Brand voices I’m digging: Monos
There’s nothing I love more than a brand voice that hits just right. I’m coming back to this series to tell you all about another fave…
Monos
Like basically everything in my life, I was introduced to this brand through a beautiful Instagram ad while my husband and I were planning our student loan payoff trip to Hawaii—and I was immediately struck by the brand’s elevated simplicity.
In case Monos is a new name for you, they’re a Canadian suitcase company, likely a close competitor of Away. To an undiscerning eye, it’s hard to tell the pieces apart when they’re side by side…but Monos made me immediately want to save up for the product, where Away just felt like another Millennial trend.
What it shakes down to is voice—and here’s what Monos does differently.
#1: Word choice.
Monos’s word choice has always stuck out to me, and they so intentionally choose words that feel high-end and a little unusual. And when I say unusual, I mean they use words that aren’t often found in conversation, but if someone said it out loud, you wouldn’t find it weird (in most cases). The word would probably sit with you for a bit, but it wouldn’t feel unnatural.
Examples:
Crafted, thoughtful, outfitted: this is a brand that talks a lot about mindfulness—and that’s so apparent in their product descriptions.
Smartly dressed: ugh, I love this so much—not only is it particularizing the details of the suitcase in such a unique way, it’s describing a Monos customer’s aspirations, too. (Don’t believe me? Go on TikTok and look for travel outfits.)
Dossier: they don’t call their blog a blog. No, it’s a dossier. A word that feels so French and so Gilded Age—a classy way of saying you have all the receipts. And this leads me to…
#2: A sense of erudition.
Oh yeah. Monos isn’t talking to an uneducated customer, and I LOVE this about them. There’s the dossier, for one (I had someone ask me to define that word once while I was gushing about this brand), and many, many references to Japanese culture and mindfulness practices.
Honestly, the best way I can think to explain this is to just direct you to the dossier. Read the titles of their posts—these are not things people without disposable incomes are thinking about (or, if they are, they’re aspiring to this life and doing what they can to get there).
Again, it just fits in such stark contrast to Away, which feels like the Everyman’s suitcase in comparison. Maybe my cards are showing, but I’m the kind of person that doesn’t want a thing that everyone else has; I want to be a more discerning, thoughtful customer, and finding Monos feels like I took that step…and honest to God, I think it was the brand voice that did it.
#3: Sentence pace and structure
Young copywriters, take note: Monos so artfully does something with voice that it’s practically a masterclass: they slow down their writing with long, meandering sentences.
I don’t know what it is about a slowly paced sentence that feels more cultured: maybe it’s the sense of not being in a rush, of having the luxury of slowing down. But it also plays so well into what Monos stands for: mindfulness, enjoying the moment, being intentional.
You rarely see a short, snappy sentence—but even when you do (like in the Dossier screenshot above), it feels slow…and it’s all because of the structure, the grammar, the word choice.
If this is something you dig, I’d recommend checking out Francine Prose’s Reading like a Writer. This will change the way you look at sentences and either A) ruin reading for you forever or B) make you nerd out like a true champion.
If you’re curious: why yes, I did buy a Monos suitcase (after saving my pennies, of course; I’m no impulse buyer at this price point). And yes, they’re completely amazing, and yes, I feel so high-end and put together when I’m walking through an airport.
The product completely stands up to the brand’s promises, and I take in every moment when I’m using it: the feel of the zipper, the snap of the compression pads, the glide of the wheels across the airport floor…just like Monos intended.