Most brand voice exercises fail in the same place: a room agrees on three nice adjectives, everyone leaves, and nothing about the writing changes. The reason is that adjectives do not describe a voice, boundaries do. "Confident" means nothing until you say what it is not: not arrogant, not hedgy, not loud.
This worksheet is the short version of the exercise we run with clients. It produces four things: your adjectives with their boundaries, the words you do and do not use, the sentences you always write the same way, and the four tone settings for when money, mistakes and deadlines are involved.
It now runs as a form rather than a document. Fill it in here and it saves in your browser as you type, so you can stop halfway through and come back. Do it with two or three people, one of whom answers customer emails. An hour is enough. If you want the definitions first, read what brand voice is, and for worked examples to react to, see brand voice examples. If you would rather check the whole brand than just the voice, start with the free brand audit.
How to run the session
- Collect, do not invent. Before the session, gather five pieces of writing where the brand sounded like itself: a sales email that worked, a support reply someone thanked you for, a proposal you won. Read them aloud first.
- Start with the boundaries. Write the adjectives, then immediately force a "but not" for each. The refusals are the useful part.
- Test the voice on bad news. Every strong voice survives a welcome email. The real test is a refund, a delay and a price increase.
- Keep the output to one page. If the guide is longer than the lorem templates it replaces, nobody will use it.
The worksheet
Work straight through it. Everything is optional until you choose to save, and nothing leaves your browser until then.
What to do with the output
Turn it into a one-page guide: adjectives with their boundaries, the word lists, the three sentences and the four tone dials. Add one on-brand and one off-brand example per adjective so nobody has to interpret anything, then keep it next to your email and proposal templates rather than in a folder.
If the room could not settle on adjectives, the problem is usually upstream: the positioning is not decided yet. Our guide to what brand strategy actually includes is the right place to start, tone of voice vs brand voice explains the difference between the fixed personality and the flexible setting, and the free brand audit will tell you whether voice is even your biggest problem.
Common questions, answered
How long does the brand voice worksheet take?
About an hour with two or three people in the room, or 90 minutes on your own. The longest part is not choosing the adjectives, it is agreeing the boundaries, because that is where people discover they meant different things.
Who should fill in the brand voice worksheet?
Whoever writes for the brand most often, plus whoever approves it. Include one person from sales or support, because they hear objections in the customer’s own words and will catch an adjective that sounds good in a workshop and false on a call.
Can I use the worksheet for a client brand?
Yes, and it works well as a paid discovery session. Bring three drafts of the adjectives from their existing material, then let them correct the boundaries. They will engage with a wrong draft far more readily than with a blank page.
What do I do with the finished worksheet?
Send it to us to keep on file for your project, copy it into your own documents, or print it. The worksheet is the raw thinking; your one-page guide is what people will actually read and follow.
Is the brand voice worksheet free to use?
Yes. Fill it in here, print it, share it with your team, and use it with clients. Nothing is sent to us until you choose to save it.
One hour, one page, and a decision about what your brand will never sound like. That is a more useful deliverable than any amount of brand personality language, because it is the version your team can apply tomorrow without asking you.