Pretty much every brand has a Tone Of Voice document of some sort these days. Done well, they can be quite useful. In my experience, they are rarely done well. And every single one of them has the same maddening ‘WE ARE...BUT NOT...’ slide. This slide lays out a series of adjectives that describe the brand personality, along with a series of related adjectives that do not. I’ll give you an example that - I swear to God - has been in every TOV doc I’ve ever read:
WE ARE Confident BUT NOT Arrogant
Thank goodness for this clarification - I was about to plonk down at my keyboard and bang out a 200-word eDM that was absolutely dripping with hubris and conceit. Forgive my sarcasm, but surely it’s obvious that no brand would ever identify as arrogant - so the linguistic guardrail you have given me is useless. Often, the adjective in column B is just the excessive form of the adjective in column A. The above example could be rephrased as follows: WE ARE Confident BUT NOT Too Confident. When you phrase it like that the full banality of the statement is laid bare. Obviously no brand wants to be Too anything! So if your statement fits that format, consider rewriting it, or binning it.
But the crimes aren’t just in column B. The above example also errs in column A - ‘Confident’. Point me to a brand anywhere in the world that wouldn’t say this describes them. You would have a hard time doing it. Confident is like Authentic, Optimistic, Positive. These traits are in every single brand document. So how can it possibly be helpful to include them in this one as well? It just wouldn’t make sense for a brand to be Meek, Fake, Pessimistic or Negative. So attaching to their antonyms is pointless. It is like a band describing their music as Tuneful, Melodious, Rhythmic.
So, a fairly simple test to apply: when describing what your brand is, try to use words that some brands wouldn’t. When describing what you brand isn’t, try to use words that some brands would.
If you adhere to those two rules, your tone of voice document is going to be clarifying and useful to a copywriter.
But you know what else is an amazing TOV document? An ad! I would argue that sending over a few print headlines or social posts, that the marketing team agrees are bang-on tone - that is as good as any TOV document.