In this episode of Bite Big, recorded live in London as part of our UK creative leadership series, Amber Bonney sits down with Vikki Ross, the woman described by Creativebrief as "the UK’s leading tone of voice and copywriting expert."
Vikki has spent almost 30 years shaping how some of the world’s most iconic brands talk. Sky. BAFTA. ITV. IMAX. And most recently, Range Rover, Defender, Discovery and Jaguar, four distinct British luxury vehicle brands, voiced simultaneously, from scratch.
But what makes Vikki’s story worth leaning into isn’t just the portfolio. It’s the philosophy. Her mantra, trust the process, or more accurately as she reframes it in this episode, trust the journey, isn’t a slogan. It’s how she has navigated an entire career built on happy accidents, open doors and the discipline to wait and see. No grand plan. No career ladder. Just curiosity, craft and an absolute refusal to let brands sound like everyone else.
In this conversation, Amber and Vikki get into the real mechanics of brand voice: what it takes to find it, how to protect it, and why AI can execute copy but can’t replicate the soul of a brand. They talk about the Jaguar rebrand pile-on (Vikki was in the room; she has thoughts), the growing sea of sameness that AI is accelerating, and why she rewrote her entire approach to brand guidelines so that non-copywriters could actually use them.
Vikki also gets honest about the nervousness behind her public confidence, the side hustles that didn’t pan out, and why the best advice she’d give her 16 year old self is the same thing she tells her clients: just wait. It’ll all happen.This is a conversation about words. But it’s also about conviction, patience and the underestimated power of sounding like yourself.