Tone of voice, the rules for how the brand sounds, written down so the team can stay in voice.
Tone of voice is the half of brand that everyone has to use every day. If it lives in a 40-page brand book, it doesn't get used. We write tone-of-voice contracts the team can actually carry, do's, don'ts, banned phrases, real examples drawn from the existing copy.
What we build
Voice characteristics, named and explained
3-5 voice attributes named (e.g. 'direct, plain, specific'). Each defined with what it sounds like and what it doesn't. The voice has a fingerprint the team can recognise.
Tone modulation by context
Voice stays; tone changes. Error message tone differs from launch announcement tone. The contract names which axes shift (formality, warmth, urgency) and which stay locked (specificity, plainness).
Banned phrases with replacements
The 'seamless / powerful / robust / trusted by / passionate about' inventory the brand doesn't use, paired with what to write instead. New copywriters ramp without internalising six months of brand-osmosis first.
Real examples, not invented ones
Voice examples pulled from the team's actual existing copy. 'Here's a homepage line that's in voice; here's one that drifted; here's the fix'. Concrete, not abstract.
Voice across surfaces
Marketing copy, product UI, email, support replies, social posts, each surface gets voice notes. The same brand voice adapts to the surface without losing its identity.
Voice in NL + EN simultaneously
Multi-locale brand voice means the tone has to translate, not just the words. Dutch-cliché phrases (`naadloos`, `krachtig`) get the same banned-list treatment as English ones.
Where this fits
Your team writes copy in different voices because the brand voice was never written down.
Your AI-assisted copy keeps drifting toward generic SaaS-speak and you don't have a contract to hold against.
You're scaling the content team and onboarding writers takes weeks because the voice is implicit in the founders' heads.
Tech stack
- Voice Frameworks
- Tone Modulation
- Banned Phrase Lists
Want this for your team?
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