Tone of vegan

01 — The project

Follow Your Heart is a vegan food brand started by four hippie friends in 1970s Southern California (super cool), which was acquired by Danone. To ensure continuity, our brand strategy team worked exhaustively to document the roots and ethos of Follow Your Heart. In collaborating on the foundational brand book, I had the chance to lead tone of voice development, amplifying the brand's out-there personality.

02 — The process

Lots of brands stand for better choices, but Follow Your Heart dials it up to 11 by standing for the ideas that world peace is possible and that all living beings deserve respect. So, the challenge was to capture that without coming off as unrelatable, pretentious, or judgy. In practical terms, it meant a lot of refining to build an ownable tone. I relied on my (very smart and good-natured) brand strategy, design, and marketing teammates for feedback, and we got there.

02 — Guidelines and guardrails

Using the brand's overarching verbal and visual principles for expression, I created TOV principles, guidelines, and examples to keep messaging cohesive.