Even companies that spend real money on their logo often spend comparatively little on the words around it. That's lopsided. Customers read and hear words from a brand far more often than they study its logo: on the website, in sales decks, in support emails, in the CEO's keynote, on the back of the package, social media, and much more. If those words don't add up to something coherent, the brand suffers.
In the latest edition of Designing Brand Identity, which I co-authored with Alina Wheeler, we put it plainly: "The best brands stay on message and speak with one distinctive voice."
Our earlier post on the role of verbal identity covered the full range of what verbal identity includes, from naming to writing guidelines. This post zooms in on two of those pieces, messaging and voice, and on what it takes to build them.
Messaging vs. voice
The simplest distinction, also from Designing Brand Identity: messaging is what the brand says; voice is how it says it.
Messaging is the set of ideas you want audiences to understand and remember: your positioning, your key differentiators, and the proof points that back them up. It should be relatively stable. A customer who reads your homepage, sits through a sales pitch, and skims a press release should come away with the same handful of ideas.
Voice is the verbal expression of the brand's personality. It shows up in word choice, sentence length, punctuation, humor (or the thereof), and how formal or casual the brand sounds. Voice flexes a little by context (you don't write an outage notice the way you write a launch announcement), but it should always be recognizable.
Old Spice is the example we used in the book. From the "The Man Your Man Could Smell Like" ads to the copy on the back of a deodorant stick, the voice is consistently brash and silly. You could cover the logo and still know whose words you were reading. That's the goal.
Messaging: an overarching idea, multiple supports
A messaging framework usually takes the form of a hierarchy: typically one overarching message supported by a small number of subordinate messages, each with proof points.
Supporting messages commonly come in threes. The logic traces back in part to message mapping, a risk communications method developed by Dr. Vincent Covello, built on the theory that people under stress can only take in about three messages at a time. Your customers probably aren't in a crisis, but they are busy and distracted, and a similar constraint applies. Three is also just memorable; the rule of three shows up everywhere from speeches to fairy tales.
For Environments, a Portland workplace design firm, we built the brand around one idea, creating spaces to create change, supported by three pillars: passion for design, attention to detail, and purpose-driven impact. Each pillar gave the team a clear lane for proof points and stories.
Three is a default, not a law. When we helped reintroduce NetScaler after nearly two decades inside Citrix, the framework landed on four pillars (reliable performance, end-to-end protection, comprehensive observability, and powerful versatility) that dovetailed with the business strategy. The underlying principle is discipline. If you have nine key messages, you effectively have none.
Voice: write like a jeweler
Voice often gets reduced to a list of adjectives (confident, approachable, innovative) that could describe almost any company. Useful voice guidelines go further. They show what those adjectives look like on the page, with examples of what the brand would say and what it never would.
A few principles from consultant Lissa Reidel, featured in Designing Brand Identity, apply to most brands:
Aim for clarity, brevity, and precision. A busy executive with only a few minutes should still get what she needs.
Polish and cut like a jeweler. Every pass should reveal something sharper.
Edit out modifying phrases, adverbs, and extra text. What’s left is the essence.
Use language that resonates. Readers complete the message with their own experience.
Strunk and White said it more bluntly in The Elements of Style: "A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences." Or, in John Maeda's version: "Fewer words can travel further distances."
Concise doesn't have to mean stiff, though. Some of the most distinctive brand voices are loose and conversational. Carl Sandburg described slang as language that "takes off its coat, spits on its hands, and goes to work." The right register depends on your personality and your audience. The discipline of cutting applies either way.
Beyond the framework: messaging and voice creep
Consistent messaging and voice require discipline over time. A team builds a solid framework, publishes a guide, applies it to the website and the next campaign. After that, too often, the messaging and voice drifts.
In Designing Brand Identity, we list dozens of places where language shapes a brand, grouped into five categories:
Nomenclature: company, product, service, division, and feature names, plus descriptors
Brand statements: mission, vision, value propositions, key messages, taglines, boilerplate, elevator pitch
Writing style: headline style, punctuation, capitalization, emphasis
Information: calls to action, URLs, social handles, email signatures, voicemail messages, titles, directions
Touchpoints: websites, news releases, FAQs, annual reports, call center and sales scripts, packaging, product directions, signage, apps
Try auditing a few items from these lists. How does your voicemail greeting sound next to your homepage? Do your sales scripts carry the same messages as your website? Inconsistencies like these add up fast.
How a real project comes together
When Heirloom takes on a messaging and voice engagement, the work usually moves through six stages:
Kickoff and materials review: Confirm objectives, audiences, and deliverables, and review existing communications against the brand strategy.
Discovery: Stakeholder interviews, workshops, and existing research to understand audiences, objectives, and competitors.
Framework development: Draft the messaging hierarchy (overarching message, supporting themes, proof points) and the tonal principles that define the voice.
Review and refinement: Pressure-test the framework with your team and refine it. When the stakes are high, test it with customers, too.
Application and examples: Write sample copy for real touchpoints, like a homepage, a sales email, or a product description, to show the system working in practice.
Messaging and voice guide: Deliver a concise guide that documents the what, why, and how, so anyone writing on the brand's behalf can use it.
Testing matters, too, and can confirm you’re on the right track. One client, the founder of an insurance tech company, ran customer studies after we delivered new messaging and found it resonated more clearly with the audiences they were trying to reach.
A messaging framework tells people what to say. A voice tells them how to say it. But as Lissa Reidel puts it, consistency is built on repetition: the same few ideas, in the same recognizable voice, across every touchpoint, for years. That's how a set of guidelines becomes a brand people know by ear.
Have a messaging or voice challenge? Get in touch.