From brief to delivery
Five stages, the same for every service. None of them are a mystery, and none of them start until you know what’s coming next.
- 01
Enquiry & brief
You send what you’re writing, who it’s for, and what you’re starting from — existing copy, a style guide, a spreadsheet of products, or nothing at all yet.
Needs from youEnough for us to understand the job, not a finished document.
- 02
Scoping & quote
We read the brief and, if anything’s missing, ask before quoting rather than guessing. A written quote goes back — what’s covered, how many pieces, what a revision covers — before any writing starts.
Needs from youAnswers to any follow-up questions, and a decision to proceed.
- 03
Draft
The first version gets written from the brief and whatever source material you sent. If there’s no established voice yet — a new brand, nothing published — the draft is built from the brief itself and becomes the first real thing to react to.
Needs from youNothing, until it lands. This is the part that happens without you.
- 04
Revision
You read the draft and say what’s working and what isn’t — specific reactions are more useful than “make it punchier”. Changes that match the original brief get made as part of the quoted revision stage. A different direction than the brief described is a new scope, and we’ll say so rather than treat it as a small fix.
Needs from youDirect feedback, ideally in one pass rather than a trickle of edits over several weeks.
- 05
Delivery
Finished copy goes over in a format you can actually use — a document you can hand to a developer, paste into a CMS, or drop straight into an email platform.
Needs from youConfirmation it’s received and matches what was quoted.
How we get your voice right
Mostly by reading, not by asking you to describe yourselves in adjectives. An existing website, a deck, a handful of emails you’re proud of — any of that shows more about how you actually talk than a list of brand values does.
If none of that exists yet, the brief does the work instead: what you sell, who buys it, what you’d never say out loud about a competitor. The first draft is the first real test of whether we’ve got it, and the revision stage is where it gets calibrated, not just corrected.
What a good brief includes
- What you’re launching or selling, in plain terms — not the pitch, just the facts.
- Who’s meant to read it, and what they’d need to be sure of before doing whatever the copy is asking them to do.
- What already exists — a live site, past emails, a style guide, or none of the above.
- Roughly how much of it — three landing pages, forty SKUs, a five-email sequence. A number, even a rough one, scopes the quote.
- Anything you specifically don’t want — a phrase you’re sick of, a competitor’s tone you don’t want to sound like.