She’s built a stellar career cultivating brand voice. This is what she wants you to know.
Amanda Aldinger is the phenom behind Antonym -- a creative studio that provides voice strategy and copywriting services to lifestyle brands. After jointly pursuing acting and writing in college, Amanda enrolled in a journalism arts program that focused on fashion. With $2,000 she moved to New York City from Chicago with a thesis to write and a job to find. She landed a job at MAC Cosmetics, a “life-altering” experience, as she recalls, that she wasn’t qualified to start but a couple personal details on her resume intrigued the hiring manager. It was there that she found her true passion for brand voice.
She sat down with us for an interview about her process, her passions, and what advice she has for you. What follows is an edited and condensed version of our fascinating discussion.
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Let’s start at the beginning. What was it like working at M·A·C?
M·A·C at the time was at the apex of its entire existence. The brand was entirely driven by creative. We had carte blanche to tell these stories in the most extraordinary way. We had an internal magazine called M·A·Czine. It was a marketing piece, but we treated it like a magazine. We would write these robust, incredible features to support our products. For example, we had a collection that was inspired by poisonous night blooming flowers and I got to interview a woman who'd written a book on night living flowers and do a feature on that. I also got to interview Amy Stewart, a famous fashion journalist, and talk to her just about the color orange because we were doing a collection that was all orange themes. I got to travel to London and interview fashion designers. M·A·C cared so much about words and they cared so about telling stories and they gave us resources. And so my introduction to the world of brands and working in the editorial department was very journalistic and it was incredibly creative. The voice M·A·C was using at the time, there was just nobody else who was pushing the limits and the boundaries of how to speak about things.
How so?
We never talked about gender. Now that's a trend. I currently only have one client where talking about gender still has impacted meaning with the brand, but everyone else we've completely removed gender from the lexicon and M·A·C did that long before it was a trend or a marketing campaign. And I mean the shade names, the product names, it was so creative and so exciting. Because we got to create these really verbally fascinating lexicons and stories for each collection, I felt like I was acting. It was akin to what I had studied, which was inhabiting a character, stepping into a new world understanding motivations and objectives. At that point I realized that I had actually come into the career I was always meant to do and that I actually didn't have to leave acting behind. I was just channeling that energy and all of the things I've learned into words. I was there for six years and became the editorial director. In 2017, I felt like I'd done all that I could do there. So, I quit without a job. It's very easy for me to just kind of say, “I'm done with that. I'm going to start from zero again.”
Where did you go next?
I went to yoga teacher training. I was a spin instructor. I thought I might be a health coach. I was exploring all these other things, but this writing kept coming back to me. Suddenly what the clients were asking for was not just copywriting, but they had a lot of concerns about voice and feeling like they didn't know what their voice was. That becomes an existential question or philosophical question. The conversations that we were having were fascinating because it connected to the identity, it connected to their values, it connected to the conversations that they wanted to have with their audience, which now have to be very real and very dynamic and very responsive. It was really clear to me that this was a big issue and it was a very big issue for two different reasons. It was hitting a lot of larger brands who were seeing, especially in beauty, it’s incredibly saturated. And a lot of the younger brands were coming in and basically just building everything off of social media, and they were able to do things really, really quickly. The larger brands were really feeling the pressure of this, and their voice was still kind of rooted in the older days of marketing and wasn't necessarily adapting to the conversational colloquial Emoji-laden way that these younger brands were speaking. I wanted to build a process around it and a strategy around it, and that's when I decided to create Antonym.
How important is brand voice?
I think we're at this really exciting moment. The clients that Antonym works with care so deeply about language and are willing to invest in it. When I talk to my clients about who their competitors are and who they admire, a through line is always how strong and consistent the voice is. Everything's so saturated, every industry, it doesn't matter what you are. You can't stand out without having something unique or of value to say.
We understand that as humans what it means to have a voice and the power of it. We are incredibly aware of the privilege that it is to have a voice. And it's the same thing with a brand. If you have a platform and if you have the space to speak in a way that people will listen to you and have visibility, that's a responsibility. If you don't value that, then why are you doing what you're doing? And that's why I have no interest in working with clients who just want copy to fill space or content for content's sake. That is not us, especially now. Consumers are smarter than they've ever been. We are soon graduating the most-informed consumer into new adulthood that business has ever seen. They do not have time for your bullshit. That's where I think that this work has become important too. The voice is not just the voice. The voice is inseparable from your values. It's inseparable from your purpose, your vision. It's completely inseparable from your audience and not just their marketing demographics, but their emotional reality. What are their lives like? What are their challenges? What is it like for them to live in America? Your voice has to be intertwined with all of that for it to really have an impact.
What advice do you have for entrepreneurs starting out with their voice?
It's really hard, you don't just sit down and make up a voice or know what your voice is going to be. It's ideal to start with looking at what people are doing and find the trends of how they're saying things or doing things and what you are drawn towards. That was advice that was given to me from In Wild Pursuit when I was starting Antonym; to start creating files of things you are attracted to. It doesn't have to be real brands or anything like that, but start to familiarize yourself with what you're drawn towards and interrogate that a little bit. What is it about the tone that you like? What kind of words are you liking? Is there a way that they're saying things that is intriguing to you? Are they interacting with their audience in a way that you admire and mirrors the relationship that you want to have with yours? And then the opposite of that. What irks you about the way that a brand is saying something? Why doesn't that feel right? Start to really just create that list. And then what are the things that are coming up? What are the trends that you're seeing?
Is Antonym your voice?
No. It has me in it, but no. That took me a really long time to figure out. I like the way Antonym speaks, it aligns with a style that I enjoy and appreciate. But what’s more important than it sounding like me -- the way that I interact with clients is much different and has a different energy -- is the way that the website feels.
And that's intentional?
Yes. That is intentional. This is the challenge of when you're starting your own businesses. I started Antonym to create something that could go beyond me. I don't want to be the person doing everything and I'm not now finally, which is fabulous, but I want it to go beyond me. I have a much more colloquial easy going way of speaking with clients. I am very personal and intimate in the way that I communicate and I bring that. But Antonym is a more prestige luxury service that offers a high level of service and that the experience of working with us is not just me. I wanted the brand to be different from me.
Should brand voice evolve?
When I started Antonym I was okay with it evolving. I knew that what went out into the world in June of 2019 was not what it was going to be forever because these brands do have to evolve. There was not the pressure for it to be everything that it had to be or could be at its birth, which is also similar to people, right? Our voices evolve over the course of our lives. The way that we speak is impacted by our experiences and our relationships and the way our values evolve. That’s the same thing with a brand too. I would urge any brand to listen to what people are saying and to really have a relationship with your audience where they can give you feedback around “Are you communicating clearly? Does it make sense? Do they understand what you're about?” And if they don't, then you refine and you hone and you evolve. I don't see this work as ever being set or done. The minute you think it's set or done, that's a problem.
Is there anything you've learned from going from the corporate world to running your own shop that you would want to impart on anyone else?
I think the most important thing to me is the value of relationships. The most important thing that you can do as a new business owner is to be kind and be reliable and to really work on your relationships. That is something that I spend a lot of time doing is bringing my personal energy. And that was the biggest surprise for me in starting a business -- how different your use of energy is when you own your own company, versus when you are working internally somewhere. The level of your energy is so much a part of the relationship and how you keep your business going. It's only made me dig deeper into personal values like honesty and trust and transparency. They used to say when I was an actor that we were always replaceable, anybody is replaceable. And you see that even in movies, for example Anthony Hopkins was not supposed to play Hannibal Lecter. There are even more examples of these people who create these iconic performances, but they were actually like eighth in line. So, I never assumed that anything is a given, you have to work for it. There's always another option. My biggest advice is to focus on being a good person.
Also, you cannot do everything on your own as a business owner. You can't. What you want is to be surrounded by people who are experts, who do things more efficiently and better than you can do them. As a business owner, everyone should be smarter than you at what they do. It's really crazy to run a business. It's a lot more rewarding and a lot harder than I thought it would be.