Elevate Your Voice: How to Craft a Brand Presence That Clings Like a Fart in a Lift

What It Covers

Bethany Joy explains how to develop an authentic brand voice that permeates every customer touchpoint, from auditing current communications to creating specific personality attributes that guide consistent messaging across organizations.

Key Questions Answered

• •Voice Authenticity Audit: Collect all communications—website, emails, sales materials, internal documents—and read them objectively asking what personality emerges. Compare competitor voices using the same lens to identify gaps between intended and actual brand personality perception.
• •Personality Over Values: Base brand voice on specific personality attributes like "direct but warm" rather than corporate values like "integrity" or "innovative." Use adjectives you'd describe a real person with, avoiding ubiquitous terms competitors could claim equally well.
• •Practical Voice Testing: Write actual content samples in the new voice before creating guidelines. Push the envelope to test boundaries, then pull back appropriately. This reveals what works in practice versus theory and builds team confidence through tangible examples.
• •Implementation Through Listening: Ask content creators across the organization what they need to adopt the new voice—examples, vocabulary lists, dos and don'ts. Address structural barriers like approval processes that dilute voice consistency before distributing guidelines.