Why your brand needs a personality, voice and tone
Avoid sounding pretentious by identifying your brand voice and tone.
One of the best pieces of copywriting advice I’ve heard is to avoid sounding pretentious.
I love this because it reminds us to-
Put the customer first
Write clear and concise messaging
Provide tangible results
For example, instead of saying “I’m an excellent therapist,” say “If you are struggling to engage with your child, I can help you understand how your child sees the world and respond to their emotional needs effectively.”
In other words, instead of saying “look at me!” Say “I see you. Here’s how I can get you from point A to point B.”
How to identify your brand personality, voice, and tone
When you identify your brand voice and tone, you can connect to your ideal audience. Your brand voice can grab and retain your readers’ attention and also build brand loyalty.
Your brand voice is the consistent way your brand sounds across all platforms.
It’s shaped by your brand’s personality, and it influences everything from the words you choose to how you structure a sentence.
Here’s a quick breakdown:
Brand personality is who your brand is at its core—your vibe, your values, your approach.
Brand voice is how that personality sounds when you speak or write.
Brand tone is the variation in that voice depending on context—like sounding more serious in a crisis or more playful in a product launch.
Here’s what that can look like in action:
If your brand personality is calm and encouraging:
Your brand voice might be warm, steady, and reassuring.
Your tone might shift slightly depending on what you’re talking about—offering empathy when addressing a challenge, or excitement when sharing a win.
If your brand personality is bold and high-energy:
Your brand voice might sound upbeat and confident.
Your tone might get more direct in sales copy or more casual on social media.
If your brand personality is polished and professional:
Your voice will likely feel refined and knowledgeable.
Your tone might adjust for different audiences—like being more formal for a client proposal and a bit lighter for a blog post.
When you’re clear on your brand’s personality and voice, defining your tone becomes so much easier—and way more intentional.
Take for example my new favorite brand, Jukebox:
Our handmade cold process soaps put clean, natural ingredients on repeat to elevate your shower to chart-topping status.
Their voice feels playful and warm. And their tone in this line is clever, upbeat, and inviting.
Here are my three tips for finding your brand voice:
1. Identify your customers’ problems
When your messaging speaks to your customers’ problems, you’ll grab attention, create connection, and start to build trust with your audience.
There is additional benefit to identifying your customers’ problems.
Defining your customers’ problems or pain points can provide you with valuable insight to shape your brand voice.
As business owners, we can get pretty focused on our services, or the benefits we can provide customers.
But what we actually need to do is think about our customers problems or pain points.
For example, as a web designer, my ideal customer’s paint point is not that they need a website.
Rather, their pain point is that they know they need a website, but don’t know how to get started.
Because I’ve identified this pain point, I will want to speak to my ideal customer using a confident but no approachable tone. This way, I might help my ideal customer to feel comfortable trusting me to guide them through their website build.
2. Get specific about what’s keeping them up at night
In addition to their pain points, you want to consider the emotions they are feeling as a result of their problems.
In my earlier example of my ideal clients not knowing how to get started on their website, they might be feeling anxious, behind, and overwhelmed. So, my brand tone can range from confident and grounded to calm and soft.
3. Learn how to use AI
There are so many ways to use AI to help assist in building your brand.
If you have messaging or written content that you feel reflects your brand, upload that to a chat, then ask it to identify your brand voice and tone. If it doesn’t at first, you could follow up and ask it to pull out examples (from the messaging you just uploaded) of each brand voice and tone Identifier. Sorting out your messaging this way will help you pinpoint the exact phrasing and vocabulary that make up your brand.
Why is defining a brand voice and tone important?
A brand’s voice is its personality—it stays consistent. Tone is how that voice shows up in different situations. Think of it like your brand’s mood swing (the good kind).
When you clearly define both, you:
Build the Know, Like, and Trust factor
Your audience is more likely to buy from brands they feel they know, like, and trust. A consistent voice and intentional tone help your audience feel connected to you and confident in what you offer.Grab (and keep) attention
In a crowded market, your words need to stand out. A clear voice draws people in, while the right tone for the right situation keeps them reading—and engaged.Create brand loyalty
Consistency makes your brand memorable. When your audience knows what to expect from you, they’ll keep coming back—and they’ll tell others about you.Make messaging easier
When you know your voice and tone, you don’t have to reinvent the wheel for every email, caption, or blog post. You already know how to sound—so you can focus on what to say.Adapt without losing yourself
Having both defined means you can shift your tone for different situations (playful in a product launch, empathetic during a tough announcement) without ever losing your core voice.
Avoiding pretentious messaging starts with clarity—and that clarity comes from knowing exactly how your brand should sound.
By identifying your brand voice and tone, you can speak to your audience in a way that feels genuine, consistent, and intentional. Just like the difference between saying “look at me” and “I see you,” your words can either push people away or pull them in. Define your voice, choose your tone with purpose, and watch your audience lean in, listen, and trust what you have to say.
