverent in the right moments.
Together, these principles created a voice that was confident, human and unique – modernised, and dramatically different to traditional banking language.
Creating robust guidelines
To scale a tone of voice it needs to be easily adopted and adapted, supported by clear conventions and comprehensive guidelines that will ensure consistency between writers and across channels.

These four key documents, constantly growing and evolving, have created the language system that ensures the ANZ Plus voice is consistent across all channels and environments.
Tone of Voice Guidelines
Language and grammar conventions, voice characteristics for the ANZ Plus Tone of Voice and broader referencing rules.
App Writing Guidelines
How to write for the app and secure channels. Language rules for components, alerts and notifications.
Marketing Playbook
Guidelines for features and proof points, as well as supporting assets for marketing collateral.
Web Strategy Guidelines
Content strategy for ANZ Plus web pages, navigation between pages and rules for page formatting and types.
View in Figma
Extending the voice to AI
With our comprehensive guidelines, we've been able to quickly adopt AI in two key areas:
Using agents to draft long-form content in the brand voice – expiditing the early phases of the content process and facilitating faster collaboration and delivery.
Training chatbots to respond with language consistent with the rest of the proposition, including frontline staff, ensuring responses maintain the clarity and empathy of our tone of voice.
Speaking through collaboration
Designing the tone of voice for ANZ Plus was only part of the challenge. Content for financial services passes through multiple layers of reviews – product, compliance, legal and risk. Without the right collaborative model, even the most thoroughly designed tone of voice can disappear in this approval process.

To support adoption, I redesigned how content was approached and governed at ANZ, with: 
  • Reduced number of approvers and collaborative processes;
  • Small working groups with legal and product;
  • Simplified and approachable governance solutions; and
  • Frameworks to promote shared understanding of all working parameters.
As a result, we've all taken pride in ensuring the ANZ Plus Tone of Voice survives real-world delivery.
Ensuring a consistent customer experience
The tone of voice has proved to be extensible across all ANZ Plus channels and communications, allowing us to use the same clear and simple language – regardless of how a customer is engaging with the brand.
Becoming the 'new' tone of voice for ANZ Bank
The ANZ Plus Tone of Voice was fundamental to how ANZ Plus developed and engaged with its customer base – more than a million customers across Australia.

Five years after launch, the voice has been endorsed for scale as the new voice for the entire ANZ brand, to influence all customer-facing language and communications for more than 7.5 million customers, enterprise wide.

The ANZ Plus Tone of Voice is now:
Applicable to all digital channels, web content and marketing communications.
Endorsed as ANZ's tone of voice for more than 7.5 million customers.
Uplifting branch signage, collateral and frontline experiences.
Used to train customer-facing AI chatbots across the business.
The tone of voice at work...
When you get into the nitty gritty, we've been able to make even the most fundamental banking tasks feel human, conversational, and even a little fun.

Here's what it's like to join ANZ Plus:
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