Brand voice as infrastructure

As the sole copywriter at M1, I write almost everything that clients see. Marketing emails, product copy, in-app messages, push notifications, App Store screens… the list goes on. All of it needs to adhere to two big things: 1) the brand voice and 2) FINRA 2210. Every retail communication has to be fair, balanced, and not misleading, with specific disclosures depending on what it's about. I helped shape messaging, voice, and tone amid a brand evolution. There's documentation, but much of the nuance lives in my head.

There are two ways that can end. I become the bottleneck for copy review, or I let people inside my head.

M1 is a tech company bullish on AI. If you were me, maybe you'd ask: can AI write copy? Is my job obsolete?

That's the wrong question. Yes, AI can write copy. That's obvious. I'm not too precious about my role to admit it.

The real question is: can AI write copy like a senior brand copywriter with over 10 years of experience and a particular set of pet peeves? And can it avoid triggering too many compliance edits?

Turns out it can. If I teach it to.

Enter: emilybot, a Claude skill that takes everything I think about while writing copy for the company and uses it to generate solid first drafts.

For me, it's not a go-to step in my drafting process. I still have a lot of fun stringing words together from my brain.

For people at the company who aren't writers, it gets them a lot closer to how I'd approach a copy draft. That way, they can draft sample copy that starts a lot closer to what I'd say, instead of waiting on me to come up with something.

Usually, a brand voice document gets read once, during onboarding, and then never again. This goes above and beyond that.

It's modular. It always pulls up Philosophy, Voice & tone, and Compliance for every task. Then it pulls up the specific channel based on the task.

Anyone can write “be conversational” in a style guide. The hard part is remembering all the rules for staying legally compliant.

FINRA 2210 is referenced for do-and-don't patterns: the difference between a guarantee and a possibility, between creating urgency with a real deadline versus manufactured fear, between a factual comparison and an unsubstantiated one. Alongside that, a coded disclosure library organized by product, so the correct language attaches to the correct claim automatically.

Disclosures are scoped by channel. Requirements that apply to a web page don't apply to in-product copy, and a system that demanded them everywhere would be ignored everywhere. To get it right, I had to understand the rules and collab with the compliance team.

The system includes an explicit prohibition on AI writing patterns: the “it's not X, it's Y” construction, em-dashes. Basically, if it reads like a language model wrote it, rewrite it.

I put that in for a good reason. I didn't want the copy to sound machine-generated. Technically on-brand but… somehow soulless. And let's be honest, as soon as you send an email with an em-dash, people start yelling “AI! AI!” (Such a shame. It used to be my favorite punctuation.)

Nine versions so far, each with a changelog noting what changed and why. One named owner.

It is built to absorb new products, audience updates, and whatever else arrives. I can add copy phrases that get banned by compliance to the “do not say” list. Oh, and that means it hasn't stolen my job quite yet.

The system means someone outside the brand team can produce a credible, mostly compliant first draft without waiting on me. It isn't a substitute for compliance review, which is required for every piece, but it comes close to a draft I'd recognize.

My work is spent thinking about big-picture messaging and strategy. I can be editorial rather than in the weeds drafting. It's a skill used for marketing, product design, client experience, blog, and AEO work.