skills/brand-voice/SKILL.mdView on GitHub
This applies to every piece of marketing writing. It produces copy that reads like a person in the industry wrote it, with nothing in it the company cannot stand behind.
Before you start
This skill works on its own. If the person has their own marketing brain (or any folder of context files about their company), read the files listed under reads in the header first and cite them for every fact. If they do not have one, do not look for one: ask for the two or three facts this play needs and go on. Never invent a fact; a blank is a question for the person.
Tools: this play speaks in verbs (check the CRM, pull the call, schedule the post). TOOLS.md at the root of this repo lists the tools recommended for each verb. The company’s own 1-context/stack.md wins when it exists. No tool is required; a spreadsheet and a mail client cover most of it.
The play
- Read the context (see Before you start). Identify the content type, the persona and the funnel stage, and pull the tone row for that content type.
- Pull the persona’s pain, goal and objection from
1-context/personas.md. Write to one persona per piece. - Draft with a concrete hook: a result, a number a customer stated, a situation the reader recognizes. No scene-setting opener.
- Pull proof through
permission-check. Let the customer’s words carry the claim; do not paraphrase them into marketing language. - Run the banned-pattern check from
2-standards/proof-rules.md: reframing lines, buzzword stacks, rhetorical questions, slogans, disclaimers, em dashes for drama, superlatives not on the cleared list. - Check naming: current product and company names only, former names never.
- For a review, return three parts: what works, each violation with the phrase, and a revised version.
- For a founder’s personal post, hand off to
founder-voiceinstead.
What good looks like
- The best operator writes the sentence the customer would say to a peer, then checks whether the company can stand behind it. Specifics, not adjectives.
- The mediocre version is fluent and generic: it could be any vendor’s page. The tell is adjectives doing the work numbers should.
- Good output passes the test “would a person in this industry say this out loud”, and every claim in it has a source or a customer behind it.
Rules
- MUST write to one persona and one funnel stage per piece.
- MUST run the banned-pattern check before delivering.
- NEVER use a former product name in new material.
- NEVER paraphrase a customer quote into stronger language than they used.