Developing a Brand Voice: How to Make Your Brand Sound Authentic

Your brand has a logo. It has colours. Maybe even a nice layout grid. But how does it sound? If three different people in your business write an email to a client — do they sound like the same brand? Or like three different personalities?

Most businesses invest weeks in their visual identity and exactly zero hours in their voice. The result: the website sounds like an agency wrote it, the social media posts sound like an intern, and the proposals sound like a lawyer. All under the same logo. But none of it sounds like a brand.

If you have already worked on your brand values, what follows is the natural next step: translating those values into language. Because brand voice is not just “formal or informal.” It is the entire personality of your brand, expressed in words.

What Brand Voice Really Is

Brand voice is the way your brand speaks — across all channels, all formats, all situations. Not the content (what you say), but the way you say it.

Think of people you know well. You recognise a message from your best friend even without seeing the sender. Not because of the topic, but because of the word choices, the rhythm, the attitude. That is exactly what brand voice is: your brand becomes recognisable before anyone sees the logo.

Consistency starts with language — the element that dominates most touchpoints. Your website, your emails, your social media posts, your proposals, your invoices: all text. All voice. And if that voice sounds different every time, trust does not build — no matter how good the logo is.

The 4 Dimensions of Brand Voice

Brand voice is not a single slider between “casual” and “formal.” It has four dimensions that together form your linguistic identity.

1. Personality

If your brand were a person — what kind? Not “innovative and customer-oriented” (everyone says that). Instead: is it the quiet expert who speaks rarely but when she does, every word lands? Or the energetic doer who gets to the point and motivates action?

Three to five personality traits are enough. But they need to be specific. “Professional” is not a trait — it is a minimum requirement. “Direct, warm, with dry humour” is a trait. It excludes something: namely formal, distant, and dead serious.

2. Tone

Tone varies by context — but within a defined spectrum. Your brand sounds different in an Instagram post than in a complaint response. But it should never sound so different that people do not recognise it.

Define your tone spectrum with opposing pairs:

• More casual — more formal (where exactly?)
• More emotional — more factual (where exactly?)
• More provocative — more restrained (where exactly?)
• More humorous — more serious (where exactly?)

And then: how does the slider shift depending on the situation? On social media, maybe two notches more casual. In a complaint, one notch more serious. But never at the opposite end of the spectrum.

3. Language

The concrete linguistic tools. This is where the craft comes in:

Sentence length: Short, clear sentences? Or longer, explanatory constructions? A mix?

Vocabulary: Technical terms or everyday language? Anglicisms or native equivalents? “Conversion rate” or “enquiry-to-client ratio”?

Form of address: Formal or informal? Direct or impersonal? How do you handle inclusive language?

Stylistic devices: Metaphors? Lists? Rhetorical questions? Direct calls to action?

No-gos: Which words, phrases, or devices does your brand never use? This is often more revealing than the do-list. At our studio, for example: no “we are passionate,” no “bespoke solutions,” no “holistic approach.”

4. Purpose

Why does your brand speak? What does it want to trigger in the reader? Not selling (that is the business model, not the voice). Rather: does it want to create clarity? Give courage? Provoke thought? Empower?

Purpose is the compass for everything else. If your purpose is “create clarity,” you do not write nebulous teasers. If your purpose is “empower,” you do not write copy that creates dependency.

Before and After: Brand Voice in Action

Theory is fine. Here is the difference in practice.

Example 1: About page

Before (no brand voice): “We are a dynamic company with many years of experience in digital communication. Our team of qualified professionals offers bespoke solutions for discerning clients.”

After (brand voice: direct, clear, with attitude): “We do branding for people who are building something. No corporate politics, no buzzwords. Strategy, design, and a system that works — even when you do not have to explain it.”

Example 2: Social media post

Before: “Discover our innovative branding solutions and how we can help your business achieve greater visibility.”

After: “You do not like your logo. Your website does not explain what you do. And every time you hand over your business card, you quietly apologise. It does not have to stay that way.”

Same sender. But the second text has a voice. A recognisable, human, differentiating voice.

The Swiss Factor: Multilingualism

In Switzerland, you might speak three languages — but your brand needs to sound the same in each one.

That is the particular challenge for Swiss SMEs. Your brand voice needs to work across language boundaries. And “work” does not mean “translate literally.” It means: the same personality, adapted to the linguistic and cultural codes of each language.

An example: “Klartext” in German sounds direct and positive. “Plain talk” in English sounds somewhat simplistic. “Parler franc” in French carries yet another connotation. The same brand attitude needs different words in each language to achieve the same effect.

The numbers are clear: around 40% of Swiss workers regularly use more than one language at work (FSO, 2023). If you communicate multilingually, you need a separate brand voice document per language — not just a translation list. More on this in the article on bilingual positioning.

Workshop Method: Define Your Brand Voice in 90 Minutes

You do not need a three-day workshop. You need 90 focused minutes and the right questions.

Minutes 0-20: Personality card game. Write 20 adjectives on cards (bold, quiet, cheeky, factual, warm, provocative, sober, poetic …). Sort into three piles: “That is us,” “That is not us,” “Maybe.” From the “That is us” pile, pick the five most accurate.

Minutes 20-40: Collect anti-examples. Gather copy from other brands that you absolutely do not want to sound like. This sharpens your profile faster than positive examples. When you know how you do not want to sound, you learn a lot about how you do.

Minutes 40-60: Fill in the four dimensions. Personality, tone, language, purpose — two to three sentences each. Not perfect, but honest. Perfection comes through use.

Minutes 60-90: Test writing. Take three real texts from your daily work (website headline, social media post, client email) and rewrite them in your new brand voice. Does it feel right? Too forced? Too safe? Adjust.

The best brand voice is one that feels like you have always spoken this way — but for the first time, consciously. It does not invent anything new. It makes explicit what was already there implicitly. — Miriam Beck

Your Brand Voice Template

Document your brand voice on two pages maximum. Nobody reads more than that. Here is a structure that works:

1. Personality (3-5 traits, each with a one-sentence explanation)

2. Tone spectrum (opposing pairs with a marker showing where you sit)

3. Language rules (do’s and don’ts, concrete word lists, form of address)

4. Purpose (one sentence: what should every text trigger in the reader?)

5. Sample texts (3 model formulations for typical situations)

This document becomes part of your brand guidelines. It is the chapter most guidelines forget — and the one that gets used most in daily work.

Brand Voice and Your Positioning

Brand voice is not an isolated style exercise. It is the direct translation of your positioning into language. If you position yourself as the most honest consultant in your industry, your brand voice must reflect that: direct, unvarnished, no platitudes.

And it must align with your brand values. If one of your values is “clarity over cleverness,” you do not write ambiguous wordplay in your headlines — even if the agency thinks it is witty.

The strongest brands sound the way they look, and look the way they act. That is consistency. And consistency builds trust. Especially in Switzerland, where trust is built through recommendations and personal relationships.

Cafe Lang experienced this firsthand. When we developed the brand voice for the cafe, the goal was clear: the copy should feel like the cafe itself — warm, direct, without forced charm. “The website feels like the cafe,” the owner said afterwards. That is brand voice when it works.

Your Voice, Your Brand

You now know what brand voice is, what dimensions it has, and how to define your own in 90 minutes. The next step: do it. Take the 90 minutes. Write it down. Test it on real texts.

If you find you need help — because you are too close, because you are not sure if it “works,” or because your brand needs to function in multiple languages — the Essential package is the right framework. It includes the complete verbal and visual identity of your brand. Including a brand voice that works across every language and every channel.

Your brand speaks every day. The question is whether it is saying something or just making noise.