Brand voice development, documentation & custom brand voice copybot
No more em dashes. No more generic slop. Get AI copy that sounds like your brand.
Nothing ruins your day faster than having to spend 2 hours wrestling with AI just so you can get some half decent copy. So we learned how to get AI to think and write like us. In two weeks, we'll get under the skin of your brand voice, document it all properly then teach your AI to write genuinely decent copy that actually sounds like your brand.
Who better to train
your AI copy than
actual copywriters?
We've spent the last decade obsessing over what separates OK copy from copy that sounds like a brand. Why is Oatly's copy better than Alpro? Why is Surreal's copy better than Kellogg's? It's not just the words, it's the rhythm, the things you don't say, the tiny decisions that make a voice unmistakable...
And while AI is really good at writing, it's not good at writing like you. That's because it was trained by tech bros, not brand copywriters. So we learned how to pack how we think about copy and brand voice into AI so it thinks like us and writes like you.
You know in Armageddon when they send Ben Affleck and Bruce Willis to space rather than astronauts training to drill oil? It's a bit like that, just with less Aerosmith.
DISCOVERY
SESSION
Before we write, build or do anything, we'll dig into how you talk, how your team writes, how you're currently using AI and where it's falling short. Then we'll build you a copy bot that is super-specific to your brand, not a copy-and-paste prompt with your brand name swapped in.
DOCUMENT
YOUR VOICE
Think of this document like an 50-plus-page instructional manual on how to write for your brand, from big picture stuff all the way down to the granular nuances of sentence structure and punctuation. That way, anyone can write on-brand copy for your brand. (AI or human.)
SETUP YOUR
COPYBOT
AI takes a prompt and gives back copy. Real-life copywriters kick around ideas, give you concepts, ask follow up questions... That's why we build and train your copybot to act and think about your briefs like we would, so instead of wrestling with prompts, you're collaborating with a copywriter that knows your brand inside out.
TRAINING &
CHECK-IN
At the end, we'll walk you and your team through the copybot before we hand it over, so everyone knows how to get the best out of it from day one. Then four weeks later, we'll check back in. (Because despite us roadtesting your copybot for hours, there's always going to be a few wrinkles and nuance that need a little tweak.)
years
Not to brag, but we've been using AI as part of our process since Jasper launched in 2021.
We've helped over 50 brands figure out, dial in and then document their brand voice over the last 10 years or so.
We've run 100+ workshops on messaging and voice for everyone from pinch us now brands to scrappy scale-ups.
Have used our brand voice principles or resources to develop their own shit hot voices.
Most copybots are glorified vending machines. Yours will think like a copywriter that's obsessed with your brand.
You didn't have "become a part-time prompt engineer" on your vision board. But to get AI to give you decent copy, that's what life has become.
And, let's be honest, prompting sucks. It's not how our brains work. It's not how creativity works. And it's just a massive drain.
That's why we train your copybot not just to write on-brand copy, but to act like an on-call copywriter. It will ask the right questions, it'll kick ideas around, it'll suggest different ideas before it writes...
And best of all, you can say "we need a subject line" and it'll ask you everything it needs to know to do the job properly. It won't just churn out shite.
TLDR: It's probably as close as you can get to having us write every word for you without, you know, having us write every word for you.
(We'll set it up in Claude, ChatGPT or whatever you're using. We won't force you into using new tools.)
VOICE & AI SETUP
For brands that already know how they sound.
You've got a brand voice. And you tell AI about that voice several times a day. Yet it still loves to colour outside the lines.
If that sounds familiar, we'll document your voice in a way AI (and your team) can use without going rogue, build your copybot around it, and then leave you with something that feels less like prompt-in-copy-out and more like you've cloned a really good copywriter, trained them on your brand and trapped them inside your keyboard.
VOICE DEVELOPMENT & AI SETUP
For brands that know who they are. Just not quite how to say it.
Find yourself wondering if AI is producing rubbish copy because it's doing a bad job or because your messaging needs work? We can help.
We start by working with you to figure out how your brand should sound, what it believes, what the big messaging looks like, what phrases you use over and over... until you get to that "oh shit, this is it!" moment. Where you have a voice you can't wait to get live.
Then, we train your AI on two things: a voice document that writes in your new voice every time and how to think like brand copywriters that have been doing this for 10+ years. That way, whether it's your team or your AI writing copy, every word feels like it properly does your brand justice.
"An absolute game-changer…
transformational for us as a brand."
Want to see our AI copywriter in action?
The best way to show you what properly trained AI copy looks like is, well, to just show you.
Grab 30 mins on our calendar and we'll give you a demo of the brand voice docs we create, the copybots themselves and then we'll run the same brief through AI with a "brand copy" prompts we paid £10 for vs a copybot we've built and trained to think and write like us.
Then if it feels right, we'll talk about how we can team up to get your AI sounding like you.
Book a demo or drop us a line at hello@dowordsgood.com
Get to know the copywriters that'll be training your AI
We're the people sending each other copy screenshots at 11pm. Who have entire Slack threads dedicated to stuff to add to our swipe file. Joe even texted Jack some copy he saw at 2am from a Glastonbury field.
So when we train your copybot, we're not just teaching it rules and formulas. We're teaching it the instincts we've spent a decade-and-a-bit developing AKA knowing the difference between copy that's fine and copy that makes you say "oh shit, that's good".
JACK
BARCLAY
Older brother. Obsessed with brand voice. Has genuinely rewritten a headline 103 times before we sent it over.
When I’m not at my desk: pretending I’m Carmy from The Bear, searching for wild mushrooms with the kids, or working on the home renovation with an AF brewski in hand.
JOE
KARAALI-BARCLAY
Younger brother. Former solo marketer for an ecomm brand. Feels like the walls are closing in if he doesn’t have a process and a system.
When I’m not at my desk: updating my Strava, puppy training, trekking out to craft breweries, or rewatching Mad Men under the banner of “professional development”.
FAQs
What's the difference between Voice & AI Setup and Voice Development & AI Setup?
It's basically the same service. It just comes down to whether your brand voice already exists in a way you're happy with.
Voice & AI Setup is for brands that already have a voice, even if it's just "vibes in a copywriter's head". We'll work with you to document and train your AI to write copy that sounds exactly like that.
Voice Development & AI Setup is for brands where something's off. Maybe your copy's been inconsistent for a while, or you've grown and the voice hasn't kept up, or it just never really sounded like you. We do the strategic brand voice work first to help you work out what your brand actually stands for and how it should sound. Then we document it and build your copybot.
We've already got a brand voice document. Can you still help?
Oh yeah, 100%. In fact, that makes our job even easier.
The big issue with most brand voice documents is they're written for humans, not AI. They say things like "we're warm but professional" which is great for humans who have lifetimes of context, but is super ambiguous to language model.
We'll take what you've got, stress-test it, fill in the gaps, and rewrite it in a way that AI is going to understand. (And, importantly, not misunderstand.) Then we'll build your copybot around it.
Which AI tools do you build the copybot in?
Pretty much whatever your team already uses. We're not going to make you switch tools or sign up for something new.
We work in ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, whichever. If you're already set up in one of those, we'll build your copybot right there.
If you're not sure which one to use, we'll probably suggest Claude because it's our tool of choice, but we'll work with you to make that decision.
How long does the whole thing take?
For Voice & AI Setup, we're typically done and dusted in about two weeks. Three weeks, absolute max. (And that's usually if you've got a particularly knotty brand voice with lots of different audiences and different arms of the business.)
For Voice Development & AI Setup, it's usually three to four weeks. That extra time is dedicated to the deeper thinking and positioning work at the start.
Either way, there's no lengthy briefing process or waiting around for documents to go back and forth. We've done this enough that we can do a few calls, get stuck in and get the first version of everything almost good enough to sign off.
Will our whole team be able to use it, or just the people who are already good at prompting?
This is the thing we love the most about this. The whole point is that anyone on your team can use it to get copy. Prompting goes out of the window.
We build the copybot so that it feels like working with real copywriters. (We modelled it on ourselves.) It'll ask questions, suggest ideas, follow up if it doesn't know stuff... so you can just say "we need a social media caption" and it'll take it from there. No 300 word prompt just to get 3 lines required.
Plus, at the end of the project, we run a training session with your team so everyone knows how to get the best out of it.
Do you use AI to write our brand voice document?
Kinda. We do the thinking ourselves. We work with you on the brand stuff and the strategic stuff. That things that make your brand uniquely awesome.
Then the brand voice documentation for your team is written by us based on that discovery session, your existing copy, your customer language and a lot of careful thinking.
However, we use AI for a few things during this process. We use it to parse lots of voice of customer research and analyse trends. We use it to write its own instructions based on the human brand voice document. ("hey,what stuff in here is going to be misinterpreted or mean you have to guess at what it means?" kinda thing) And we obviously use it to test.
What happens at the four-week check-in?
By the time we check back in, your team will have been using the copybot for a month. We'll have real examples to look at.
We'll review what's working, look at anything that's still sounding off, and update the documentation and copybot accordingly. It's only ever tweaks, but we want to make sure it's working perfectly.
Think of it as a fine-tune once it's bedded in, rather than a sign-off and goodbye.
We've tried giving AI our brand guidelines before and it didn't really work. How is this different?
Yeah, this is the most common thing we hear. And it makes sense because most brand guidelines aren't written with AI in mind.
Pasting a PDF into ChatGPT is a start. But it hits a couple of snags. The documentation is written for people, not AI. Brand voice documents tend to focus on style, not substance. So you end up with copy that uses the write words but feels wrong. And AI wants to write really salesy copy, which isn't always right for your brand.
What we do is a bit different. We write documentation specifically designed to work as AI instructions, covering the things language models actually respond to (sentence structure, vocabulary, what to avoid, how to handle different content types...) as well as teach it to think like your brand. We teach it your mission, your story, the thinking behind every decision... Then we build and test the copybot properly before handing it over.
Can we pay by card or split the invoice?
Oh yeah, 100%. We know cashflow isn't always straightforward.
We accept corporate cards (including Amex), and if you'd rather split the payment over a couple of instalments, just shout. No fees or interest or anything like that. Whatever works for you.