Verbal and non-verbal code of the message

Every message travels through two channels at once. The first is what the words say literally. The second is everything else: the tone, the image, the rhythm, the color, the posture, the typographic choice, the silence, the cadence, the context where the message appears. People receive both channels simultaneously and, when one contradicts the other, the second one wins.

That is why a brand can write "we're approachable" on its website and project the opposite. That is why a talk with brilliant arguments but delivered with discomfort fails. That is why a perfectly worded sales email signed off in Comic Sans loses credibility before it's even read. The verbal code—the words—and the non-verbal code—everything else—together form the real message.

This article walks through the theoretical foundation of the distinction, clears up the most common misunderstandings (especially around Mehrabian's famous "7-38-55%"), and lands on how coherence between the two codes is worked on in marketing and communication.

The theoretical foundation: a hundred years of thinking about this

The distinction between verbal and non-verbal code did not originate in marketing. There's a century of thought behind it.

Ferdinand de Saussure, in Cours de linguistique générale (published posthumously in 1916 from his lectures in Geneva), founded modern structural linguistics and proposed a central distinction: the linguistic sign is the arbitrary union of a signifier (the acoustic image of the word) and a signified (the concept). This was the basis for understanding that words are not things; they are social agreements about how to name things. His thinking opened the door to semiotics as a general discipline that studies any system of signs—not just language.

Roman Jakobson, a Russian linguist later at MIT, published his celebrated model of the six functions of language in 1960, in which he identified the elements of the communicative process: sender, receiver, message, context, channel, and code. Every communicative act activates the code—the shared convention that allows the message to be deciphered. His categories remain a basic tool.

Ray Birdwhistell, an anthropologist, formalized kinesics (the study of body language) in his 1952 work and Introduction to Kinesics (1970). He argued that most meaningful human communication does not occur through words, opening up the field of the systematic study of gestures.

Edward T. Hall, a cultural anthropologist, in The Silent Language (1959) and Beyond Culture (1976), introduced the distinction between high-context cultures (Japan, China, Arab countries, much of Latin America), where much of the meaning lives in the non-verbal code and shared context, and low-context cultures (Germany, the Nordic countries, the U.S.), where words are expected to do most of the work. This distinction remains critical for cross-cultural communication.

Paul Watzlawick, a psychologist of the Palo Alto School, in Pragmatics of Human Communication (1967), formulated one of the most-cited axioms: "One cannot not communicate." Any behavior—including silence, absence, passivity—conveys a message. For a brand, the operational consequence is that not communicating is a decision that communicates.

Marshall McLuhan, in Understanding Media (1964), coined "the medium is the message": the channel through which content is transmitted changes the content itself. A story told on TV, on radio, in print, on social media—even if it keeps the same words—produces different meanings.

Roland Barthes, in Mythologies (1957) and later works, applied semiotics to everyday culture: advertising, food, clothing, photography. His distinction between denotation (literal meaning) and connotation (added cultural meaning) is fundamental to understanding why the same object means different things depending on context.

Erving Goffman, in The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life (1956), developed the dramaturgical metaphor: social life as a theater where each person "performs" a role with their stage set, costume, and script. For brands, his lens is useful: a brand also "stages" its identity, and scenographic coherence matters as much as the script.

Paul Ekman, a psychologist, formalized the Facial Action Coding System (FACS) in 1978 and proposed six universal basic emotions. His work on microexpressions—involuntary facial gestures lasting less than half a second—remains a reference, albeit with later nuances and criticisms.

The Mehrabian myth: what he actually said

The most-cited study in this territory is probably the most misinterpreted.

Albert Mehrabian, a professor at UCLA, published two papers in 1967 that gave rise to the famous "7-38-55" formula: 7% of communication comes from words, 38% from tone of voice, 55% from body language.

The quote appears in countless presentations, sales books, and communication articles. It is misused in almost all of them.

What Mehrabian studied was not "human communication" in general. He specifically studied the communication of feelings and attitudes when there is incongruence between the channels. For example: if someone says "it's fine" with an angry tone and a closed posture, the receiver will mainly take in the message "it's not fine"—and the percentages roughly describe how attribution is distributed across channels in that specific case.

Mehrabian himself has spent decades clarifying that these percentages do not apply to communication in general. To say "only 7% of an email matters" or "93% of your presentation is non-verbal" is a distortion. The study never said that.

What we can extract from Mehrabian's work, without distortion: when there is incongruence between verbal and non-verbal code, the receiver tends to trust the non-verbal to interpret the sender's emotional attitude. And that, applied to brand, is what matters: if your website says "approachability" but everything in its execution says "distance," the audience feels the distance.

How the two codes show up in marketing

Let's get concrete. On every communication surface of a brand, the two codes coexist:

On a web page:

• Verbal: headline, description, CTA, body copy, form microcopy.
• Non-verbal: typography, color palette, white space, photography, reading rhythm, visual hierarchy, scroll behavior, sound if there is any, load speed.

In a video:

• Verbal: script, voiceover, dialogue, subtitles.
• Non-verbal: music, framing, lighting, editing pace, casting, expressions, wardrobe, set design, shot length, color, ambient sound.

In an email:

• Verbal: subject line, greeting, body of the message, signature.
• Non-verbal: typography, formatting, length, tone (formal/approachable), use of space, send time, frequency, templates if there are any.

In a sales presentation:

• Verbal: arguments, examples, figures, cases.
• Non-verbal: the salesperson's posture, speaking pace, silences, eye contact, wardrobe, the materials they bring, punctuality, the devices they use.

In a product's packaging:

• Verbal: name, descriptions, ingredients, instructions.
• Non-verbal: shape, weight, texture, the sound when opened, color, finishes, format, materials.

On a support call:

• Verbal: what is said.
• Non-verbal: tone, pace, patience or impatience, the wait time beforehand, line quality, smoothness of transfers.

In each of these contexts, the two codes are in dialogue. The operational question for any brand: are they saying the same thing?

Brand voice: the verbal code systematized

The attempt to operationalize the verbal code at scale produced the field of brand voice: the explicit rules for how the brand writes.

MailChimp (now Mailchimp) published in 2014 what is considered the pioneering voice guide of modern software. Its content—publicly available at styleguide.mailchimp.com—articulated four dimensions of tone that the team could adjust by context: the tone varied between fun and serious, formal and informal, respectful and irreverent, enthusiastic and reserved. The guide was cited so often that it spawned an entire methodology.

Slack developed a recognizable voice from its earliest days: short, slightly irreverent, helpful. Slack's error messages—that famous "Hmm, that didn't work"—are canonical examples of how tone builds brand even in moments of friction.

Nielsen Norman Group, a reference in UX, formalized a tone of voice matrix in 2016 with four opposing pairs:

• Formal vs. casual.
• Serious vs. funny.
• Respectful vs. irreverent.
• Matter-of-fact vs. enthusiastic.

These four axes—used in order, adjusted to the audience—give a writing team a concrete tool so they don't have to improvise.

Visual identity: the non-verbal code systematized

The non-verbal code in branding has its own formal discipline, much older.

Paul Rand designed the identities of IBM (1956), UPS, ABC, Westinghouse, NeXT (1986). His book A Designer's Art (1985) remains essential reading. Rand understood that a logo is a declaration of identity—dense with cultural and emotional connotations that accumulate over time.

Saul Bass worked on identities for AT&T, United Airlines and, cinematically, on the title sequences for Hitchcock (Vertigo, 1958) and Kubrick (Spartacus, 1960). His work demonstrated that a visual identity can be narrative and not merely decorative.

Massimo Vignelli (American Airlines, NYC subway map, Bloomingdale's) took the modernist principle to its limit: identity must be systemic, not decorative. His Vignelli Canon (a 2010 book) still articulates the discipline well.

The most recognizable modern identities—Nike, Apple, Patagonia, Mailchimp, Stripe, Airbnb—are systems that articulate typography, color, photography, illustration, motion, layout, and sound (Apple's startup chime, Netflix's ta-dum) into a coherent non-verbal code that the receiver reads subliminally.

Coherence: the central problem

What's critical is not having a carefully crafted verbal code or a polished non-verbal code. It's that the two say the same thing.

A few practical cases where coherence breaks down:

"We're approachable" + a cold tone. A brand declares approachability but its website uses formal language, generic bank-style corporate photography, contact forms with many fields, and support that takes days to respond. The audience hears "approachability" as a claim and feels "distance" as an experience. The claim loses.

"Premium" + careless execution. A luxury brand that says "attention to detail" but has a website with badly kerned typefaces, spelling errors in transactional email, packaging with crooked tape. The audience discovers that the promise doesn't hold up.

"Innovation" + an aesthetic anchored in 2010. A tech brand that claims to be innovative with a visual identity from a decade ago. The incoherence makes the claim feel defensive.

"Sustainability" + visual greenwashing. Brands that rebrand in green without changing practices. The audience, especially younger and better-informed generations, detects it quickly and the claim boomerangs back.

"Local and artisanal" + industrial production. Artisanal packaging with a "handmade" seal on a product manufactured at industrial scale. When it's discovered, the brand loses more than it gained.

The operational consequence is that verbal claims are only valid if the non-verbal execution sustains them. A promise that execution doesn't back up not only fails to convince: it leaves the brand worse off than if it had never made the promise.

Mistakes that keep recurring

Working only on the verbal code. Teams that invest in copy, brand voice, and core messaging—but ignore that the five-year-old visual identity is contradicting that message every day. And vice versa: a visual rebrand without touching the voice, with an equally incoherent result.

Undocumented brand voice. "We know how we write." Sure, until a new writer or a new agency joins. Without accessible documentation, every new piece is a roulette spin.

Visual identity without a motion system. In 2026, the brand is no longer lived only in static form. If there are no rules for video, animation, reels, and microinteractions, every piece in motion is a local decision, which produces non-verbal chaos.

Not auditing low-priority surfaces. The transactional email. The bot's message. The 404 error page. The invoice. The office signage. Internal communication. These "minor" surfaces shape experience and add to the brand's non-verbal code.

Assuming the non-verbal code is subjective. Typography, color, rhythm, space—these are technical decisions with theory behind them, not "a matter of taste." A brand that treats its non-verbal code as improvised decoration produces noise instead of identity.

Not considering the code in each target culture. Hall made it clear: what reads as "direct and effective" in a low-context culture reads as "cold and aggressive" in a high-context one. International brands with a single tone and aesthetic translated literally fail in specific markets.

Confusing "voice" with "persona." Brand voice is how the brand consistently writes; a brand persona is a caricature of "that person." Confusing them produces a voice that tries to be a character and ends up forced and artificial.

Changing the code on a whim. The identity that gets reformulated every time the marketing director changes destroys accumulated recognition. Valuable brands evolve; they don't reinvent themselves every twenty-four months.

How it fits into the flow

Creative operations are the system that keeps the two codes in sync over time and across surfaces. Without a system, every team and every agency interprets the brand its own way, and coherence erodes piece by piece.

At Polimake, Studio defines both codes—voice and visual system—and maintains the criteria; Studio coordinates their application across channels and campaigns; Media handles production, ensuring the identity arrives coherently in video, image, sound, and motion.

This relates to persuasive communication as a broad territory, to the brand guide as an operational document, and to core communication as the content that both codes dress up.

To close

Every brand speaks through two channels. The verbal is what the brand claims; the non-verbal is what the brand demonstrates. When the two align, the audience trusts. When they contradict each other, the audience goes with the demonstration—and the claim rings hollow.

The practice that ages best: treat the two codes as systems with their own discipline, document them together, regularly audit coherence on every brand surface, and resist the temptation to invest in only one. A brand that takes care of only the copy or only the visuals says things by halves—and the audience, today more literate than ever in reading brands, notices.

Quick references

• You cannot not communicate. Silence is also a message (Watzlawick).
• When there's incongruence, the non-verbal wins (Mehrabian, in his correct context).
• Four useful tone axes: formal/casual, serious/funny, respectful/irreverent, neutral/enthusiastic (NN/g).
• Document the voice so it survives the team that created it.
• A visual system with motion included, not just static.
• Audit "minor" surfaces: transactional email, 404 error, invoice, signage.
• Consider cultural context: directness doesn't mean the same thing in every culture (Hall).
• Don't confuse voice with persona. Consistent voice; forced persona.
• Coherence between claim and execution or the claim weakens.
• The medium is part of the message (McLuhan): a message on TikTok is not the same one on LinkedIn.