Tone of Voice, Branding & Strategy Blog

TOP OF THE MORNIN': COFFEE AFTER A TRIPLE ESPRESSO

27 / March / 2023

You know the drill: you walk into a stripped-back, slightly industrial space which has splashed out on the plywood, and head to the counter, where a bearded fellow in cobalt-coloured ‘workwear’ is lighting a bunsen burner while you read a menu with six different roast options. Mild panic kicks in when you realise it’s your […]

HONEST BURGERS: FAR MORE THAN TALKING THE TALK

27 / June / 2022

We write all kinds of things for all kinds of brands, but it’s burgers and rosemary salted chips that got us thinking. Since we worked on this project for Honest Burgers, we haven’t looked at fields in the same way. We now play ‘Industrial Farming I Spy’ – and it’s everywhere.

UP TO MUCH?

22 / February / 2022

We haven’t had a face-to-face meeting in two whole years now. Here’s some of what we’ve been up to from our swivel chairs in the living room.

HAPPY 50TH BIRTHDAY GREENPEACE!

13 / September / 2021

‘Nothing changes without you’: here’s Greenpeace’s campaign video featuring the concept and words we came up with to celebrate their 50th birthday. The brief was to create a campaign that would thank – and go down well with – their supporters. We played with a ‘growing old disgracefully’ idea, as well as a concept to […]

Alexa, how do you get hair like Alexa?

15 / February / 2021

If you’re Meghan Markle or Alexa Chung, every day is a good hair day. Their tresses just sort of tumble in a woke-up-like-this way. Not too styled, but just styled enough. The secret to their longed-for locks is the hairdresser George Northwood. He’s been doing Alexa’s hair for years and – in beauty circles, at […]

HOW WE WORK WITH START-UPS

12 / October / 2020

When we work with start-ups, we close Word and PowerPoint and begin where they need our words-and-thinking combo the most: the front page of their website. So we sum up what they’re about in a wireframe, not a Word doc (it forces you to write in a different way), and play with how we can pitch […]

ONES THAT GOT AWAY PART THREE

14 / July / 2020

This time we’re heading to the Barbican… “Less is more” is a classic graphic design mantra. It looks good: I’m typing this on a MacBook, with a Muji notebook by my side, opposite some Vitsoe shelves, so I’m all signed up. But this style does a funny thing to words – mostly not very many […]

A non-essential word or two from us

14 / April / 2020

Back when London’s lockdown was beginning, writer and journalist Rhymer Rigby tweeted that his daughter described his job as ‘the opposite of a key worker’. Well, quite. It feels odd to take the coronavirus on as ‘content’ with tips and tricks on other ways to write about ‘unprecedented times’. And yet it feels just as […]

ONES THAT GOT AWAY PT 2

15 / May / 2019

Museums and galleries have a tried-and-rarely-strayed-from formula for campaigns. There’s nearly always a lead picture (that has tested well with focus groups), alongside the exhibition’s title. Any five-star reviews get added on later and there’s a last “final weeks” push before the exhibition closes. Often, though, that way of doing things preaches to the converted […]

ONES THAT GOT AWAY

02 / May / 2019

The first in an occasional series of ideas clients didn’t go for. This one’s for Duppy Share rum and shows you how we write stuff on social. You can read more about the tricky business of content in our new how-to guide. Our take is that a lot of what brands post on social is […]