Read this line from one of my favorite authors: “I love deadlines. I love the whooshing noise they make as they go by.”
What can you infer about the person behind that line? Are they funny or serious? Cheerful or dour? Pleasant company or a total bore?
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As a writer, part of my job is to express myself through words. And the choices I make to create that expression become my voice. Perhaps you hear it in your head as you read this paragraph.
When you know to look for voices, you’ll see them everywhere: in writing, in video, in your very interactions with others. And in business? Your brand’s voice plays a huge role in helping you connect with the world and your consumers.
Brand voice can help you underscore authority, boost playfulness, or reach directly into the hearts and minds of your buyers. Done well, there’s resonance — your voice clicks with your buyer. Done poorly? Buyers flee, and brands struggle to survive.
What goes into defining your brand voice, and where can you go to get inspired when it’s time to put pen to paper? Let’s explore the details behind a great brand voice.
Table of Contents
- What is a brand voice?
- Why Brand Voice Is Important
- Creating Your Brand Voice
- Brand Voice Examples
- Brand Voice Template
Your consumers pay attention to your voice. It’s the foundation of trust, and trust matters when it’s time to buy.
In the U.S. market, 90% of consumers say it’s important to trust the brands they buy or use. Your brand voice lays the foundation by showing your customers what to expect from your company’s content, services, and even customer service.
Why Brand Voice Is Important
In short? Brand voice helps answer your customer’s most pressing question:
Why should I buy from you instead of somebody else?
Part of any brand’s job in the marketplace is to inform, educate, and persuade consumers to take action (namely, buy your product or service). Your voice serves as an ambassador in this effort: it helps you connect with buyers even when you’re not physically present.
The strongest ambassadors can quickly signal if something is or isn’t for you. For instance, you’ll make assumptions about an unfamiliar brand if its ambassadors wear pink cowboy hats versus black three-piece suits. Each choice conveys particular elements of a brand:
- Pink cowboy hat: Bubbly, playful, youthful, irreverent.
- Black three-piece suit: Somber, formal, authoritative, exclusive.
Serious buyers will probably gravitate toward a formal or authoritative brand; more playful buyers will explore the bubblier, irreverent ones. What matters is that you understand who your target audience is and shape your voice to meet them as they are — not as you wish them to be.
And your brand ambassador must translate across multiple platforms, and potentially even across countries and cultures as well. Every shred of copy your brand produces, from the About Us page on your website to the game on the back of a cereal box, should exude your brand’s distinct voice.
Brand voice carries an important internal function, too. A well-defined brand voice establishes a cohesive set of guidelines for your writers, marketers, content creators, and even graphic designers.
“Well-defined” is key here. Most often, I see brand leaders compile a list of 4-5 adjectives related to their brand voice. They also usually dig deep into the thesaurus, hoping to stumble upon the perfect choices to explain their voice’s presence and perception.
You can certainly throw adjectives at the wall and hope something sticks, but without simple explanations of what “clear, helpful, human, and kind” means, content gets haphazard fast.
For example, HubSpot’s style guide specifies that “we favor clarity above all. The clever and cute should never be at the expense of the clear.” It also gives multiple examples of what “clear,” “helpful,” “human,” and “kind” actually look like in copy. Contractors and new hires aren’t left guessing — they get detailed explanations that let them hit the ground running.
A clarified brand voice lets you speak to your audience, attract new customers or users, and express your brand’s distinctiveness consistently and compellingly.
Creating Your Brand Voice
So, you know your brand voice should represent you. But how do you discover who you are? And how do you build that concept into something practical you can share with your teams?
It doesn’t take a weekend nature retreat to find your voice. In fact, most of what you need sits in front of you right now. Let’s talk about that process and what goes into good brand voice guidance.
1. Center your company’s mission.
Your company’s mission and values should live at the heart of everything you do. However, I often see these elements get sidelined in favor of the newest trend or hype cycle. These leaders chase instead of listen. And in return, you get cringy content — and audience abandonment.
You chose your mission and values for a reason; they mean something to your organization. Let them lead your brand voice creation process.
Adherence to the mission led to HubSpot’s social media team successfully translating brand voice to LinkedIn, with 84% more engagement in just six months.
Emily Kearns, HubSpot’s senior manager on the social media team, shares more:
“So much of what is good about HubSpot is the culture and how we treat each other — just the overall vibe,” she said. “And there was a huge opportunity to take that into the social space.”
HubSpot’s brand voice is clear, helpful, human, and kind, which became the social media team’s foundation for everything. “Human and authentic — that’s just table stakes,” Kearns said.
Even if the core mission is the same, how you express it varies by platform and timing. HubSpot’s official product descriptions might require more gravitas to appeal to buyers, while its Instagram account can translate the HubSpot culture into vibes — a more human-focused take on its brand voice.
Since HubSpot’s social team reinterpreted the corporate voice on social media in 2023, the team has earned a 2024 Webby nomination in the category of Social, B2B.
Lauren Naturale, the social media manager at Tides, a nonprofit that advances social justice, agrees with leading your voice with your values. “You cannot take a values-based approach to marketing if your company is not actually living or enacting those values in any meaningful way,” she said.
Naturale was also the first social media manager at Merriam-Webster, where she built the dictionary’s social media presence from almost nothing — “they would post the word of the day to all the social channels once a day” — into a must-follow.
She notes that Merriam-Webster lacked the strategy deck that major corporations pay big bucks to build. Instead, it had “very well articulated, shared values around how interesting language was, how important it was, and the fact that it is always changing.”
She sums up those values: “Words and language are not cultural capital. They’re not the property of the elite. You can care about words and language and also be interested in the way that language is changing.”
Living those values helped build what is now a well-known brand voice (never mind the 456% increase in audience size on X).
2. Infuse your buyer persona into your brand voice.
Have you had one of those conversations where you just clicked with someone else? The chat felt effortless, the vibe was strong — it felt right.
Research shows we like people who are like us better. Your brand voice should mimic this human desire. Specifically, you want to sound like the buyers you’re trying to reach.
Ideally, you’ve done the work building your detailed buyer persona already. If not, start by considering:
- Who are you trying to reach?
- What do they need from your brand?
- What can you offer them that nobody else can?
- How do they like to be communicated with?
Your goal is to find what clicks with them and deliver that experience consistently through your brand voice. Conduct basic audience research using tools like Google Analytics or a simple survey of your audience. It’ll help you home in on your audience’s desires and interests.
Ryan Shattuck, a digital media strategist who managed Dictionary.com’s social media for four years, also encourages you to go further: “Knowing your audience is obvious, but I would take it a step further. Respect your audience,” he said.
Dictionary.com’s buyer persona evokes an image of somebody popping onto their phone at midnight to play the latest New York Times’ Connections word game.
“I think it’s safe to assume that the people who follow a dictionary account on Instagram are also people who read books and do crossword puzzles,” said Shattuck.
This understanding guides his content decisions and the way it’s communicated via his voice: “And so I can make a joke about the Oxford comma. I can use a meme to share the etymology of a word,” he said.
Finding audience resonance brings confidence to your voice — and backing for your content decisions and direction.
3. Scour your best-performing content for clues.
Even a few months’ worth of content can tell a strong brand voice story. Review your current published content and rank them by performance. Many people start with views and impressions, but I’d encourage you to dig past the top-line metrics.
Engagement — likes, comments, shares — shows you stirred something in a potential buyer. Even if those numbers are low overall, a signal still lives within.
Grab those most engaging posts and ask yourself: What was your brand voice in that content piece?
- Did you feel assured and authoritative, leaning on deep topical knowledge and backed by original research?
- Or were you playful and irreverent, dropping memes and pop-culture references to reach your people?
Specifically, this question hits on tone — a major brand voice component. Tone carries several dimensions, such as seriousness, enthusiasm, and respectfulness. Deploying tone wisely is why you laugh at comedians and scowl in front of a judge.
That said, you don’t need a multidimensional review of tone to adjust your brand voice. A quick exercise:
- Make a list of adjectives that describe how you want your voice to sound.
- Make a separate list of adjectives that describe how your voice sounds in each of your 3-5 top-performing pieces.
- Highlight the common elements and decide which you want to replicate across your brand.
Now, I have seen some who get excited by their top-performing posts and replicate the content ad nauseam. Don’t copy/paste the words or images; rather, emulate the feeling you get when you read those words or watch that short-form video. Engagement grows through a variety of content that evokes the same sentiments.
4. Decide who you are not.
Sometimes, figuring out who you are is overwhelming. Or, perhaps you’re a newer brand struggling with where to start.
When that happens, I recommend focusing less on discovery and more on weeding out. Who you don’t want to sound like can tell you plenty about your desired direction.
Maybe you personally like Duolingo’s playful, fun voice, but you do branding work for a funeral home. Funny reminders to study Spanish probably won’t mix with cremation services.
Start with examples of brands you enjoy and others in your industry. Analyze their brand voice and see what doesn’t sound like you. For instance, you review several brands and feel their voices are:
- Too pretentious
- Too serious
- Too grandiose
- Too unfriendly
Your brand voice lies in the antithesis: You’re looking for something down-to-earth, funny, informal, and humble.
From there, you can build your voice your way.
5. Get a second opinion.
Brand leaders get wrapped up in their own minds. I’ve fallen prey to feeling like a piece nailed my voice … only for a (well-meaning) friend to demolish that perception.
You probably gather multiple estimates before picking one to do a job. Do the same with your brand voice analysis. Trusted friends, partners, and advisors can help you see your gaps and sharpen your brand voice before you commit it to the market.
If you’re a newer brand (aka on a tight budget), lean on your networks. Buy a fellow brand manager a cup of coffee and get their take on your work. Startup communities and VC partners may also have free or lower-cost services to validate your voice.
If you’re ready to throw down real cash, recruit a third-party content marketing agency as a co-developer. A good agency will conduct deeper analysis, gather more opinions, and bring their expertise to a final brand voice product.
For example, Forbes’ BrandVoice is a media partnership program that helps brands reach and resonate with their audiences through expert consultancy and direct access to Forbes’ audiences. Cole Haan (my favorite pair of shoes) worked with Forbes to create content related to style, arts, travel, social impact, and more.
So if you need extra support building your brand voice or want to stress-test it across your organization or marketplace, try a program like BrandVoice or explore another agency’s brand voice offerings.
6. Craft a communications template with 3-5 brand voice characteristics.
Defining brand voice is half the battle; the other half is enforcement. A voice does you no good if it’s not consistent.
Formalize your brand voice in a communications template easily accessible across your company. Include a table with the 3-5 core characteristics your voice requires and details on how your content creators should use these elements in their work.
Provide multiple examples of each content type (e.g., blog posts, social media copy and images, short-form video scripts). The more tactical advice you deliver, the easier it’ll be for anybody in your organization to accurately replicate your voice. That’s the key to transforming ideas into action.
Pro tip: If you want a ready-made template you can personalize for your organization, check out our free brand voice template.
Top Tips from the Pros
As you tweak your template, use the advice from these pros to hone the edges of your brand voice and stand out from the crowd.
1. Be human.
Kearns encourages you to ask yourself, “Would a real person say this? Is there something in here that is relatable, and that someone can connect to?”
Shattuck reminds you of what should be obvious: “It’s not a dictionary sitting at a computer, it’s a real person.”
2. Respect your audience.
It’s good to know your audience — it’s gold to respect them. When consumer trust keeps falling, successful brands step into that gap and show buyers they matter. Your brand voice should reflect your respect.
3. Mirror your brand’s product and culture.
People can spot a mimic a mile away. Don’t copy another brand’s culture just because you like. Be yourself. And if you have that great company culture, celebrate it in your content.
4. Be culturally relevant, but don’t sacrifice your brand identity.
I love a good meme, but that doesn’t mean I’d want every company to use it. If a meme doesn’t reflect their identity, I’ll sniff out that phony and drop that brand.
Shattuck said that at Dictionary.com, his content choices reflected both modern culture and the company’s values: “Is this post educational? Is it entertaining?” If he couldn’t answer “yes” to both, he knew the post would flop because it wasn’t adding value to the company’s audience.
Show you know your audience, industry, and the world at large. But stick to who you are in every expression, even if it means shelving the meme.
Brand Voice Examples
If you’re looking for further brand voice inspiration, check out these examples. I find each of these companies presents a clear voice that makes it easily recognizable in its industry.
1. HubSpot
A year ago, you’d be more likely to find a product description on HubSpot’s social media than a meme about brat summer.
But then the social team began experimenting with a more Gen Z and millennial tone of voice.
Kearns shares that it’s still a work in progress. Every month, the team inspects performance and singles out the best results. “We’re figuring out how we talk about the HubSpot product in a way that is interesting and adds value and is culturally relevant,” she said.
Cultural relevance and timeliness matter to the social team. Kearns says she’s always asking how they can connect the HubSpot product to “something hyper relevant, or something that managers are going through right now.”
“If we just talk about our product in a vacuum, even with our fun brand voice layered on top of it, it might fall flat,” she said.”
Kearns says that although your brand voice should be identifiable and consistent, “it should have a little bit of flexibility” for adaptation to different platforms.
2. Duolingo
As the embodiment of the Duolingo brand voice, Duo is “expressive, playful, embracing, and worldly,” with a splash of “persistent and slightly awkward,” according to Duolingo’s brand guide. If you’ve ever missed a Japanese lesson, you’ve experienced Duo’s persistence.
Duolingo’s defined brand voice includes a “brand personality” section describing who Duolingo would be as a celebrity (Trevor Noah), a vehicle (a Vespa), and a song (Queen’s “Don’t Stop Me Now”).
Duo thrives on TikTok, where the owl’s “unhinged” antics have cultivated a dedicated global following. Duolingo’s CMO, Manu Orssaud, shared with AdExchanger that Duo has brought forward a brand voice that will continue creating something memorable:
“We want to continue doing content that’s fun, entertaining and gives people three seconds of something weird that’s memorable,” Orssaud said. “[That’s] what marketing should try to do.”
3. Title Nine
A woman-owned and women-focused athletic wear company, Title Nine mixes a friendly “aww shucks” vibe with triumphant motivation. I’d describe its voice as friendly, powerful, playful, and direct.
Freelance copywriter Robyn Gunn writes on her website that T9 had her write copy that “reinforce[s] the brand’s badass, ballsy DNA that differentiates it from ‘softer’ competitors in the category.”
Title Nine’s “Who We Are” page encapsulates this voice perfectly: Its clear language underscores the brand’s love of the outdoors and its enduring support of women.
This graphic from its online store evokes a more playful side of Title Nine’s brand voice — bright colors and patterns, the casual typeface that “Trail Shop” uses, and the invitation to “track in some dirt.”
4. Duluth Trading Company
When was the last time you laughed at a commercial about work pants? If you’ve seen Duluth Trading Company’s ads, you’ve probably had a chuckle or two. After all, how often can you pit work pants against an angry beaver?
Duluth’s clothing lines target rugged adventurism and hard workers — and their brand voice matches that audience. From the grizzled narrator behind their ads to the dedication to “There’s Gotta Be a Better Way,” Duluth captures a hard-working attitude. It’s realistic to the challenges of its buyers — bailing hay all day requires tough clothes. But they don’t take themselves too seriously. The everyday-ness of Duluth’s voice fits right on the ranch.
Plus, I’ll admit a little professional envy, wishing I could’ve come up with “Go Buck Naked Underwear.”
5. Poppi
You can feel the neon glow of Poppi soda from the moment you reach its eye-searing pink and yellow website. The company has mastered Gen Z appeal, with a brand presence fit for social media’s infinite scroll and viral shares of new soda flavors.
The company’s “Our Story” page belongs in an Instagram caption. It’s a bright and bubbly story replete with emoji and passion that also highlights the A-list celebrities serving as brand ambassadors. Even its newsletter sign-up says, “Let’s be friends.”
The creative agency responsible for Poppi’s branding describes it as “quirky, nostalgic, and vibrant.” Toss in a splash of “informal” or “casual,” and you have a unique brand amid the soda market.
6. Taco Bell
Did you know you can get married at Taco Bell? (Well, only at the Las Vegas location, but still.) While most probably won’t tie the knot with a Cheesy Gordita Crunch, it shows how deeply Taco Bell can embed into people’s lives. And the brand knows this, especially among its target market: younger generations.
For example, Taco Bell’s Instagram posts would fit many Gen-Zer’s feeds.
It’s not overly produced, with a photo you could get from an iPhone and a basic caption. And that simplified look captures brand voice better than most multi-million-dollar campaigns.
There’s an authenticity to Taco Bell’s content reflected throughout its assets. Even titles for news releases aim for its audience, with Paypal “pulling up” to Taco Bell locations.
Taco Bell’s CMO, Taylor Montgomery, sums up their ethos as being a “cultural rebel,” reflecting how its brand lives within its fans. It’s a symbiosis that its brand voice embraces to great effect.
7. Mailchimp
Mailchimp helps companies reach their buyers with authentic messages; its content shows that same devotion to authenticity.
Read the company’s Content Style Guide, and you’ll see what they mean:
“We want to educate people without patronizing or confusing them. Using offbeat humor and a conversational voice, we play with language to bring joy to their work . We don’t take ourselves too seriously.”
Mailchimp consistently achieves its conversational, direct, playful voice across all of its content.
For instance, this blog post goes on an exploration of “highly unscientific personas,” including the fainting goat. The email service provider describes this persona as: “When startled, its muscles stiffen up and it falls right over.”
They then link to this video:
A blog post like this one showcases the subtlety behind brand voice — especially regarding diction (your word choices). For instance, what if the blogger had written: “If a goat is scared, it becomes nervous. The animal’s muscles contract, and it faints as a result.”
You, as a reader, notice the different vibe. Both examples say the same thing, but one feels personal while the other belongs in a high-school biology textbook.
8. Fenty Beauty
Rihanna’s beauty company, Fenty Beauty, makes it clear from the first page what you can expect from its brand voice. Bold and honest language speaks to Fenty’s deeply held desire to connect. It’s not performative or pretentious — you get the sense you’re talking with a friend.
Fenty carries that tone across its social channels, like in this YouTube video description:
There’s a casual, excited feel to it. Look at those fire emojis. If an insurance broker used those, you’d cringe. But here? They belong. Every piece adds to the fierceness Fenty seeks to evoke.
The brand voice matches its target audience perfectly: youthful millennials and Gen Zers who use makeup for authentic expression.
9. Clare Paint
Not every brand needs sarcasm or “that no-makeup makeup” tone to reach younger audiences. For instance, Clare Paint has developed a mature, spirited, and cheerful brand voice that brings a breezy, girl-next-door feel to their branded content.
For instance, consider the title of one of their recent blog posts, “6 Stylish Rooms on Instagram That Make a Strong Case For Pink Walls.”
The post uses phrases like “millennial pink,” “pink walls have obvious staying power,” and “designers and DIY enthusiasts alike have embraced the playful shade with open arms.”
Clare Paint’s language is friendly, chic, and professional. You connect with it like you would a knowledgeable, fun professional at a paint store.
This relatable voice appears across channels. For instance, here’s Clare Paint on Instagram.
“When baby’s first bedroom is on your grown-up vision board” brings a little maturity to Instagram feeds, like an older, fashionable sister. Referencing the COO‘s baby boy gives another opportunity to make authentic connections with Clare’s followers.
10. Skittles
As for Skittles, they lean all the way into raw authenticity and display its disdain for promotion across every platform. Every piece of content revels in how real it is, and how it reflects culture today.
For instance, Skittles will co-opt popular meme formats and actually follow them instead of trying to transform them into an ad. An example of this is on Instagram:
The brand voice feels like you’re gossiping with a mischievous Skittles employee behind-the-scenes. The “I can’t believe they just posted that” factor keeps the content fresh and exciting.
What’s most remarkable about the brand’s voice to me is its consistency. Probably my favorite Skittles ad is “The Skittles Touch” from 2008.
Every time a man touches something, it turns to Skittles. His coworker shares how “awesome” that must be while the man laments how he can’t hold his newborn child for fear of turning him into Skittles. I’ll let you watch the rest to see how it ends.
It’s ridiculous and hilarious — and Skittles has stayed that way for nearly two decades.
Brand Voice Template
Want a template for your own brand voice? HubSpot is here to help! You can fill out this blank Google Sheet template with your own brand voice characteristics.
Complete the remaining cells and send them to your team.
Note: You’ll be prompted to make a Google Drive copy of the template, which isn’t possible without a Google account.
To find your people, find your brand voice.
When you know who you are and how you come across in the marketplace, you can’t help but attract like-minded people. There’s a magnetism to a strong brand voice — one that’s honest to your values and shines through consistently everywhere you appear.
Logo, color palette, and font are also certainly important parts of branding. But a good brand thrives on good content. And good content needs its unique voice.
Editor’s Note: This post was originally published in April 2021 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.
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