The first step was to familiarise ourselves with the brand – its values, audiences and wider strategy – to create an authentic tone of voice. We developed personality traits, drawn from their existing brand values, to guide the writing style. Each trait contains tips on how to use language, sentence structure and certain writing techniques to craft the Tribute tone of voice.

The guide also shows the tone of voice in action, with sample passages and a brief analysis, so that those using the guide can see how the tone of voice can be put into practice. Finally, there’s a copy style guide, which sets out punctuation, spelling, usage and formatting to ensure communications are stylistically consistent.

We then ran a copywriting workshop for the St Austell Brewery team, packed with practical exercises, insights and advice. The aim was to equip them with new skills and understanding that they can apply to real writing situations. We covered key themes such as awareness of audience, techniques such as warm-up exercises and applying the tone of voice, and best practices for particular platforms. The team left with a greater confidence in their writing abilities and experiential knowledge of how to craft persuasive copy.