The Challenge

Founded in 1922 by military officers, USAA built its reputation on a deeply personal understanding of the military community. As the organization expanded its national marketing and advertising presence, it needed a more consistent way to communicate that relationship across channels, audiences and agency partners.

In 2014, USAA partnered with FutureBrand on a comprehensive brand refresh. Through research and workshops with leadership, members and military families, the team identified five defining brand personality traits: Warm, Genuine, Energetic, Smart and Grounded.

But identifying a personality and writing in that personality are two different things.

The initial agency-developed language sounded too corporate. It captured the strategy without capturing the people, culture and relationships that made USAA distinctive. To bring the personality traits to life, I developed a brand persona and practical guidance showing writer how to (and how not to) express those traits in their work.

Finding the Voice

Approximately one-quarter of the way into the project, development of the brand’s verbal identity moved in-house. Working collaboratively with internal creatives, I became the primary writer and final editorial owner of the voice and messaging work. I authored USAA’s four core brand messages, developed the narratives that gave the personality traits meaning, and wrote the tone-of-voice guidance that translated abstract characteristics into practical writing decisions. I also wrote If USAA Were a Person, a brand-personification narrative designed to make the organization’s character recognizable and relatable. The objective wasn’t to make USAA sound more casual. It was to make the organization sound more like itself: knowledgeable without being condescending, warm without being sentimental, and confident without losing the humility of its military roots.

Making the Voice Usable

A brand voice is only valuable if people can use it. Beyond the core messages and personality descriptions, I developed practical editorial tools to help writers, marketers and agency partners make consistent decisions. These included personality definitions, examples of what the brand should and shouldn’t sound like, usage principles, and writing and editing checklists.

The guidelines encouraged writers to consider their audience’s circumstances, lead with relevant information, communicate benefits clearly, and remove language that sounded unnecessarily institutional. They also distinguished between core brand messages and finished marketing copy. The messages were intended to guide communications, not become slogans repeated verbatim.