Explain It the Way You'd Explain It to a Friend
They sound like a particular person explaining something they care about.
A man who writes the catalog for a small seed company describes a tomato as something you will probably eat standing at the sink before the others reach the table. Customers quote it back to him in emails.
He has never studied brand voice. He just writes the way he would talk over a fence, and he does it the same way on the packets, in the newsletter and in replies to complaints.
Voice gets treated as a branding exercise, with tone charts, personality adjectives and style guides. But the voices people remember tend to come from someone who stopped performing. They sound like a particular person explaining something they care about.
That voice does flex. The man writes shorter on a text message than in a letter and softer when someone has lost a crop. But the person underneath doesn't change. A voice adapts to the room without turning into someone else.
This suggests some quieter questions. If you read your last five messages to customers aloud, would a friend recognize you in them? Where do you switch into a stiffer, more corporate version of yourself, and why? And what is something you'd say to a friend about your work that you'd never put in writing?
That last one is usually the voice.
The seed catalog man isn't aiming for consistency. He's aiming for honesty, and the consistency follows.
