What Is Brand Voice? How To Create One for Your Brand (2025)

If you’ve ever watched Friends, then you know Rachel was a romantic. The show starts with her running away from her wedding and leaving behind an easy life because she didn’t love her fiancé. The series ends—spoiler alert—with her getting off a plane and turning down her dream job to be with the man she loves. 

While Rachel’s character changed throughout the show’s 10 seasons, at her core, Rachel remained the same person. That’s because the show’s writers managed to accurately capture her voice. 

As an ecommerce business owner, your brand also has a voice. Establishing a consistent brand voice helps customers feel like they know what your business is about, much like how they get to know a character in a story. 

Learn how to discover the right brand voice for your business and start building authentic connections with your audience.

What is brand voice?

Brand voice is a brand’s public identity and how it expresses its values, point of view, and attitudes. Any employee who speaks on behalf of your company will work with voice. Social media managers use voice to write captions and guide image selection, executives incorporate brand voice into presentations or thought leadership pieces, and copywriters craft marketing messages according to voice guidelines. 

Establishing a unique brand voice is essential to a business because it keeps your messaging consistent and recognizable for your target audience. “Some of the less successful brands try to be everything for everyone and that really dilutes the power of their message,” says Ky Allport, creative director of the branding studio Outline. That’s why brand voice is such an important starting point. As Ky says, “One thing that we’re always looking for is: Does the brand have a distinct point of view?” 

Brand voice vs. brand tone

While closely related, brand voice and brand tone are not the same thing. In marketing, brand voice refers to a brand’s identity. Brand voice remains consistent regardless of where it shows up, but certain elements of the voice’s tone may change depending on the type of communication and the intended audience.

Why brand voice matters

Brand voice is like putting a face to a name. Establishing a compelling brand voice helps brands build recognizable personalities. This makes it easier for a business to form emotional connections. As Ky explains, “It builds trust in your consumers and customers if they feel like you have a clear, consistent point of view.” 

A distinct voice can also help a brand stand out in the marketplace. A new ecommerce business selling blue raspberry–flavored dental floss, for example, might choose to adopt an energetic, lively brand voice to stand out in an industry crowded with traditional products. Exciting language (like “become your dental hygienists’ fave”) would help this company communicate its identity and be more memorable for consumers.

How to find your brand voice

1. Define your target audience
2. Revisit your company’s mission statement and values
3. Evaluate existing brands or characters
4. Create a brand voice chart
5. Share your voice style guide

Here’s how to identify and express your company’s brand voice: 

1. Define your target audience

Developing a strong brand voice is about appealing to your target audience. 

To accomplish this, you need to understand who you’re targeting:

• Learn about your existing audience. Gather customer analytics to learn more about your audience’s gender, location, and age. You can also reveal other common denominators by surveying customers to ask about their interests and why they bought from you.
• Study your competitors. Analyze competitors’ social media messaging, their reviews, and who they work with to learn more about their target audience. This can help you narrow your focus or find a niche that others have overlooked. 
• Tap into industry market research. Market research from firms like McKinsey & Company digs deeper into your target audience’s behaviors and thoughts. 
• Create buyer personas. Buyer personas are fictional characterizations of your ideal customers. They help you personalize your messaging to attract more buyers. 

After you define your target audience, you will better understand how to speak directly to them. For Omsom, which makes sauces and noodles, understanding its core audience meant it could stand out among competitors. “I think we did something really powerful in that we really centered the first- and second-generation Asian American community at a time where many brands were overlooking this audience,” co-founder Vanessa Pham shared on an episode of the Shopify Masters podcast. “Even Asian food brands were speaking directly to a non-Asian consumer, saying things like, ‘Travel the world through our products.’” 

2. Revisit your company’s mission statement and values

What do you want to accomplish as a business? Revisiting your company’s mission statement and brand values can remind you of the “why” behind your brand, which can shape how you talk to customers. For example, if your mission is to create an inclusive clothes-shopping experience, then you might adopt a brand voice that is encouraging. 

Heyday Canning Co.’s co-founders developed a distinct brand voice by centering the company’s purpose. “We did a lot of thinking about who we are and what our values are that we’re going to carry through everything we’re going to do,” Heyday co-founder Kat Kavner shared on the Shopify Masters podcast. “And from that emerged this consistent brand vibe of a new company that was going to be very joyful and vibrant and fun and kind of vintage and retro but also very forward-looking.” 

3. Evaluate existing brands or characters

Brand voice examples don’t need to come from products or brands in your industry—inspiration can come from anywhere. Think about existing brands or fictional characters that catch your attention. What does that brand or person say or do that resonates with you? Think about how you’d describe their personality and why you have that impression.

From these examples, come up with a few words to describe your brand personality, such as wise, helpful, strong, and rebellious. 

Try using these writing exercises to dive deeper into your brand’s personality and voice:

• What would your brand do on a Saturday afternoon? Would it wake up early and hit the trails for a hike or spend all day planning for an elaborate dinner party?
• Write a 250-word biography of your brand with your new voice in mind. Think about the words and phrases your brand would use to describe your products, mission, and goals. 
• Try using your own brand voice to create several different types of copy. How would your brand caption a promotional social media post? How would your brand describe products on your website?

4. Create a brand voice chart

A brand voice chart or voice style guide is a section within a company’s brand guidelines. The voice style guide describes your brand’s distinct personality and explains how to express it. 

Every company includes different elements in their style guides, but they generally cover:

A sounds-like, doesn’t-sound-like chart

Personality descriptors like creative and empathetic are a great starting place, but there are millions of ways to express these traits. For example, a person who smiles at you in a coffee shop and a stranger who rushes into a burning building to rescue your goldfish might both be nice. Including specific examples of what your voice should and shouldn’t sound like may help your team grasp the more subtle aspects of brand voice. 

So if your brand voice is encouraging, your chart might look like this: 

Sounds like	Doesn’t sound like
Kind. We’re the understanding friend you ask for support. We’re reliable and we’ve always got your back.	Effusive. We won’t shower you with compliments if we don’t mean it.
Upbeat. We’re cheery and excited to connect with you, our audience.	Airheaded. Just because we’re cheerful doesn’t mean we aren’t aware of the challenges you’re facing. Our positivity is rooted in practicality.

Examples

Examples of your brand voice can help your team understand how to respond to different situations. Showing what doesn’t work is also crucial. “One of our favorite things is to draft successful and unsuccessful versions of the same factual message,” says Margaret Pilarski, director of brand strategy at Outline. 

Say you run a shoe brand and your brand voice is personable and knowledgeable, you might craft the following examples:

Successful	Unsuccessful
You don’t need to learn to walk on grates like Rihanna with the Dover boot. With a 2.25-inch block heel, you have a sturdy base—perfect if you need to wear your shoes for hours. Wear them with your blue jeans or pink dress, it goes with everything.	The Dover boot has a 2.25-inch heel, making it comfortable to wear and a wardrobe staple.

Preferred terms 

A preferred term list ensures people consistently use the correct terms. For example, if you sell spices that draw on Latin American flavors, you might use the word “Latine” as a preferred term because it’s part of your brand name. To make it more useful, you can also include terms you don’t want to use. In this case, you might state that you want to avoid “Latinx,” “Latino,” and “Hispanic.” 

5. Share your voice style guide

One of the best ways to ensure you have a consistent brand voice is to share it with your team. Everyone who communicates with your audience on behalf of your brand should have access to your style guide for reference. 

Brand voice examples

• Diaspora Co.
• Who Gives a Crap
• BLK & Bold
• Molekule

Consider these different brand voice examples and get inspired to find the right brand voice for your business:

Diaspora Co.

Brand voice: Transparent

Diaspora Co. is a direct-to-consumer (DTC) spice company founded by Sana Javeri Kadri. With a model that prioritizes both ethics and profitability, the brand voice is transparent yet approachable. It doesn’t skimp on details when explaining its small-scale production and sourcing practices, but it mixes in words like “hella” to avoid sounding dry and to mirror the colorful, vibrant visual identity. 

Who Gives a Crap

Brand voice: Cheeky

Who Gives a Crap is both silly and direct. In the brand’s words, “Sure, we love puppies and sunny days and walks on the beach, but our real love is toilet paper.”

This is the first sentence of the eco-friendly toilet paper company’s bio and it captures the fun yet direct voice perfectly. The brand’s About Us uses jocular language to address a potentially awkward subject head-on and weaves in earnest communication about its sustainability mission. 

BLK & Bold

Brand voice: Earnest

BLK & Bold is a mission-driven coffee company. Whether discussing its company values or promoting its product, across communication channels the brand uses a forthright and sincere voice to underscore the importance of its social goals.

In the brand’s words, “A lifetime friendship, shared values, and an immeasurable love for coffee & tea serve as the foundation for BLK & Bold Specialty Beverages. Cofounders Pernell & Rod created this company with the desire to unite coffee and tea lovers worldwide through a common interest in community investment—specifically for the youth. Pernell & Rod believe that if children are the future, then they should be equipped with resources to manifest their potential.”

This earnest brand voice comes from a personal place for the founders, both of whom grew up in neighborhoods suffering from high unemployment and poverty. “We both felt that there was a void in the business world and wanted to ensure people in our own backyards were given equal access and resources in exchange for their patronage,” Rod says in an episode of the Shopify Masters podcast. 

Molekule

Brand voice: Authoritative 

The home air purifier company Molekule uses an authoritative brand voice to build consumer confidence. The brand frequently uses industry-specific and scientific terms to demonstrate its deep subject matter expertise. 

In describing the air filter’s core technology, the brand explains, “By combining PECO nanotechnology with HEPA filtration and air quality sensors, Molekule air purifiers can capture particles found in smoke, while detecting and destroying organic pollutants like bacteria, viruses, chemicals, mold, allergens, and more.” This precise, detail-oriented voice speaks to health-conscious consumers who take the time to research and understand their options.