Tone shifted with every marketing campaign, and there was no core voice for product teams to work from. Content across the experience veered between overly formal, technical and too casual, and users felt it.
I set out to:
Define a practical, consistent tone of voice for product content
Create guidance that other writers and designers could use without me
Apply and test the voice across real product touchpoints
Helped to fine-tune the masterbrand voice. I led work specifically for how it would live in the products with brand and marketing teams to define five core principles, capturing the spirit of being at the table during a tournament.
Turned principles into practice. I translated high-level tone into actionable product guidance, with examples and patterns for common UX moments.
Applied it across the product. I wrote and reviewed content across verticals so the voice showed up consistently in real journeys.
Built in governance. I set up content reviews so tone held in future releases, not just at launch.
Product tone now aligns with the brand: friendly, clear and user-first
The guidelines were embedded into the design system, so tone and content patterns are built into future work by default
Teams use the content patterns and tone guidelines when building new features
Designers and PMs face fewer copy decisions on their own, so there’s less guesswork and fewer review rounds
A scalable framework is in place for future content hires and contributors
The biggest lesson was balancing consistency with flexibility. It was important for me to demonstrate that different moments in a journey call for different tones, and a good voice adapts without losing itself. Small shifts in language made a real difference to how confident users felt.
If I did it again, I’d run collaborative workshops earlier to build buy-in. A lot of my time went on helping wider teams understand why product content can’t simply adopt a commercial-led tone across the board, and that case is easier to make together than after the fact.
It confirmed something I believe deeply: tone of voice isn’t just how we sound. It’s how we make people feel at every step.
