Permission to Make the Rules

Hello and welcome to the twelfth edition of The Ferocity Letter, a softly fierce Sunday note for visionary women—and everyone who supports them.

My mission is to empower you to trust your intuition and communicate with presence, clarity, and resonance.

Every other week, I share field notes, practices, and words from women.

This week’s letter is about how to approach building brand & communications style guides that will enable anyone who creates for you—or your brand—to better understand the voice, tone, message and meaning you need to deliver.

In the last two weeks, I’ve had conversations with three women who are each creating (or co-creating) brand positioning for new businesses.

One is opening a hotel, restaurant, and retreat center here in the San Juan Islands. One is leading corporate communications, brand, and marketing for a startup. One is an experienced copywriter and website creator reinventing her business to focus on design.

Brand and communications style guides came up in all three conversations!

It made me realize there is a hunger for having one, if you lead a business or oversee communications for one.

In fact, the copywriter went so far as to tell me,

“I’ve gotten to the point where I won’t write for a business until they have a clear brand or style guide that helps me understand their voice. The trial and error to figure out how to write for them by revising blog posts and web pages over and over is exhausting and wastes time. I wind up trying my best to create a voice for them as we go, when that part should already be clear and I should simply be focused on writing or designing in it.”

There are 25 bajillion free articles on the web about “How to create a brand guide” and “How to create a style guide,” and as I perused some before writing this week’s letter, I was struck by how formulaic they can be. Now, I love a good framework. As a foundation, it helps me be more creative with my thinking when I have a grounded structure from which to push off from. Ideas can take flight while staying at least somewhat grounded in the purpose they were intended to serve.

But I also know this: Of the myriad of brand and communications style guides I’ve used and helped build in my career, no two are identical in structure or form!

This is the fun part.

There are no prescribed rules you must follow.

You are creating the rules.

And each brand, like every human being, is a completely unique expression.

My advice? You already know it involves journaling. Get out a pen (or hire someone who loves to listen and write while you talk).

Perhaps most importantly of all, answer this first:

How do you want your customer, client, reader, or listener to *feel when they encounter your brand?

A brand is a promise, and your reputation is how you fulfill and live up to that promise. Consistency of communication and design is part of building that trust. The way you write does more than describe your brand—it also serves to shape it because it shapes how people will feel when they encounter your brand.

Next, dive into these eight questions:

1. Brand Identity: Who are you? Tell us everything. Where you were born. What is your name. Who do you love? Who loves you? What are you here to do?

2. Brand Guiding Light: What is your purpose? Your North Star? The most important thing you always come back to? Your business or brand’s very reason for being here on this earth?

3. Brand Essence: How does your purpose boil down as a concept? How might you distill it into just a few single-word descriptors? (e.g. Love. Service. Nature. Ferocity. Education. Magic. Equity. Lift. Nurture. Vision. Women. Visibility. Warmth. Empowerment. Angelic. Speed. Mindful. Intelligent.)

   1. Play with dozens of words. Write a bunch of them on a white board. Get the thesaurus down from the shelf. Explore what the most interesting words mean to you, your organization, your team. Choose three or four, no more. These might even become your communications and brand positioning essence words. You might even give them their own page in your brand book or style guide.

4. Brand House: If your brand was person and they lived in a house, what would that house be like? Imagine and describe it in your guide. “House of [Your Brand Name Goes Here].” Get as detailed as possible:

   1. What does it look like? Colors. Artwork. Landscaping. Room set up. Furniture. Flow. Cleanliness. Windows. Doors. Flooring. Amenities. Location.

   2. What is the experience people have when they visit your brand’s home? How do they feel? What do they do? What is their favorite part of your house? How often do they visit? What happens to them during and after? How are they changed? What are the emotions they might experience?

5. Brand Persona: If your brand was a person, how would they interact with other human beings?

   1. How do they behave? Are they more introverted or extraverted? Are they polite? Cautious? Reserved? Conscientious? Deeply listening? Asking thoughtful questions? Are they outgoing? Gregarious? Like a stage actor with talent, flair, wit and charm?

   2. What is it about their character that causes people to not only like them, but come to trust them?

   3. What do they say? What are some phrases, colloquialisms, words and sentences they would say often? What are some things they would never be caught dead saying?

6. Brand Vision: What is the world you—and your brand persona—envision and wish to invite and manifest? I am asking what is the grand, pie-in-the-sky vision that maybe feels like a far-off dream today, and will be utterly amazing when it does come true? Describe that world to us. Make us feel the possibility with you. Make it electric, give it energy, allow us to feel it and want it too.

7. Brand Mission: What do you—and your brand—wake up and do, every day, to make this vision come true? What are the actionable goals you have set to get closer and closer to the vision?

8. Brand Values: Values are verbs (thank you Simon Sinek1). What are the principles your brand lives by, and how do they translate into actions?

There are dozens of different details to consider including in your guide. Like I said earlier, you can find all of them by Googling: “How to create a brand guide” or “How to create a communications guide.” A few examples:

1. Will your brand write in AP Style? Chicago Manual of Style? American Medical Association? IEEE? The Bluebook? Some combination of theses?

2. Will you have special rules for special things, like: Does every blog post include a call to action? Or a prayer? Or a link? Or a question?

3. Will your brand be brief, sharp and to-the-point? Or will your style lean to longer sentences that that flow like poetry, dropping unexpected gifts for the reader?

Mostly, I want to give you permission to create the guide that serves you, your brand, your business, and the people who will help you write, design, and build it. You can follow a formula, but remember that the rules are being written by you!

A brand and communications style guide is a living, breathing book. Like a magician’s book of spells, it will be constantly changing. Allow for this. Plan for this. Do not get caught up in perfection for posterity. There is no such thing.

“Am I doing this right?”

The answer is yes.

There is no perfect brand or style guide waiting somewhere on the internet for you to discover it.

There is only the one you create.

Trust your instincts.

Trust your voice.

Trust the spark that made you start this thing in the first place.

Permission granted.

Now, go make the rules.

1. INGRID BERGMAN, Academy Award-winning actor and international film icon

“You must train your intuition - you must trust the small voice inside you which tells you exactly what to say, what to decide.”2

2. PENNEY PEIRCE, author of “The Intuitive Way”

“People often ask me if they can trust their imagination. They assume that there is some kind of evil twin lurking beneath the surface, bent on sabotaging the good twin on the outside. It’s as though imagination is an insidious force, which, given the slightest foothold, will trick your logical mind into losing control or acting foolishly. I remind them that the logical mind would have nothing to do but repeat itself ad infinitum if it weren’t for the creativity and genius of imagination. Life would have no juice, no zest.”3

3. SHARON BLACKIE, Award-winning writer and internationally recognized teacher of the mythic imagination and mythic feminine

“Women are spinners and weavers; we are the ones who spin the threads and weave them into meaning and pattern. Like silkworms, we create those threads out of our own substance, pulling the strong, fine fibres out of our own hearts and wombs. It’s time to make some new threads; time to strengthen the frayed wild edges of our own being and then weave ourselves back into the fabric of our culture. Once we knew the patterns for weaving the world; we can piece them together again. Women can heal the Wasteland. We can remake the world. This is what women do. This is our work.”4

When women trust their ferocity, they remake the world.

Thank you for reading The Ferocity Letter.

I write these words to encourage and empower you—and because I need them, too.

If you are creating the stylebook for your brand, and would value a thought partner in the process, I'd love to hear from you.

Until next time, trust your ferocity.

— Laura

Laura Lowery is an advisor to visionary women. A communications strategist, writer, and founder of Light Advisors—she partners with purpose-driven leaders to give voice to your vision, elevate your presence, and empower you to communicate with clarity and resonance. Learn more: lightadvisors.co