# Discovery Questionnaire The exhaustive 80+ question bank. Group questions into AskUserQuestion batches (max 4 per call). The SKILL.md Phase 1 lists the minimum-viable subset; this file is the deep bank for high-stakes brands, multi-market work, or category audits. > Rule of thumb: most failures in tone-of-voice work trace back to a rushed Phase 1. The discipline rewards depth here. --- ## Table of contents - [A. Brand foundations](#a-brand-foundations) - [B. Audience](#b-audience) - [C. Positioning and competitive landscape](#c-positioning-and-competitive-landscape) - [D. Business goals](#d-business-goals) - [E. Personality and culture](#e-personality-and-culture) - [F. Content scope](#f-content-scope) - [G. Constraints](#g-constraints) - [H. Existing assets](#h-existing-assets) - [I. Stakeholders and governance](#i-stakeholders-and-governance) - [J. Edge cases and emotional registers](#j-edge-cases-and-emotional-registers) - [Batching guidance](#batching-guidance) --- ## A. Brand foundations If `SOUL.md` exists, most of this section is already answered — extract and confirm rather than re-asking. 1. What is the founding story in 90 seconds? Who started it, when, why? 2. What was the original problem the brand was created to solve? 3. What is the mission statement (current, in use, not the one in the deck)? 4. What is the vision (10-year horizon)? 5. What are the values, and which are aspirational versus lived? 6. What does the brand believe that the category does not? 7. What is the single sentence the CEO would want a stranger to remember? 8. What has the brand previously claimed about itself that turned out to be wrong? 9. Are there cultural artefacts (rituals, internal slang, founder phrases) that should be preserved in the voice? 10. What is off-limits? (Topics, opinions, public stances.) ## B. Audience 1. Who are the top 3 personas, named, with a one-paragraph bio each? 2. What are the JTBDs (jobs to be done) each persona hires the brand for? 3. What words do they use for the problem? For the solution? (Mine sales calls, support tickets, reviews.) 4. Which subreddits, Slack groups, LinkedIn communities, newsletters do they live in? 5. What other brands do they buy that you admire and want to share voice DNA with? 6. What other brands do they buy that you do **not** want to be confused with? 7. What is the emotional state when they encounter your content? (Anxious, bored, curious, urgent, defensive.) 8. What does success feel like for them after engaging with your content? 9. What is their reading level, literacy, and language fluency? 10. Are there sub-personas with materially different linguistic norms (developer vs PM; donor vs volunteer; junior buyer vs C-suite)? ## C. Positioning and competitive landscape 1. Who are the 5 direct competitors? 2. Who are 3 adjacent brands you are sometimes compared with? 3. How do they sound on the NN/g 4 dimensions? (Plot them.) 4. Which of their voices do you respect, and why? 5. Which voices in your category are commodities (everyone sounds the same)? 6. What is your category truth that no competitor will say out loud? 7. What is the one sentence about your brand that, if a competitor wrote it, would make you angry? 8. If you disappeared tomorrow, what would the category lose? 9. Where does your voice need to differ from category default to be recognisable? 10. Where does your voice need to conform to category default to be credible? ## D. Business goals 1. What content goals does ToV need to serve in the next 12 months? (Demand, activation, retention, recruiting, fundraising, policy change.) 2. What is the largest content investment area? (Where small voice gains compound the most.) 3. What does a "good" piece of content look like from a business perspective? 4. What KPIs will be used to test whether voice work is working? 5. What is the budget and headcount for content production? 6. Who owns content P&L? ## E. Personality and culture 1. If the brand were a person at a dinner party, who would they be? (Job, age range, hobbies, what they read, who they admire.) 2. Which 3 employees most embody the desired voice today? 3. Which public figures would you point to as voice references (not to imitate, but to triangulate)? 4. How does the founder sound, and how much of that should survive in the brand voice? 5. What is the internal culture (Slack-channel tone, all-hands tone)? Should that show externally? 6. What jokes does the team make about the brand or category? Any worth surfacing? 7. What does the team find embarrassing about how the brand currently sounds? ## F. Content scope 1. Which channels are in scope? (Web, blog, email, social per platform, in-product, support, sales decks, press, legal, recruiting, internal.) 2. Which formats? (Long-form essay, listicle, video script, podcast, newsletter, push notification, ad copy.) 3. Frequency per channel? 4. Who owns each channel? Who writes? Who reviews? Who publishes? 5. Which third parties create content in your name? (Agencies, freelancers, influencers, ambassadors.) 6. Where does AI-generated content enter the workflow today? 7. What is the lifespan of content? (Evergreen, campaign-bound, ephemeral.) ## G. Constraints 1. Legal constraints: claims, disclaimers, regulated-industry language. 2. Regulatory constraints: GDPR, HIPAA, FDA, SEC, FCA, ASA, etc. 3. Accessibility requirements: WCAG, plain-language laws (US Plain Writing Act, etc.). 4. Cultural and religious sensitivities per market. 5. Linguistic constraints: which languages, which regional variants (en-US vs en-GB, pt-BR vs pt-PT). 6. Trademark constraints: how the brand and product names must be written. 7. Existing contractual commitments to specific naming conventions. ## H. Existing assets 1. Inventory of current content by channel, owner, performance. 2. Top 10 best-performing pieces in the last 12 months. What do they share? 3. Bottom 10. What do they share? 4. Any existing style guide, brand book, messaging framework? 5. Customer-facing language audit: what do reviews, support tickets, and social mentions say back to you? 6. Are there pre-existing taboos or banned-word lists? ## I. Stakeholders and governance 1. Who is the final decision-maker on voice? 2. Who is the day-to-day owner? 3. Who reviews content at what threshold? 4. What is the escalation path for sensitive copy (crisis, legal grey area, public criticism)? 5. Which teams write but currently do not consult any guide? (Sales, recruiting, HR, support, legal.) 6. What is the budget for training and tooling? 7. Who signs off on changes to the voice itself? ## J. Edge cases and emotional registers Each of these answers becomes a row in the tone modulation matrix. Skipping any of them means the matrix has gaps that downstream writers will silently fill with category default. 1. How should we sound during a crisis? (Outage, recall, lawsuit, public criticism.) 2. How should we sound when responding to complaints (justified, unjustified, viral)? 3. How should we sound on sensitive societal topics? Should we engage at all, and which ones? 4. How should humour work? Where is it banned? 5. What does an apology sound like in our voice? 6. What does celebration sound like (a win, an anniversary, a customer milestone)? 7. How do we acknowledge a mistake without destroying trust? 8. How do we say "no" to a customer? 9. How do we deliver bad news (price increases, sunsetting a feature, layoffs)? 10. How do we sound when a customer or community member uses language we disagree with? --- ## Batching guidance Use these batches when running `AskUserQuestion` (max 4 questions per call). The SKILL.md describes the minimum-viable subset; use these expanded batches for high-stakes brands. | Batch | Section(s) | Questions in batch | Why batched together | | --- | --- | --- | --- | | 1 — Foundations | A | 1, 3, 5, 6 | Anchors everything downstream; load-bearing answers | | 2 — Audience essentials | B | 1, 3, 7, 9 | Audience determines tone modulation more than any other input | | 3 — Competitive frame | C | 1, 5, 7, 9 | Differentiation; surfaces where to diverge from category | | 4 — Goals | D | 1, 3, 4 | Without goals, voice work optimises for nothing | | 5 — Personality | E | 1, 3, 4 | Surfaces the founder/CEO trap and triangulation references | | 6 — Scope | F | 1, 2, 4, 5 | Defines which channels need modulation sections | | 7 — Constraints | G | 1, 2, 3, 4 | Hard limits before defining attributes | | 8 — Existing assets | H | 1, 2, 3, 4 | Audit grounding; what's working vs not | | 9 — Governance | I | 1, 2, 4, 7 | Without these, the guide will not be enforced post-launch | | 10 — Edge cases | J | 1, 3, 4, 9 | Highest-leverage matrix cells | Use `AskUserQuestion` only for questions where you genuinely cannot infer the answer. If `SOUL.md` already answers section A, skip batch 1. If the user has shared their existing brand book, skip the questions it covers. For free-text answers (e.g. references, anti-references, persona descriptions), prefer asking the user to provide them in a single message rather than forcing them through a 4-choice picker.