Patterson Dental marketing voice — full reference

Source: Patterson Dental Marketing Copy Voice, updated 9/25/18 [VOICE18]. The document’s own subtitle is “An addendum to the Patterson Brand Guide.”

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1. Scope — this is a layer, not a replacement

[VOICE18] adds to the corporate voice (corporate-voice.md). Everything in the corporate voice still applies to Dental copy: optimistic, clear, truthful, personable; AP style; active voice; sentence case.

Important

Do not swap one for the other, and do not blend Dental attributes into corporate or Veterinary copy.

“When we describe the voice of our marketing copy, we are not talking specifically about the messages we send or the words we are choosing. Instead, we are talking about a set of ideals that we espouse as we write for the dental business… We need to continue showing up as the same company regardless of who is sitting behind the keyboard.”

2. The three attributes

“If our copy is empathetic, empowering and authoritative, we will always be on brand.”

Empathetic

“We not only understand what the customer is talking about, we have the insider knowledge to feel what they are feeling.”

Written for doctors, office managers, hygienists, assistants and others. Solutions are offered from a place of unadulterated authenticity.

Tip

Guardrail: emotional connection is good; overselling is bad.

Empowering

Every piece should make the customer think about the next step toward actualising their vision. Aspirational language, grounded in the facts of running a business.

Tip

Guardrail: nudge — do not shove — people toward purchases that can change their practice forever.

Authoritative

The healthcare professionals we address are experts in their field. At Patterson we are experts on the business practices, equipment, technology, software and merchandise a dental team needs.

“We leverage our 140+ years in business to speak with a high level of authority regarding the efficacy of our product offerings (and our advice).”

Tip

Guardrail: “There is no reason to be shy.”

3. Positioning line

“Patterson Dental is relied upon for expertise and is trusted to support dental practices around the country as they endeavor to grow both in size and capacity for care.”

4. Cautions

Warning

“140+ years” was written in 2018. Verify the current figure before reusing it in copy.

Warning

[VOICE18] is eight years old at time of extraction. Its attributes are still cited by [BG25 p.12], which links to it, so it remains in force — but confirm with Corporate Marketing before treating any specific wording as current.

Note

The document contains five links to campaign examples (“See our voice in the wild”). Those are titles only in the PDF’s text layer, with no URLs. [TBD: the referenced campaign examples are not recoverable from the document.]

5. Other sub-brands

[TBD: no equivalent voice addendum exists for **Patterson Veterinary** or **Animal Health International**.]

For those audiences, use the corporate voice from corporate-voice.md and say explicitly that no sub-brand addendum was found.

Caution

Do not transplant the Dental attributes onto them — [VOICE18] is scoped to “the dental business” in its own words.

6. Audience terminology reminder

Dental and Veterinary do not share vocabulary [COPY22]:

Veterinary copy uses	Not
patient	pet, animal
exam room	operatory
clinic or hospital	office, business

Sales roles also differ:

Unit	Title
Dental	territory representatives
Veterinary	territory managers

See the copy-style-guide skill.

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Source of truth: plugins/patterson-brand/skills/voice-and-tone/references/dental-voice.md in the patterson-corp repository.