most brand voice examples are useless. here are the ones that aren't.
everyone wants to copy wendy's twitter account. it's a mistake. the best voices aren't styles you imitate. they're systems of constraint you can steal. i'll show you how to see the difference.
every list of 'great brand voices' has the same three names. wendy's, mailchimp, innocent drinks. they're held up as icons. they're also totally useless as examples.
copying the final tweet teaches you nothing. it’s like trying to reverse-engineer a cake from an instagram photo. the recipe isn't the picture. it's the system of constraints—the rules—that produced it.
the difference between a system and a style
a good example shows you the machine, not just what the machine produces. the vocabulary rules, sentence structures, argument patterns. we've run over 500 voice profiles. the voices that last aren't the wittiest. they're the most constrained.
they use a tight vocabulary. a predictable rhythm. look at email marketer ben settle. he writes in 8-12 word sentences. almost zero adverbs. that's not style. that's a machine. you can measure it. you can copy it.
b2c voices built on systems
oatly and liquid death are good examples because their voice is a direct response to a business problem. they sell commodities—oat milk and canned water. the brand has to justify the price. the voice does all the work.
- oatly: they write long, rambling, self-aware copy on the carton itself. it reads like an insecure but charming friend talking to you. the system is clear: break the fourth wall, use run-on sentences, and call out the reader's skepticism before they can feel it.
- liquid death: they wrapped a health product in a heavy metal aesthetic. the system is just as obvious: aggressive language ('murder your thirst'), a death-metal font, and a constant mockery of wellness marketing tropes.
in both cases, the voice has a job. it creates distance in a crowded market. it's a function, not decoration. that’s a system you can learn from. a viral tweet is just a lottery ticket.
systems for people and b2b
for people, look at alex hormozi, paul graham, and justin welsh. their voices are clear, replicable systems. they prove voice is often about logic and format, not just picking the right words.
- alex hormozi: his voice is pure declarative authority. simple subject-verb-object sentences. no hedging words like 'i think' or 'maybe'. just direct commands. it’s a machine for generating certainty.
- paul graham: the opposite of hormozi. his essays are exploratory. the system uses long, complex sentences, lots of 'i think' and 'it seems'. he shows you his work. you watch him arrive at the answer, you aren't just given it.
- justin welsh: he built a huge linkedin following with a rigid template. hook, list, summary, call to action. every time. his voice *is* the template. proof that pure structure can be a signature.
writers who use templates, like welsh, have 80% less voice drift. we measured it. the structure is a container. it keeps the voice consistent even when the topic changes. — from our analysis of 500+ voice profiles
why most brand voice guides fail
most voice guides give you a list of adjectives. 'friendly, witty, professional.' this is useless. it's the main reason everything sounds the same. you can't give an adjective to a writer—or an ai—and expect anything but generic mush. it's not a mechanical instruction.
ask an ai to 'write in a friendly tone' and you get the most beige, internet-flavored soup imaginable. 'friendly' is an interpretation. a machine needs an instruction. a constraint.
the failure is simple. you can't build a voice from a feeling. you build it from rules. 'friendly' is a feeling. 'use contractions, ask one question every five sentences, and keep them under 15 words'—that is a system. it's what our brand voice detector measures.
building your own voice system
take 10-15 pieces of your own writing that worked. find the patterns. turn them into rules. don't guess what your voice is. measure it.
- measure sentence rhythm: drop your text into hemingway. what's the average sentence length? the range? that pattern is your rhythm.
- identify core vocabulary: find your 20 most-used nouns and verbs. not the jargon like 'solutions' and 'synergy'. the real words. 'subscriber'. 'revenue'. that's your palette.
- list your signature transitions: how do you connect ideas? 'here's the thing'? 'which means'? find the 3-5 phrases you lean on. they're a huge part of your voice signal.
once you have these rules, you have a system. you can feed it to an ai, hand it to a new writer, or just use it to keep yourself honest. it's how you stop the voice drift that makes brands forgettable.
drift happens draft by draft — too slow to notice until your readers already have. hold your voice profiles your real writing and scores every new draft against it. you see the slip before anyone else does.
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founder of hold your voice. writes about brand voice, ai writing patterns, and the craft of sounding like yourself.
co-written with ai as sidekick. shashank developed the core arguments and proprietary data; the ai helped structure them into a scannable format and challenged the weaker examples.