Three Activities for Winning Brand Voice Workshops
Why and how to run a collaborative brand voice workshop with your team
Brand voice workshops are one of the first things I like to do on any content project. Running this workshop defines what a client’s voice sounds like, what it does not sound like, and how that voice varies contextually (tone). The result of the workshop is a simple document that saves tons of time and headache later in the writing process.
Whether you’re a writer, content strategist, or leading an editorial team in some capacity, you can run a successful brand voice workshop equipped with just your brain and some basic office supplies. Here’s how and why we run brand voice workshops at AVO agency.
When and why to do a brand voice workshop
If you’re creating a new brand from scratch, launching or redesigning a website, or creating a mobile app, you’ll want to have clearly defined brand voice. Really, if you’ve got a brand that plans to put out any content at all, they should have a brand voice—which is pretty much every brand. While we mainly do these at the beginning a specific content project, you can benefit from having a clearly defined brand voice at any time.
You might not be as aligned as you think
The tricky thing about words is that they mean different things to different people, and can change contextually. As much you might think your team is aligned, workshops can often reveal how members of your team think differently.
For example, you may all define your brand voice as “friendly.” But what does friendly mean? How is friendly translated into different contexts and scenarios that are specific to your business? Trouble and unnecessary revisions ensue when a writer has one definition, an editor has another, and a stakeholder has a completely different idea of what “friendly” means.
Brand voice workshops solve for this in 90 minutes. You’re welcome.
Documentation helps current and future team members
It’s no secret that we’re big fans of documentation, but it’s because we’ve seen over and over how game changing it can be for businesses of all sizes. It’s certainly useful for large enterprises, but even small startups can run into issues when there’s no documentation around content.
The reality is, there are lots of people involved in content creation and there always will be, no matter what size your business is.
At a small startup, you might only have one (or zero) writers on your team, but you are going to have lots of different people dealing with content. Sure, you can DIY your service update emails for a while and forego having a blog. But what happens if you hire a PR agency, or want to launch a new page on your website and hire a freelancer? Instead of going through endless revisions because it doesn’t “sound right,” you can just hand over one document that explains exactly what you want. Easy.
The three ingredients of a great brand voice workshop
We have a basic workshop outline and activities we do with nearly every client (which I’ll share next), but it can easily be customized and adapted to fit unique needs. That said, no matter how your workshop is customized, it should cover these three things.
1. User needs and expectations
Your content isn’t user-centered if it’s not created with your audience in mind. That begins with your brand voice.
2. Brand voice attributes
This is where you get to choose and define adjectives to describe what your brand sounds like, and what it does not sound like.
3. Context and adapting tone
Your brand voice attributes will change slightly depending on context. Figure out what that means for your brand.
Three activities for meaningful brand voice workshops
Alright, we’re getting into nitty gritty specifics. How do you run the workshop? What exactly do you do during it? What type of document do you end up with at the end, and what does it look like? We’ve got you covered.
What you’ll need
A facilitator to lead the workshop (that’s you!)
People to participate (stakeholders, subject matter experts, or internal team members)
A conference room (or you can do this remotely, in which case you need a Zoom account or similar)
Sticky notes, blank pieces of paper, pens or markers, and an empty wall or whiteboard
If possible, have a dedicated note taker — but you can do without if you must
A brand voice workshop agenda
Our brand voice workshops are usually 90 minutes, and go something like this:
First 10 minutes: introductions and hand-out supplies
20 minutes: empathy exercise
30 minutes: brand voice attributes
20 minutes: tone of voice scale
Last 10 minutes: wrap up and next steps
We do theses as a standalone workshop, but also sometimes as part of a longer two-day discovery session.
User needs exercise
This activity gets everyone in a user-centered mindset before you even start defining the brand. This assumes you already have personas or some shared understanding of who your audience is.
First, set a timer for five minutes. Ask everyone to write down words or phrases on their blank piece of paper to describe how the user might be feeling before they interact with your content. For example, when they arrive on your website, how are they feeling? Bored? Excited? Overwhelmed? Confused? When the time is up, take turns going around the room and reading each sticky note out loud and adding it to an empty wall.
Next, set a timer for 5 more minutes and have everyone write down words or phrases to describe how you want the user to feel after interacting with your content. Depending on the project, you can also tie this in with a business goal. For example, if they arrive on your website feeling confused or overwhelmed, you might want your content to help them feel informed and confident so that they can become a paying customer.
When the timer is up, do the same thing and have everyone read their words aloud.
As the workshop leader, pay attention during the whole process to try to find a few common themes. Even if your participants use slightly different words, they’ll likely still have some things in common. At the end of the activity, you should be able to fill-in-the-blanks for this statement in a few different ways: “Users feel ________. Our brand voice helps them feel ______, so that they can _______”
Example: “Users feel unsure and skeptical about financial planning. Our brand helps them feel informed and confident so that they can sign up for a consultation.”
Now, you have a goal for what your brand voice needs to do.
Brand voice attributes: brainstorming, card sorting, and dot voting
Now that you know how your users feel and how you want them to feel, you can start figuring out how you can accomplish that through your brand voice.
Again, set a timer for 5 minutes. This time, ask everyone to write down adjectives to describe the way they want their brand to sound in order to achieve the goals you set in the previous exercise. When the timer is up, have everyone go around the room and read their adjectives then stick them on the wall.
Once everyone’s sticky note is on the wall, it’s your turn as the facilitator to start leading a card sort, which is a fancy way of saying you should start grouping similar things together. For example, if one person wrote “educational” and another person wrote “informative,” you can group those things together because they are saying the same thing.
After the initial sorting, you might end up with too many adjectives. You really only need a few. If that’s the case, you can have your team do a dot-voting exercise — which is pretty much what it sounds like. Everyone gets dot stickers and uses them to vote on their top three favorite attributes.
Dot voting. Source: https://www.nngroup.com/articles/dot-voting/
Tone of voice exercise
While voice is akin to a brand’s personality, tone is how that personality changes depending on the situation. This exercise helps the team discuss that by taking one brand voice attribute, adding in a scenario, and seeing if it changes.
For example, if one of your brand voice attributes is approachable, does that become more or less “friendly” in error messages? What about social media?
To do this exercise, give each participant in the workshop a blank sheet of paper and have them draw a line. That line represents a “scale” of the attribute you chose. Write the core attribute in the middle, then two other adjectives on either side. From our example, that might be: straightforward > approachable > friendly. What you want to do is pick different user scenarios, and figure out where on line the tone should be.
As facilitator, you can share a few scenarios or contexts with the group, then give them about 30 seconds to find a place on the line they think is appropriate. Then, have everyone go around the room and share. You can draw one big tone scale on the whiteboard and mark it up if you’d like, too, or just encourage discussion for a few minutes.
After the workshop: creating a brand voice deliverable
Once you’ve hosted the workshop, you’ll want to synthesize all the activities into a brand voice guide. This could also be a section within a larger content style guide.
Tips for creating brand voice guides that actually get used:
Keep it simple. Content creators are busy, and won’t read a 15 page word document. We tend to deliver ours as slide decks and use lots of visualizations.
When working with new content creators, schedule time in person or on a call to have the content strategist (or someone else who can assume this responsibility) walk them through the style guide. It’s not about reading it to them and being a micromanager; it’s more about getting time on the calendar to discuss it and allow them to ask questions. This can even be a quick 15 minutes.
Update it often. Think of any type of style guideline as a living document that grows and changes with your organization. Revisit it and make changes as often as needed. Making these updates can also be a great way to facilitate discussions with a writing team about what’s working for them, what’s not, and what kind of support or clarity they need to do their best work.
Tips for first time facilitators
If you’ve never hosted a workshop like this before, it might seem intimidating — especially if you don’t like being in the spotlight. But instead of thinking of yourself as the leader of the workshop, think of yourself more as a guide. It’s not your job to do and say everything; it’s your job to lead people towards meaningful discussion and thought. It’s less like public speaking and more like moderation. That’s why I call workshop hosts facilitators, not leaders.
It also helps to practice explaining the activities aloud. You could even record yourself and listen to your own explanations if you want to challenge yourself.
Creating a productive environment
Before the workshop starts, think about where it’s taking place and what distractions you can remove. If you’re doing this in person, you’ll want to let everyone know that they won’t need their laptops and to put them away.
If it’s the type of group that’s always on their phone, you can offer a planned 10 minute break, and say that they can put their phones away because you’ll give them time to check it later.
Things like lighting and room temperate matter, too. If you’re renting a conference room, find out if you need to arrive early to turn on air conditioning, etc.
Remote workshops are a bit different, because you have a lot less control over external distractions. With remote groups, it’s good to do extra expectation setting ahead of time. Send out an agenda more than once, and include instructions on how to participate. Don’t just send a meeting link — let people know they need to be in a quiet space with fast internet, and on their laptops for screen sharing.
What to do when things go wrong
It’s always a good idea to think about “plan b” activities or discussion topics if things don’t go as planned. Sometimes, you have a group that isn’t talkative, or maybe everyone is having a tough week. When that’s the case, facilitating can feel like pulling teeth. The best thing you can do is try your best to read the room and try to adapt your activities to the group you have.
For example, let’s say you’re trying to get people to write down brand voice attributes and they don’t have much to say, or keep getting on their laptop to reply to emails. Just throw out the whole “write your own” thing if it’s not working, and start writing down your own ideas on the whiteboard. Then you can call on specific people individually for feedback. “Mike, would you agree our brand voice is approachable? What does that mean to you?” It’s not ideal, but you have to roll with it. This gets easier with practice.
We hope this was helpful. What questions do you have about brand voice workshops? Leave your thoughts in the comments.
Want us to host a brand voice workshop for you? Contact us.