We collaborated with our small team of voice enthusiasts to determine how we could impact the voice of Microsoft. We spoke with dozens of writers and reviewers across the company —including employees from Windows, Office, Server & Azure, customer service, public sector and marketing. We reviewed research and collected existing artifacts that communicated related guidance. And we integrated our findings and insights into a tight, high-level campaign aimed to create impact across the organization.

Drawing inspiration from many facets of the brand, we carefully crafted language and clear principles to illustrate our voice. And we decided to promote the work through an integrated suite of materials.

As voice is about our words, we designed exclusively with typography. We pushed our font guidelines and color systems to make strong statements about the significance of our voice.

We published an 80-page book, meant to be used as inspiration and high-level guidance. And we worked with our field teams to translate and produce the spirit of the guidance to be locally relevant in our 16 top languages.

We created a short, anthemic video, using related typographic treatments, fluid motion and human sounds to bring our voice to life.

In achieve success with our global network of content creators, we are promoting the work through a variety of media and channels. We introduced our voice at a workshop for our global CMOs at our annual MGX (Microsoft Global Exchange) conference. And we continue to present at key marketing and communications all-hands meetings and functions across the organization and around the world.

In addition, we created two instructional videos and shared them on an intranet site that we built to promote the content and training materials.

We are also leading hands-on workshops with small groups of 10-12 people responsible for creating content. Participants submit work that we rewrite together to illustrate our voice principles. People come away with a deeper understanding of Microsoft’s modern voice, tools they can use with their teams to write in this voice and specific before/after examples of their work.

So far, we’ve changed our voice for over 3,000 global content creators. The work is taking off, and is met with enthusiasm and an open desire for change. And the best is yet to come.