Brand Voice Charter

One-page charter: three adjectives you are, three you are not, phrases you always/never use, and side-by-side voice samples for common scenarios.

A brand voice charter is one page that lets someone who has never met your team write in your voice on their first day. It works by being specific and comparative: not adjectives alone, but the adjective plus what it is not, plus a sentence written both ways. Everything here is designed to be enforceable in an edit, which is the only test that matters.

Reach for this when

Content is coming from several writers, freelancers, or an agency and reads like several different companies.
You are briefing an AI assistant and need instructions more precise than professional and friendly.
You are launching a rebrand or entering a new segment and the voice needs to shift deliberately.
Feedback in reviews has become subjective, and edits are argued rather than resolved.

Three adjectives you are

Pick three, and for each one write a definition in your own words plus a one line test an editor can apply. An adjective without a test is decoration.

Choose adjectives a competitor would not also claim. Innovative and trusted fail this test.
Define each in one sentence, in plain words, as your team would explain it to a new hire.
Add the editor test: a question the editor asks of a sentence to decide if it passes.
Rank the three. When two conflict inside a sentence, the higher ranked one wins.

Three adjectives you are not

This block does more work than the first one. Naming the adjacent voice you keep drifting toward is what makes the charter usable under deadline.

Choose the near misses, not the opposites. Nobody drifts toward hostile, plenty of teams drift toward corporate.
For each, write the tell: the specific habit that signals the drift, such as stacked qualifiers or exclamation marks.
Note where the drift usually creeps in, which is typically legal reviews, launch announcements, and apologies.
Add the fix in one line, so the edit is mechanical.

Words we use and words we avoid

Two short lists and a preferred term column. Keep them under fifteen items each, because a longer list stops being consulted.

Always: the terms that carry your point of view, including how you name your own category.
Never: jargon, hype words, and any phrasing your legal or compliance team has flagged.
Preferred terms: the pairs, written as say this, not that.
Naming rules: capitalisation of product names, how you refer to customers, how you refer to yourselves.
Mechanics: sentence length target, contractions yes or no, oxford comma yes or no, how numbers are written.

Voice samples, side by side

The heart of the charter. Six scenarios, each shown twice: once off voice, once on voice. Writers copy patterns far more reliably than they follow rules.

A product or program announcement.
A price change or a policy change.
An apology after something went wrong.
A social post celebrating a customer or a member.
A cold outreach email to someone who does not know you.
A support reply to a frustrated person.
For each: the off voice version, the on voice version, and one line explaining what changed.

Tone shifts by context

Voice is constant, tone moves. Set the range explicitly so people know how far they may travel and in which direction.

Define the dial: for example, warm to precise, or playful to serious.
Place each channel on the dial: social, email, website, documentation, sales, support, crisis.
State what never changes regardless of context, usually clarity and honesty about limitations.
Give the crisis rule separately, because that is when teams reach for the worst instincts.

How the charter is enforced

A charter with no enforcement path is a poster. Decide who arbitrates, how feedback is phrased, and when the document changes.

Name the voice owner: one person who breaks ties.
Require review feedback to cite the charter, for example, this reads corporate, see the tell about stacked qualifiers.
Add the charter verbatim to your AI assistant instructions and to every freelancer contract.
Review twice a year. Add the samples that caused arguments and delete the rules nobody used.

How to use it

Collect twenty pieces of your own published copy: the ten you are proud of and the ten that read wrong.
With two or three colleagues, sort them into yes and no piles without discussing adjectives, then name the pattern each pile shares. The adjectives fall out of the piles.
Draft the two adjective blocks and the word lists, then write the six voice samples using real copy from the no pile rewritten.
Test it: hand the charter and a brief to someone outside the team and ask them to write 200 words. If the result is off voice, the charter is not specific enough yet.
Publish it as one page, paste it into your AI assistant instructions, and attach it to every content brief.
Revisit twice a year and update the samples before the rules.

Common mistakes

Choosing adjectives that no company would deny, such as authentic, trusted, or innovative. They fail the editor test and give reviewers nothing to point at.
Writing rules without samples. People copy examples under deadline pressure and ignore abstractions.
Making it long. Anything past two pages becomes an onboarding artifact rather than a working tool.
Leaving out the not list, which is the part that actually catches the drift toward generic corporate prose.