Open almost any brand's "tone of voice" document and you'll find the same handful of words. Conversational. Warm. Clear. Expert. Sometimes "approachable expert," as if that really helps. These aren't wrong, exactly — they're just not useful. They describe what almost every brand wants to sound like, which means they describe what none of them actually sound like in a way that matters. Brand voice isn't a list of adjectives. It's built from decisions — what you choose to say, what you choose not to say, how long your sentences are, whether you use humour and what kind, which words feel right and which ones make you wince. It's something you feel more than you define. The brands that really have a voice — the ones people could identify a caption from in a lineup — got there by making a lot of specific choices and sticking to them. They said no to the generic phrasing. They built something that sounded like a person you'd actually want to talk to. Start with what you’re not. This sounds counterintuitive, but defining your voice by exclusion is often easier and more honest than defining it by inclusion. Most brands know — at some level — what they don’t want to sound like. They don’t want to sound like a corporate press release. They don’t want to sound like a pushy sales email. They don’t want to use the word “leverage” unironically or describe themselves as “passionate about delivering solutions.” So start there. Write that list. Every word, phrase, and tone you want to actively avoid. The corporate-speak. The buzzwords. The sentences that end with “…for our clients.” The things that, when you read them back, don’t sound like a person at all. This isn’t about negativity — it’s about clarity. When you know what you’re not, the space for what you are gets much smaller and much more useful. Instead of “we want to sound human,” you end up with “we never say ‘leverage’ or ‘synergy,’ we always write like we’re talking to one specific person, and we make our sentences shorter than feels comfortable.” That’s something you can actually use in a briefing room. Find the one person you’re writing for. Here’s a thing that changes how copy sounds immediately: stop writing for an audience and start writing for a person. Not a persona document with a stock photo and a made-up name. A real specific person — someone on your team, someone you sold to recently, someone you’d genuinely like more clients like. What do they already know? What annoys them? What do they find funny? What kind of email do they actually read all the way through? When you write for a real person, a lot of the generic language disappears on its own — because you’d never say it to them out loud. You wouldn’t walk into a meeting and tell a founder you’re “passionate about delivering innovative marketing solutions.” You’d tell them what you’re good at, why it matters for their situation, and what happens next. That’s the voice. That’s what it should sound like on the page too. Specific audiences create specific voices. The more clearly you can see the person on the other side of your words, the more clearly your words will sound like you. Don’t define it. Write it. The trap most brand voice projects fall into is spending the entire engagement producing a document and then wondering why the copy still sounds wrong. Voice isn’t something you document and then apply. It’s something you develop in practice — and then describe after the fact so others can follow it. The best way to find your brand’s voice is to write a lot of things that don’t feel right, slowly cut toward the things that do, and pay close attention to the moments when something lands. What made that sentence work? Why does that paragraph feel like us when this one doesn’t? The answers to those questions are your voice guidelines — they just need to be written down once you’ve found them, not before. If you’re starting a brand from scratch, pick three pieces of writing you admire — from any source, not necessarily from competitors — and try to figure out what makes them feel the way they do. Then write your first version in that direction. It doesn’t have to be perfect. It just has to be a starting point that you consciously choose, rather than defaulting to the same template everyone else defaults to.