Brand voice: a 12-page guide in 1 day with the client's team in 2025
Classical brand strategists spend six weeks on tone of voice. We learned to ship a working 12-page guide in one working day — with the client's team, on a laptop, without agency theatre.
Creastra Digest
- The day runs on four blocks: artefacts, antagonists, lexicon, validation
- An antagonist (a brand we deliberately do NOT want to resemble) yields 70% of the contrast
- The guide passes when a copywriter can produce a social post from it in 12 minutes
When clients ask for tone of voice, we hear the real ask: «our marketer cannot write a post because they do not know how the brand sounds». In 2025 we standardised a one-day workshop that solves it without a six-month brand study. We have run it 11 times now — from the Tilda chain of nurseries to the RecordMetr B2B software.
Block 1. Artefacts (90 minutes)
The client's team brings 30 «voice specimens»: posts, emails, ads, sales scripts, customer reviews, supplier correspondence. We sort them on the wall into three piles together: «sounds like us», «sounds like someone else», «unclear». The «like us» pile is the raw material for the guide.
Block 2. Antagonists (60 minutes)
The most underrated step. The team names three brands they do NOT want to resemble and writes one «we would never say it like this» line for each. Tilda's antagonists were state-run kindergartens («bureaucratese»), an elite private one («snobbery»), and a competing chain («baby talk»). After that exercise the brand's own voice becomes visible without strain.
Block 3. Lexicon (90 minutes)
- Friend-words: 30 terms and turns we use, with examples
- Enemy-words: 20 banned words with alternatives
- Five signature constructions (Tilda: «we do not raise children, we observe their growth»)
- Register: when «you-formal», when «you-informal», single vs group address
- Headline pattern: length, presence of a number, subheading, emoji (or their absence)
Block 4. Validation (60 minutes)
By the end of the day the client's copywriter (or one of ours) writes three pieces against the guide: a social post, a customer email, a service description. Target: 12 minutes per post. If the writer overruns, the guide is too complex and we trim it on the spot.
What you walk out with
- A 12-page PDF with «before / after» examples for each rule
- An 8-question «ship it?» checklist
- A Notion glossary with 50+ entries (our add-on)
- 4–6 client team members trained as voice custodians
- A 30-minute review of the first ten pieces a month later, then a polish pass
Where it does not work
If a brand has zero artefacts (a stage-1 startup) the day is wasted — generate 30 pieces somehow first, then run the workshop a month later. Same for companies where «voice» is the owner's call and the owner skips the workshop: any guide ends up in a drawer within two weeks.