Well, when I write for my clients, I write in their styles. And when I write for myself, I write in my own style.
The folksy style represents my true identity.
It's like acting really. On stage you act and play a role. You act as if you were someone else. But off stage, you are you, the real you.
However, the two overlap in the audience's perception.
Right from the first showing of Rocky I, the market has identified Sylvester Stallone as the tough underdog who can succeed against astronomical odds. The subsequent Rocky stories and the Rambo series have confirmed this perception.
Then Sylvester acted in two "disaster" movies: "Oscar" (1991) and "Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot" (1992). Nightmare-calibre disasters for his perceived style and character. Both movies flopped rather miserably.
Lesson learnt: Even on stage, you can't play too far outside of your real character.
Writing in a folksy style for me is the same as playing Rambo or Rocky is for good ol' Sylvester.
This is why I have stopped writing for large corporations. Most of them are looking for writers who can write in a contrived, corporate style infested with legalise, smoke and mirrors, industrial jargon, hype and plain, pedestrian and garden-variety bullshit.
I did it many years ago, and I could do it again. But since I wouldn't enjoy the process, I don't even do it. My target market, privately owned "entrepreneurial" IT companies, allows me a certain level of maverick-ness because for them this is uniqueness.
Large corporations with a "Conformity we worship, dogmas we embrace, status quo we uphold" mentality, overseen by legions of stiff-arsed and anal-retentive pinstripes, would never tolerate the folksy style, although it would be more profitable for them. But we all know that in large corporations politics rules the land, not common sense. You don't have to be "profitably correct" as long as you are politically correct even at the expense of profit. Amazing.
So, this is it really.
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