THE UNSEXY WORK THAT BUILDS ICONIC BRANDS
By Stevie Wilson, Brand & Content Executive
Every Thursday, THE BOARD BRIEFING brings you curated industry insights directly from our Members to your inbox.
Why language governance systems matter more than you think.
Most brands don’t lose their edge in a single dramatic moment. They lose it slowly in bite-sized feedback in boardrooms and campaign reviews. (You know what I’m talking about.)
In Slack threads where feedback contradicts.
In org-wide presentation decks where the voice feels a little… off.
In rewrites of rewrites, because everyone’s just trying to get it approved.
As a brand and content leader, I’ve worked with fast-scaling start-ups and global brands alike, and here’s what I’ve seen across the board:
THE GREATEST THREAT TO BRAND CLARITY ISN’T EXTERNAL COMPETITION — IT’S INTERNAL MISALIGNMENT.
THE LEADERSHIP DISCONNECT
If you’re a founder or C-suite leader, you need to be deeply enrolled in the systems that shape how your brand is expressed every day. Voice guidelines, writing principles, and tone frameworks aren’t just "nice-to-haves" or creative artifacts for the execution team — they’re operational tools.
That disconnect becomes obvious in feedback. You (or your team) have heard variations of it:
“Can we make it pop?”
“It needs to sound more elevated, but still conversational.”
“I just don’t think this sounds like us.”
You can hear the copywriters shriek in unison. But the problem isn’t the feedback — it’s that there’s no shared language to anchor it.
When there’s no agreed-upon voice system in place, feedback becomes subjective, inconsistent, and often contradictory. Writers guess. Marketers guess. And eventually, the brand starts to lose its distinctiveness.
WHAT HAPPENS WITHOUT SYSTEMS
Without clear documentation, every new hire — from copywriters to marketing managers to social leads — has to interpret the brand voice from scratch. They piece it together from past campaigns, a few saved Teams messages, or just ~vibes~.
I once joined a company mid-rebrand that had already invested heavily in a visual overhaul. But when I asked to see their updated voice or messaging framework, the answer was: “We don’t really use it. It’s not super clear.”
The result? Internally, no one could agree on how to talk about the brand or the product. Externally, the content read as fractured across touchpoints — like five different brands trying to speak over each other. Social was aiming to be irreverent. PDPs were dry and impersonal. And emails were a word salad.
WHAT SYSTEMS ACTUALLY DO
Narrative systems like Brand voice guidelines, messaging hierarchies, naming frameworks, and copy principles are much more than static PDFs.
They’re critical business tools - and when done well they:
Help cross-functional teams (not just writers) make quicker, better choices
Create consistency across content, even when different people are executing
Reduce creative review cycles by giving everyone a shared reference point
Give leaders clarity and a common, objective language for feedback
At lululemon, I helped create messaging architecture that served as a foundational tool across Brand, Community, Product, and Retail. It didn’t stifle creativity — it sped it up. It gave teams a sandbox to play in, so they could focus on what mattered: storytelling, not second-guessing.
At Banana Republic, I led the shift from overly complex and prescriptive guidelines to focus instead on overarching brand identity concepts, common-sense guardrails, and consumer insights, allowing the team to fully understand who we are and what we want to communicate. This took us from agonizing over whether a word or sentence structure would be deemed correct to a greater sense of buy-in and confidence — allowing teams to make decisions more quickly and understand the sandbox they were empowered to play in.
THE BEST FRAMEWORKS DON’T LIMIT CREATIVITY — THEY DIRECT IT
A well-built framework doesn’t dictate every word — it defines the edges of the sandbox so your team knows where to play, where to push, and where to pull back.
I’ll keep saying it: the goal of voice guidelines (or any creative guidelines for that matter) are to accelerate decision-making. They give writers, designers, marketers, and even legal something to align around. And most importantly, they keep your creative expression coherent without making it repetitive.
If your brand system feels like a script, it’s too rigid. But if it feels like improv with no rules, it’s useless. The best frameworks are specific enough to protect your distinct tone, and flexible enough to evolve with context.
Look at:
Aesop - Tone is so disciplined and elevated that it becomes a distinct, sensory experience across all channels. The writers (and reviewers) are bought-in to the same ideology.
Patagonia - Voice is activism. They can write a product page or a policy takedown and still sound like the same brand.
(Early) Glossier - Voice was so consistent across emails, Instagram captions, and packaging it felt like a single person was behind it all (which is hard to do even if it IS one person writing everything).
These brands don’t play it safe — they play it smart.
Their creative range doesn’t suffer because of their frameworks. It exists because of them.
LEADERSHIP SETS THE TONE — LITERALLY
If you want a brand that’s consistent, distinct, and scalable, you need to codify how it speaks and how you evaluate whether it's working.
That means:
A practical, principle-based voice guide that shows what “on-brand” looks and sounds like - with real examples and contextual flexibility. Examples and explanations are key.
A feedback system that aligns executives with creative leads, so comments are tied to shared standards — not subjective instincts. Use facts, not feelings.
Documentation that scales across teams, so writers, marketers, product teams, and legal are all pulling in the same direction. Don’t just upload it and walk away — book time with everyone to contextually present the guidelines and answer questions.
BOOST BRAND EQUITY AND TEAM CONFIDENCE
If your team is guessing what “good” looks like, or your brand is showing up differently across functions, channels, or regions, you don’t have a content problem. You have a clarity problem. And clarity is a leadership responsibility.
Brand voice systems are business tools, alignment tools, and growth tools. For executive teams serious about brand health, they should be non-negotiable.
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