A cross-brand playbook works when it is short and says clearly what is fixed and what each brand may change. Lock five things that protect the company, and leave five things to the people who know the audience. Everything else in a 40-page brand deck is noise that teams stop reading.
TLDR: Write one page. Five locked rules (claims, logo use, review owner, reporting fields, crisis contact) and five open choices (voice, formats, rhythm, replies, local topics). Add three real example posts per brand so the rules have a face.
The five rules that stay the same for every brand
These are the rules where a mistake costs money or trust. They should never be a judgment call made at 6 pm on a Friday.
- Claims and legal lines. Which promises, prices and comparisons need sign-off before they go public.
- Logo and name use. Where the logo can appear, the exact brand name spelling, and what never gets edited.
- A named reviewer. One person per brand who can say yes or no, plus a backup.
- Reporting fields. The same few metrics, defined the same way, so a result in one brand can be compared with another.
- Crisis contact. Who gets the message first when something goes wrong, and how to reach them.
If you cannot defend a rule in one sentence, it probably belongs on the open list.
The five choices each brand makes for itself
Brands with different audiences should not sound identical. Let each team set:
- Voice. Formal, playful or dry, written as three sample sentences, not an adjective list.
- Formats. A skincare brand and a B2B software brand do not need the same mix of carousels and short video.
- Posting rhythm. Based on that brand's audience hours, not a company-wide schedule.
- Community replies. How fast, in which tone, and what gets escalated.
- Local topics. Events, holidays and jokes that only make sense in that market.
In Mydrop's data, carousels ran 10% above an account's typical post, while a link in the caption cost 7%. Facts like these are useful as defaults, but each brand should still test them on its own audience.
One page, one table
Put the whole playbook in a table so a new hire can scan it in two minutes.
| Area | Locked or open | Owner | Example to show |
|---|---|---|---|
| Claims and legal | Locked | Legal reviewer | A post that passed review |
| Logo and name | Locked | Brand lead | Correct and incorrect use |
| Review step | Locked | Brand approver | The approval note format |
| Reporting fields | Locked | Analytics owner | The monthly one-pager |
| Crisis contact | Locked | Head of social | The phone tree |
| Voice | Open | Brand social lead | Three sample posts |
| Formats and rhythm | Open | Brand social lead | Last month's calendar |
| Replies | Open | Community manager | Five model replies |
Show three real posts per brand
Rules alone get ignored. Next to each brand's row, link three posts that the team is proud of and one that missed. People learn tone from examples much faster than from definitions.
Refresh the examples every quarter. A playbook with last year's posts in it says the company stopped paying attention.
Make the locked rules part of the workflow
A rule that lives in a PDF is optional. A rule built into the review step is not. In Mydrop you can give each brand its own workspace and brand profile, and route every post through approvals so the named reviewer sees it before it goes live. The locked list then becomes the approval checklist.
Because every brand sits in the same calendar, the head of social can also see at a glance whether one brand is silent while another posts daily.
Review the playbook twice a year
Ask three questions in a short meeting:
- Which locked rule was broken, and was it because the rule was unclear?
- Which open choice created a result worth copying in other brands?
- Which rule did nobody use? Delete it.
For the next step, open your current brand guide and mark every rule as locked or open. If more than ten rules are locked, cut until five remain. Then start a workspace per brand in Mydrop and move the five rules into the approval step.
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