I'd love to share some new work with you 🤗

A new type of project for me!

Some new work!

I loved getting to work with Kari Ginsburg on bringing her new beautiful website to life via words. This was sort of a brand new kind of scope for me…

Check out how we worked together and if anyone has an idea of what to call this, I might start offering this to more clients… What would you call it?

At first Kari was considering bringing on a copywriter to write all her new website copy for her coaching business Uproar Coaching, but Kari has such a strong, unique personality that I thought it’d be a shame if the website didn’t properly capture her voice.

First, brand strategy:

I suggested we instead work together on defining Uproar’s brand through positioning, differentiated value, personality, and a messaging hierarchy. Kari has done so much thoughtful work on her business that this was really seamless to do together with my go-to tools and frameworks.

Copy direction:

I then laid out what I’m calling “copy wireframes” - in Figma, I took the outputs from the frameworks and laid out what messages should go where, and a word count to aim for. Kari then rewrote those marketing messages in her wonderful voice to properly sound like her, passed the copy to her designer, and I did small final edits once the design was ready.

Some takeaways from this process:

• When people in service-based businesses get stuck or lose motivation with marketing, the first impulse and standard is often to outsource something like content creation or copywriting. But lately I’ve been thinking about how much of the person is lost in that process. Personality is SO important for a service-based business. If you’re worried about someone not properly capturing your voice (which is WAY harder for a copywriter to do than writing in a brand voice), consider getting strategy help and someone to tell you what to write where. My hypothesis right now is most people mostly need help knowing what to say, simplifying your message, and some accountability to actually get it out there. I might go into this more when I cover personal branding.

• I believe the best brands have some tension. I picked this up from some thought leader years ago and now I can’t remember who, I’m so sorry! But it’s the idea that as people we inherently have characteristics that have tension because we aren’t built in a lab. Take me as an example - I love The Bachelor but also consider myself, on some days at least, somewhat intellectual. (There are a lot of “intellectual” Bachelor fans out there :) ) Or looking at brands - Soul Cycle was exclusive in pricing and difficulty, but inclusive in its language and encouragement. All to say, Kari’s website is a GREAT example of a brand with interesting tension. Just look at her personality-filled unconventional photos and bright colors, but backed up by certifications and deep experience in her field. Kari already had this deep sense of herself and her strengths before we started working together, I just got to help bring it to life a little :)

If you’re a misfit, outlier, rule-breaker, and trailblazer feeling a little unsatisfied or unfulfilled, I highly recommend checking out Kari’s services!

—

Other brand bits & bobs:

• All the coverage of Abercrombie’s rebrand has been really interesting and has got me thinking. This article in The Cut about the “unbranding” is one of the best. The rebrand has obviously been successful for them, but I’m also curious how defensible it is against competitors, since ultimately, “give millennial women the clothes they want” is a little bland in the long run. To me the new brand already not much different that J.Crew, Madewell, and The Gap in recent years, and you’re seeing American Eagle start to look more like this as well. Look at these three pretty undistinguishable landing pages from three different stores…

• Very much enjoyed this deep dive into the importance of early stage branding from

  Koto
  :

  Early-stage branding: driving go-to-market impact

• I’m always a fan of marketing channels that are not social media, so this list of 100 ways to share your work + life that aren’t social media was an immediate bookmark.

• On the topic of brand tension (which I mentioned above with Kari’s work), I recommend the How I Built This episode about Slutty Vegan. She talks a lot about how she wanted more playful, scandalous language that got people talking because vegan brands are usually really leaning into health and natural and can risk coming off boring, preachy, or too granola. She leaned into provocative language and names to build interest and make it more interesting.

• Similarly, this video on Tony Chocolonely. It has a deep mission of eradicating child slavery in the chocolate supply chain, but the brand identity is so bright and colorful and playful.

• Nothing deep to say here, but I just really like the brand identities of The Trampery, a workspace in London, and Le Rub, a sunscreen.

• How fun was the Esprit brand back in the 80s and 90s?

P.S. Thanks to everyone for your kind replies and comments about my mid-year in review! For others, check out Alexa Phillips’ and Sarah Jutras’.

---

Let’s chat!

If you dig what I’m putting down:

• Shoot me a reply back

• Check out my full site and The Office of Beloved Brands

• If you want to support my work in another way, I do have paid subscriptions turned on. I’m not offering additional content at this time for paid subscribers, so it’s kind of like a tip jar. A completely optional tip jar 😊