✍️ the science of sounding like yourself

It’s not what you say, it’s how you say it. 

For example, we could tell you that today’s issue of The Standard is bringing you our advice on how to define a strategic brand voice. 

Or we could say: Listen up, fives, a ten is speaking. We’re here to teach you a thing or two about tone 👏 of 👏 voice 👏 — because “vibes” don’t scale, bitches. 

Or: Today we will be defining brand tone of voice across the six axes of storyarb’s bespoke Tone Calibration Framework, to align your brand persona on register, subjectivity, temporal orientation, etcetera. 

Or even: LISTEN UP, PEOPLE. Today we’re drilling down on BRAND VOICE ALIGNMENT, and I don’t want to see ANY of you publishing OFF BRAND DRIVEL ever again. You WILL learn this framework, you WILL document your own, and you WILL execute with PRECISION. 

You get it. 

Voice makes a big impact. 

But it’s not always the easiest thing to define—and it’s definitely not the easiest thing to scale with consistency as your writers and content channels grow. 

Here's how to get on the same page (and how we give all our clients their own unique tone of voice).

The most effective brand tone of voice will: 

• Resonate with your specific audience 

• Reflect your company values and offering 

• Have a concrete definition anyone on your team can execute

How do you get that concrete definition? You use our beautiful tone calibration tool.

At storyarb, we’ve developed an entire science around the art of sounding like yourself. 

For every client—and for ourselves—we hone in on a super specific, ICP-friendly tone of voice by looking at brand voice across six different axes. 

1. Register: How formal is your brand? 

2. Audience expertise: How much do you expect your readers to know? 

3. Subjectivity: Do you have a strong point of view? 

4. Time orientation: What is your timeline? 

5. Graphic orientation: Where is your audience, literally? 

6. Boldness: How edgy are you? 

Different positioning on these axes works for different audiences. 

For example, if you’re selling a highly regulated product at premium price, your audience may feel safer with a more buttoned-up approach. If you’re selling something for daily use, where your brand personality is part of your offering, casual may be more comfortable.

We dive deeper into what these axes mean, where well-known companies fall across them, and what placements work best for different audiences in our guide to nailing the right brand tone of voice.

Campaigns that got us talking: The same week that New Yorkers artfully rejected Friend AI, Claude’s “zero slop coffee shop” had a line around the block. The difference: positioning. The Friend campaign emphasizes AI as a replacement for human interaction, while Claude markets itself as a “thinking partener” that works alongside human intelligence.

AI spotlight: Experimenting with AI Agents yet? Here's a walkthrough that helps you figure out how to get the result you're looking for.

Stuff that made us scroll back up: An amazing clip from a community library.

Are you still finding your voice? 

Emma Miller, our Creative Director of Editorial, has helped everyone from VC-backed startups to established B2B brands build their brand tone bibles.

She’s coached founders who want their fingerprints on everything (but can’t approve everything forever) and scaled editorial teams from “one guy who hits the publish button on everything” to “40-person research team that puts out content in one voice.”

Your brand voice is currently documented in… Vote here. 

• The founder’s head (thoughts and prayers) 

• A Google Doc last updated in Q2’20

• An updated, comprehensive style guide

• Bold of you to assume it’s documented 

Previously, we asked you what pop cultural character your ideal brand tone would handle. 40% of you put on a white blazer and said, "It's handled." 

When your audience sees the words you’ve written, they should know you’re the one who wrote them. The best way to get there is to document your voice so well that anyone can speak in it. 

Free yourself from playing tone goalie, free your team up to write with more clarity, and free your Slack messages from endless messages about whether “schedule a demo” or “sign up, you cowards” is more on brand. 

See y'all next time.

— the storyarb writers’ room 🫡

Oh! And another thing… It was once essentially mandatory for anyone appearing on the BBC to speak proper “BBC English.” Closely aligned with Received Pronunciation, this was a formal, non-regional, prestigious accent, with features like non-rhotic “r” sounds (so “hardly” sounds like “hah-dly”) and crisp consonants. In the 1960s, the BBC gradually relaxed its rigid accent policy. Talk about a strict brand voice.