Tone of Voice Creation Case Study

Project highlights

• Three-hour, in-person tone of voice workshop
• Delivered in collaboration with Finch Design Company
• Practical tone of voice guide created for use across different channels
• Project completed within one month
• Further workshop delivered for a sister brand

The brief

When Finch Design Company began work on a new brand for a niche ecommerce business, its founder, Mat, invited Method Marketing to support the development of its tone of voice and shape how the new brand would communicate.

From the outset, Method Marketing worked closely with Finch to make sure the language, personality and messaging felt like a natural fit with the look and feel of the brand.

The challenge

Creating a tone of voice for a new business means starting with a blank page.

There is no website, content library or bank of customer communications to review. Instead, we needed to guide the team towards agreement about what the brand stood for, who it was speaking to and how it should sound.

The client team already had plenty of ideas. However, as the conversation began, it became clear that they didn’t always share the same vision. One person might imagine the brand as playful and bold, while another might see it as warm and reassuring.

That’s not unusual when launching a new business. Everyone brings their own experience, assumptions and perspective. The challenge was to turn those individual ideas into a shared direction that the whole team could understand and use.

Our approach

Finch Design Company arranged a half-day, in-person discovery session with the client team, covering everything from the company and its values to the visual identity and tone of voice.

The session was attended by the company’s founder, business development manager, marketing manager and general manager, alongside Finch Design Company and Method Marketing.

While Finch led the exploration of the visual aspects of the new brand, Method Marketing led the tone of voice discussion. A series of prepared questions encouraged the team to examine the business, its audience and the personality it wanted to convey. These included:

• What does the business do?
• How is it different?
• Who is it for?
• What matters to that audience?
• Why would customers choose it?
• How should people feel when they interact with the brand?
• What language feels right?
• What would feel completely out of character?

The session gave everyone space to step away from the practicalities of launching the business and think more creatively about the brand. It also brought assumptions about the audience, the company’s personality and the language it should use to light.

There was plenty of energy in the room and the discussion sometimes moved in unexpected directions. Giving those conversations space helped uncover phrases, ideas and points of difference that may not have emerged through a more rigid question-and-answer format.

By the end of the workshop, the team had a much clearer and more consistent view of how the brand should communicate.

The solution

After the workshop, Method Marketing distilled the discussion into a clear set of principles. The team agreed that the tone should feel friendly and playful, while remaining clear, consistent and appropriate for the new audience.

These principles were developed into a practical tone of voice guide, which included:

• A brand persona
• An audience persona
• Tone of voice principles
• Writing style guidance
• Preferred vocabulary and terminology
• Words and phrases to avoid
• Messaging examples
• Guidance for different channels
• Example copy

Rather than saying the brand should be “friendly” or “playful”, the guide showed what that meant in practice. It demonstrated how the tone could be adapted across different formats and situations, helping the team apply it consistently.

The first draft was shared with Finch Design Company as a PDF before being sent to the client. Following one round of amendments, the document was approved.

The finished guide was designed to sit within the wider brand document developed by Finch, giving the business a reference point for both how the brand should look and how it should sound.

The project took around a month from the initial preparation to final sign-off.

The results

The completed tone of voice guide gave the client team a shared understanding of how the new brand should communicate, along with a practical reference for anyone creating content on its behalf.

It’s now being used to shape the brand’s website, social media channels and internal communications, helping the team apply the same language, personality and principles across different formats.

The project also led to further work. Following its completion, Finch Design Company and Method Marketing were asked to deliver a second tone of voice workshop for one of the client’s sister brands.

“Working with Lucy at Method Marketing continues to be an absolute joy. We’ve collaborated on two projects now, Cuddly Animals and MerchyCart, and her involvement has been invaluable. Lucy joins our brand strategy sessions, which gives both our agency and the client incredible insight into structuring their tone of voice. She ensures the client feels completely included and invested in the final outcome, creating the transparency we value so much as an agency.

“For our design team, Lucy’s work lays the fundamental groundwork for the visual identity. She provides clear, authentic direction on how the brand should feel and, just as importantly, what directions to avoid. We firmly believe that a brand needs to sound just as good as it looks, and we couldn’t achieve that without Lucy steering the verbal direction.”

Mat Finch, Founder, Finch Design Company