DreamWorks Animation

Here’s another brand voice and tone story. This one features talking ogres and kung fu pandas. Okay, maybe not exactly…

Before I came onboard as a freelance copywriter for DreamWorks Animation (DWA), reporting to the Director of Creative in the Marketing Division, DreamWorks had never had any kind of style guide. And the Human Resources department needed some guidelines fast because they were in the midst of a huge recruitment drive.

So, this process was a bit seat-of-the-pants. However, I already knew that is sometimes the case on projects. At Disney, I had to rely on my “ear” for numerous different business units, none of which had a voice and tone guide.

Competitors

Disney was their main competitor. As I’d been a copywriter for Disney for almost 7 years, I was more familiar than usual with the competitor’s brain personality traits.

Next, I met with my manager and we discussed the traits he’d uncovered while working there. He and I had worked together at Disney. This plus our common ground as “outsiders” gave us an unprecedented viewpoint. We were both big fans of DWA movies, too, which helped.

Employees

As this mostly concerned HR, we discussed the kinds of folk who worked at DWA:

• Brilliant

• Quirky

• Colorful

• Hardworking

• Friendly

Honestly, they were not too different from the best character qualities in their animated films. We agreed that these made fine brand voice personality traits, particularly for Human Resources. And fortunately they agreed!