Cloudstyle: the voice system
Google has a very distinct voice. But Google Cloud is B2B, and writers kept mistaking B2B for boring. So we built Cloudstyle, Google Cloud's first standalone brand guidelines, and gave the brand a voice of its own: everything that makes Google, Google, tuned for business. Four attributes carried it. Be helpful. Be simple. Be confident. Be friendly. Then I trained 17 writers on the system, with do/don't rewrites, a synonym bank for escaping jargon, and one rule above all: the 'B' in B2B doesn't mean boring.