Brand Voice

Brand Voice

Design the voice an organization should use. Turn brand strategy into concrete writing rules that a person or agent can apply and review.

Boundary

Use this skill to define a desired organizational voice.

• To capture how a person or organization already writes from real samples, use voice-dna-kit.
• To measure a sample's style deeply, use style-forensics.
• To draft content from an existing voice profile, use style-writer.

Strategic market identity, differentiation, and the claims the voice expresses are decided upstream and are not set here.

Existing brand content may reveal current habits, but do not treat those habits as the desired voice automatically.

Inputs

Collect the smallest useful set:

1. Brand positioning and product promise.
2. Primary audiences and what they need to understand, feel, or do.
3. Current perception and desired perception.
4. Three to five traits the voice should express.
5. Important channels and contexts.
6. Examples the organization admires or rejects, when available.
7. Drafts paired with versions approved or edited by the brand owner, when available.
8. Legal, accessibility, terminology, or claims constraints.

If positioning or audience is unresolved, flag that gap. Voice rules cannot repair unclear strategy.

Workflow

1. Assess source quality

Label each input by owner, channel, audience, date, approval status, and relevance to the desired positioning. Separate:

• approved examples that represent the desired voice
• current material that reveals habits but not necessarily intent
• drafts and their owner-approved edits
• admired external examples used only to identify qualities or boundaries
• outliers, mixed-author work, and material from obsolete positioning

Do not average conflicting sources into a fictional voice. State which evidence governs and which material was excluded or treated as provisional.

2. Define the voice's job

State:

• who the brand is speaking to
• what the audience should perceive
• what must remain true in every context
• what the brand must never sound like

Separate identity from tone. Identity stays stable. Tone changes with context.

3. Turn traits into observable behavior

Choose three to five traits. Define each trait with:

• what it means
• how it appears in writing
• what it does not mean
• one positive example
• one negative example

Reject unsupported adjective lists such as "bold, authentic, innovative." A useful trait must change a writing decision.

4. Define constants and tone dials

Document the characteristics that never change, then specify how tone shifts across contexts such as:

• marketing
• sales
• onboarding
• support
• incidents and errors
• product interfaces
• legal or policy communication

For each context, name the purpose, tone adjustment, evidence requirement, and prohibited behavior.

5. Set expression rules

Define concrete guidance for:

• vocabulary and terminology
• sentence and paragraph rhythm
• formality and contractions
• confidence and hedging
• humor and emotional warmth
• pronouns and audience address
• punctuation and formatting
• claims, proof, and specificity
• openings, transitions, and closings

Prefer enforceable rules over mood words.

6. Build calibration examples

Create paired off-voice and on-voice examples for at least three important contexts. Change only what the guide explains so reviewers can trace each revision to a rule.

Do not copy admired brands. Use them only to identify qualities or boundaries.

7. Test the guide

Draft three short messages with different stakes. Review whether:

• the same identity survives across contexts
• tone changes appropriately
• the output is distinguishable from generic category copy
• every correction maps to a written rule
• legal and factual constraints remain intact

Patch the guide where reviewers rely on taste that the guide does not encode.

8. Run owner-edit calibration

When a brand owner supplies an approved edit, compare it with the proposed draft and record:

• exact wording retained, removed, or replaced
• the audience or risk the edit addresses
• the candidate rule the edit suggests
• whether other approved examples support the same rule

One edit creates a candidate preference, not a universal rule. Promote it into the guide only when the owner confirms it or the pattern recurs across approved examples. Record contradictions instead of forcing consensus.

Deliverable

Use brand-voice-guide.md as the structure. Save the result to the location requested by the user. If no location was requested, present the guide before creating a file.

The guide should contain:

1. Brand and audience context
2. Core voice principles
3. Trait definitions with boundaries
4. Voice constants and contextual tone matrix
5. Language, rhythm, punctuation, and formatting rules
6. Claims and evidence rules
7. Off-voice and on-voice examples
8. Owner-edit calibration log and confirmed rules
9. Review checklist
10. Open assumptions and revisit triggers

Quality Gate

The guide is ready when:

• each trait changes observable writing behavior
• context changes tone without changing identity
• examples demonstrate rather than restate rules
• banned patterns are concrete
• reviewers can explain why a draft passes or fails
• Owner-edit calibration distinguishes one-off preferences from repeated or confirmed rules
• strategic assumptions and unresolved gaps are explicit