Klover, a young fintech brand, had built a distinctive, light-hearted voice that worked well in its first growth phase. But ahead of their series B-raise, leadership set their sights on what they thought would be a more serious audience. They worried if the humor would travel.
They asked for qualitative research to settle the question, and that question certainly had a clear answer: yes, humor still worked. But that wasn't the whole story. We answered a question Klover hadn't thought to ask—what value humor brought to the customer.
The insight came from customer conversations about money. For everyone, finances sat on a continuum from boring to terrifying: a chore at the light end, and a source of real anxiety on the heavier side. When customers spoke about real people they trusted on the matter, it wasn't neutral technicians or clever advisors. It was mentors who could crack jokes and soften the seriousness while guiding them through.
That reframed what Klover's humor was really for. It could be more than decoration, and more than just a way of explaining things. It was actually part of the product. While Klover's service lightened the load of managing money, its voice could lighten the mood—making the boring stuff less boring, and the scary stuff less scary.
With that insight, we didn't build a tone-of-voice document in the usual sense. We created a set of principles describing the purpose and responsibilities of humor. With this direction, copywriters didn't have to worry as much about the tone of each joke as being intentional about it's context. Humor stopped being a stylistic choice, and became a brand asset with a job description.