Define a Brand Voice and Tone Guide

This prompt produces a usable brand voice guide in one pass by forcing four concrete deliverables: personality traits, a do/don't vocabulary list, context-specific tone variations, and before/after rewrites. The structure matters because vague 'be friendly and authentic' guidance is unusable, whereas a banned-words list and worked examples give writers something they can actually apply. Use it when you're standing up a new brand, onboarding contractors or freelancers, or trying to make scattered copy sound like one consistent voice.

What you can expect back

LUMEN BANK — VOICE GUIDE

Personality traits
- Plain-spoken: we explain money like a smart friend, never a banker.
- Encouraging: we treat freelancing as legitimate, not risky.
- Quietly confident: calm and capable, never hype-y or salesy.

Vocabulary
Use: clear, you keep, no surprises, your money, simple, set up, covered, in minutes, real person, on your terms.
Never: leverage, synergy, valued customer, unfortunately, kindly, robust, best-in-class, disrupt, ecosystem, herein.

Tone by context
- Social: short, warm, a little playful. Emoji sparingly.
- Support: reassuring and specific; lead with the fix.
- Marketing: benefit-first, concrete numbers over adjectives.

Before/after
Before: 'We regret to inform you your transfer was unsuccessful.'
After: 'That transfer didn't go through. Here's how to fix it in two taps.'

Illustrative example — your results will vary by tool and inputs.

Get sharper results

• 01Feed the model two or three real competitor taglines and say 'we want to sound nothing like these' so the banned-words list captures the cliches you specifically want to avoid.
• 02Ask it to justify each banned word in a clause, because seeing why 'leverage' is off-limits helps writers internalize the voice rather than just memorizing a list.
• 03Request the before/after examples be drawn from your actual touchpoints (error message, welcome email, pricing page) so the guide demonstrates voice where it's hardest to maintain.
• 04If the traits come back generic, push back with 'no trait that every brand could claim' to force differentiation like 'irreverent' or 'meticulous' instead of 'innovative'.
• 05Once you have the guide, save it and reuse it as context in future copywriting prompts so every piece of generated content inherits the same voice.

Adapt it for your case