Week 1
Read everything
A wide sample of what the brand has published, including support replies and internal notes, which are usually more honest than the marketing.
Creative direction · Editorial voice and tone · Sydney
Editorial voice and tone
Most voice guidelines are three adjectives and a warning against jargon. They are unusable, everybody knows it, and the writing carries on sounding like whoever wrote it that day.
Grab the snowball. Give it a spin, and watch it grow as you scroll. Just like your tone.
3adjectives most guides stop at
1usable rule set instead
Before and afterfor every rule, or it is not a rule
Testabletwo writers reach the same answer
The short answer
What are voice and tone, and why do most guides fail?
Voice is how a brand always sounds. Tone is how that shifts with the situation: the same brand should not sound identical in a launch announcement and in an apology. Both are only useful when written as rules somebody can apply without you in the room.
Most guides fail because they describe a personality instead of giving instructions. Friendly, professional and human are true of almost every brand and tell a writer nothing. Two people given those three words will produce two different pieces of writing, which is precisely the problem the guide was bought to solve.
So we write voice as decisions with examples: what we do, what we do not, and the same sentence shown both ways. It sits inside our wider creative direction service, and because our Snowball SEO platform automates the search heavy lifting other agencies bill by the hour, more of your budget goes into the work.
The difference
What separates a usable voice guide from a decorative one?
One test. Give two writers the guide and the same brief. If the results sound like the same brand, it works. If they do not, it is decoration.
What makes a rule usable
- It can be broken, so it is a decision rather than a platitude
- It comes with the same sentence written both ways
- It says what to do, not only what to avoid
- A writer who has never met you can apply it correctly
What makes a guide decoration
- Adjectives that are true of every brand in the category
- Rules with no example, which everyone interprets differently
- A tone section that only describes the happy case
- Nothing about the words you have decided not to use
Where the voice belongs to a named person rather than the company, that is closer to our ghostwriting work.
The cost
What drives the price of voice work?
How much existing writing there is to work from, and how many people write in the brand's name. A voice for two people is a conversation; a voice for sixty is a training problem.
A voice guide
The document
The rules, the examples and the tone shifts, written from your existing material and tested on real briefs.
Guide and training
Document plus rollout
The same, plus working sessions with the people who actually write, because a guide issued by email is not adopted.
Ongoing editing
Retainer
A standing editor on the work as it is produced, which is the only thing that makes a voice stick in a large team.
We quote after a free consult and a read of what you have published. For the wider argument, see our brand storytelling guide.
What moves the number, in order
- How many people write in the brand's name
- How much existing writing there is to analyse and reconcile
- How many audiences the voice has to serve without fragmenting
- Whether regulated or legal language constrains it
- Whether training and rollout are included
- Whether ongoing editing is part of the arrangement
A guide nobody is trained on is not adopted
Voice guides fail at rollout more often than at writing. The document is fine; it was emailed to fourteen people, three of whom opened it, and nothing changed.
What works is a working session where people rewrite their own recent work against the rules and see the difference in something they wrote. It converts a document into a habit in about two hours.
So we would rather sell a shorter guide with a rollout than a longer one without, and we will say so when the budget only stretches to one of the two.
The scope
What you receive
A document short enough to be read and specific enough to be used.
The voice rules
What this brand does and does not do with language, written as decisions a writer can apply or knowingly break.
Before and after pairs
The same sentence written wrong and right for every rule, because a rule without an example is interpreted differently by everybody.
Tone shifts
How the voice changes in an apology, a launch, a rejection and a support reply, which is where most guides go silent.
A banned and preferred list
Specific words, with reasons, because vague guidance about jargon has never removed a single instance of it.
Worked examples
Two or three real pieces rewritten to the voice, taken from your own material rather than invented.
A rollout session
A working hour with the people who write, rewriting their own recent work, which is what turns the document into a habit.
The return
How far should tone actually move?
Further than most guides allow and less far than instinct suggests. A voice that never shifts sounds robotic in a crisis; one that shifts too far sounds like a different company.
Write the apology first
The most useful page in any voice guide is the one covering what to sound like when something has gone wrong, and it is almost always the page that does not exist.
Everyone can write the launch. It is the refund refusal, the outage notice and the complaint reply where a brand either sounds like a person or retreats into legal language, and where customers form the most durable impression.
So we write those examples explicitly, and we test the guide on them, because a voice that only works when the news is good is not a voice.
The process
How a voice gets defined
Three to four weeks, most of it reading what you have already written.
Week 1
Find what is already true
Most brands have a voice already, unevenly applied. Naming it is better than inventing one nobody will adopt.
Week 2
Draft the rules
Decisions with before and after pairs, tested by asking whether a rule could be broken.
Week 3
Test on real briefs
Two writers, the same brief, the guide in hand. If the results diverge, the guide is not finished.
Week 3
Tone shifts
The hard situations written out: apology, refusal, outage, complaint.
Week 4
Roll out
A working session where people rewrite their own recent work, which is what makes it stick.
The brief
What to ask before you commission a voice guide
Voice work is bought on adjectives and judged on whether the writing changes. These four questions test for the second thing.
Will every rule have a before and after?
A rule with no example is interpreted differently by everyone who reads it, which is the same as having no rule.
Does it cover the bad news?
Apologies, refusals and outages are where a voice is most visible and most guides go silent. Ask to see that section specifically.
How will it be tested?
Two writers, one brief, the guide in hand. If nobody proposes a test like that, nobody knows whether it works.
Is rollout included?
A guide emailed to a team is not adopted. Ask what happens after delivery, because that is where voice work usually fails.
We are happy to answer all four and to read what you have published before you commit. See our brand storytelling guide for the wider frame.
Start here
Ready to sound like one company?
Send us five things you have published recently, including one where something went wrong. The free consult is a working session, not a sales call, and you leave with three things whether or not you book us.
- An honest read on whether you have a voice already, unevenly applied, or none
- Three rules drawn from your own writing, with before and after pairs
- A fixed price, with rollout costed separately so you can see the trade-off
Good questions
Voice and tone FAQs
What is the difference between voice and tone?
Voice is how a brand always sounds. Tone is how that shifts with the situation. The same brand should not sound identical in a launch announcement and in an apology, and a guide that does not describe both is only half written.
Why do most voice guidelines not work?
Because they describe a personality instead of giving instructions. Friendly, professional and human are true of nearly every brand and tell a writer nothing. Two people given those words produce two different pieces of writing, which is the problem the guide was meant to solve.
How much does a voice guide cost?
We quote after reading what you have published. What moves it is how many people write in the brand's name, how much existing material there is to reconcile, how many audiences the voice has to serve, and whether training and rollout are included.
How do you know if a voice guide works?
Give two writers the same brief and the guide. If the results sound like the same brand, it works. If they do not, it is decoration. We run that test before delivery rather than after.
Should we invent a voice or find the one we have?
Almost always find the one you have. Most brands already sound like something, applied unevenly. Naming and sharpening that is adopted far more readily than a personality invented in a workshop.
What about regulated industries?
Constraints make voice work more useful rather than less, because the room to move is narrow and needs defining precisely. We work within the legal requirements and focus the voice on everything they do not dictate.
How long should the document be?
Short enough that people read it. Most useful voice guides are a handful of pages of rules and examples. Sixty-page documents are read once by the person who commissioned them.
What happens when writers leave?
This is the main reason to write it down at all. A voice that lives in one editor's head leaves when they do. A guide with examples and a rollout habit survives staff changes, which is the whole point.