brand_voice v1.0.0

name: brand-voice description: Define a brand voice and tone system — personality attributes, tone dimensions, do/don't lists, vocabulary rules, and crisis voice guidance — and produce a one-page voice charter anyone can write from. Triggers when the user asks to create, define, refine, audit, or apply a brand voice / tone of voice.

Brand Voice

Purpose

Turn a fuzzy idea ("we want to sound friendly") into a usable verbal identity: fixed voice attributes with definitions, tone dimensions with positions, a banned-words list, and paired on-brand/off-brand examples. Output is a one-page voice charter in plain Markdown that a freelancer with zero context can write from.

Workflow

1. Collect the inputs. Brand name, audience (who reads it, how they prefer to be spoken to), 3 competitors whose voices to differ from, and 3–5 existing content samples if they exist. If no samples, say so — the charter becomes aspirational, and mark it that way.
2. Set the attributes. Choose exactly 3–4 voice attributes, each written as "X but not Y" (e.g. "confident but not arrogant", "playful but not childish"). The "not Y" half is the part that actually constrains writers. For each attribute write: one-line definition, one DO and one DON'T sentence pair.
3. Plot the tone dimensions. Position the brand 1–5 on each of the five spectrums (see references/tone-spectrums.md), then map tone shifts by context (homepage, error messages, support, legal, social). Voice stays fixed; tone flexes.
4. Write the vocabulary rules. Words we love (5–10), words we never use (3–5 corporate offenders like elevate, premium, unleash, transform, discover — adapt to the brand), and style defaults (sentence case, exclamation budget, Oxford comma choice).
5. Add crisis voice. Every charter gets the crisis section: acknowledgement language, apology anatomy, active-voice rule, and the voice floor — how the brand sounds when something has gone wrong (see references/crisis-voice-playbook.md).
6. Stress-test. Take one real sentence from the client's current copy and rewrite it three ways: neutral, on-brand, and (honestly) off-brand. If the three are indistinguishable, the attributes are too generic — sharpen them.

Output Contract

The deliverable is a one-page voice charter (Markdown). Required sections, in order:

1. Voice in one line — "Imagine the brand were a person — who are they to the customer?" (e.g. "the friend at the gym who's three years deeper than you — cuts the BS, hypes you up without preaching, never the loudest in the room")
2. Attributes — the 3–4 "X but not Y" pairs with definitions
3. Tone map — five spectrum positions + context-shift table
4. Say this, not that — at least 6 paired examples drawn from the client's real surfaces (button copy, emails, error states)
5. Vocabulary — love list, never-use list, style defaults
6. Crisis voice — apology anatomy, half-apology traps to avoid, messenger guidance
7. Voice check — three questions a writer asks before shipping ("does this sound [attribute]?", "would any other brand say this unchanged?", "could a real person say this aloud?")

Keep it to one page (~600 words). A charter nobody can hold in their head is a charter nobody uses.

Operating Rules

1. Voice is fixed, tone is situational. Never confuse them. An apologetic tone is not a different voice — it is the same attributes under pressure.
2. No generic adjectives. "Friendly, professional, trustworthy" without a definition and a paired example is decoration, not guidance. The off-brand example is the most valuable line on the page.
3. The "any brand" test. If a sentence could appear on any competitor's site unchanged, rewrite it. Specificity is the voice.
4. Concrete over clever. Plain language, short sentences, specific nouns and verbs. Ban vague claims ("best-in-class", "innovative", "transformative") unless immediately followed by proof — a number, a quote, a fact.
5. In crisis, the voice compresses to three moves: acknowledge fast, own it in active voice ("We failed", never "A failure occurred"), and pair every apology with concrete corrective actions and a timeline. Never apologize with "if", "any", or "feel" ("sorry if you were offended" is a trap, not an apology).
6. Match the messenger to the severity. Social teams handle bumps; leadership speaks for real harm. Silence is itself a statement — acknowledge before the narrative sets.
7. Revisit yearly or after any major brand shift. A charter that predates the company's current reality is worse than none, because writers trust it.