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Why brands need to stop going on about 'content' and find something worth saying - We All Need Words
We came across our first ‘content strategy’ just after we started We All Need Words. A planning agency had been hired by a big (non-sporty) brand to sponsor the sort of sports events that Nike do. Their twist on this was to support the spectators – the families and friends who go along to things, […]
Made in Britain: 2014 via 1950 - We All Need Words
Last weekend we went to Best of Britannia (BOB), part pop-up department store, part celebration of independent brands designing and making things in Britain. On top of ideas for Christmas presents, it made us think a lot about ‘brand Britain’. Many companies at BOB were selling an idea and image of Britain as well as […]
The day we went to Selfridges. To speak not to shop. - We All Need Words
Here’s Rob talking about stopping brand slop in Selfridges at an event set up by It’s Nice That. We were tickled that the soundbite flying around afterwards on Twitter was: ‘If you feel like a berk saying it you shouldn’t write it down. – Rob Mitchell’. We’re determined to bring the word berk back into […]
Apologise unreservedly seems to be the hardest word(s) - We All Need Words
Oh dear. Diageo have got themselves in a bit of bother with small brewers BrewDog. You only need to look at Diageo’s apology to see how they got into trouble in the first place (and why BrewDog deserve to win more awards than them). Diageo’s at-arm’s-length statement vs… A Diageo spokesperson: “There was a serious […]
One nil to Cambridge - We All Need Words
Cambridge University and the city of Dublin both launched brand campaigns this month. Each of them looks different from ‘the usual’, but if you put them side by side (and put yourself in visitors’ shoes), Cambridge’s campaign is the only one that actually has something to say. Dublin: just a pretty face There’s something a […]
No bluffing: our how-to guides - We All Need Words
Like method actors, one of the first things we’re asked is “so what’s your process?”. People like process; it’s comforting. It means everyone knows the steps involved to get the perfect piece of work. But there isn’t a one-size-fits-all, ten-steps-to-success way to do branding. If anything, we’ve found that process gets in the way and […]
Jargon isn't the problem and 'Plain English' isn't the answer - We All Need Words
About this time every year the Plain English Campaign has its gobbledegook awards. It goes roughly like this: they pick some prize pieces of incomprehensible twaddle, which fill some easy column inches in a few newspapers. We roll our eyes at all the rubbish jargon and business clichés we use at work nowadays and then […]
Who wrote it? I did - We All Need Words
We’ve noticed something. Behind a lot of brands with good writing, there’s a founder who penned the words themselves. Someone who had a clear idea of what they wanted to do, knew who they wanted to be and how they wanted to sound. It goes to show that good writing and clear thinking are one […]
A non-essential word or two from us - We All Need Words
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 […]
The problem with management books - We All Need Words
Jill Lepore’s take-down of ‘The Innovator’s Dilemma’ by Clayton M. Christensen (a management book popular with Silicon Valley types) in the New Yorker is worth a read — all 6,000 words of it. Here’s a (bit of a chewy) taster: “Disruptive innovation as a theory of change is meant to serve both as a chronicle […]
Once upon a time we didn't need strategic storytelling - We All Need Words
Once upon a time stories weren’t called ‘narratives’ and we didn’t need a process, archetypes or rules to help us tell them. And most authors of books, plays, films and the like (ie real stories) didn’t use them either. So why have so many agencies started banging on about the power of storytelling all of […]
Shrewsbury nominated for D&AD pencil - We All Need Words
The branding work we did for Shrewsbury with & SMITH last year has won a D&AD award. Shrewsbury is the only branding scheme nominated for a D&AD pencil in its category (just nudging ahead of London 2012’s Olympic branding, no less). Read all about Shrewsbury here – then go there.
What's the big idea? - We All Need Words
Branding types love to talk about ‘the big idea’: a thought that makes you feel differently about something or see things in a new way. But most so-called big ideas aren’t really that big and they don’t have much of an idea behind them either. It’s much easier to come up with touchy-feely slogans than […]
Writing for social media: our theory to add to the theories - We All Need Words
‘How should our brand write for Facebook, Twitter and [insert the next big thing here]?’ That’s a question nervous brand managers ask us a lot at the moment. To their slight dismay, we don’t hand over a template, a guideline or a guaranteed-to-get-you-more-retweets-than-that-photo-of-Barack-and-Michelle trade secret. Because social media is different to other writing. You’re talking […]
Tone of voice. No tone of voice. - We All Need Words
What is tone of voice? And does it really matter? We can show you. All we need is some butter and a Jedi Master. TONE OF VOICE A humble ingredient, no more: a rousing tone for Lurpak plays on how you feel when you’ve baked something yourself. Clever. NO TONE OF VOICE Spend £££s to […]
ONES THAT GOT AWAY PART THREE - We All Need Words
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 […]
Something wonderful in Frome - We All Need Words
An uphill cycle race, a proposal to turn the town into an obstacle course, an art gallery and cafe in a loo, mysterious slogans graffitied on walls and pulled along by airplanes. Welcome to The Independent State of Frome. Since we worked on the branding project for Shrewsbury, we’ve been on the lookout for other […]
Wild Lime Bar & Kitchen - We All Need Words
Move over All Bar One, Slug and Lettuce and JD Wetherspoon. A new high street bar brand is in town. High street pubs – especially those outside London – haven’t moved on much since the mid-nineties. Chains like All Bar One, Pitcher & Piano and Slug & Lettuce have struggled to reinvent their formula of […]
ONES THAT GOT AWAY PT 2 - We All Need Words
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 […]
The Turing Test for brands - We All Need Words
In 1950, computer scientist Alan Turing came up with a test for artificial intelligence; what became known as The Turing Test. Could people tell if a machine or a person was ‘talking’ to them? If a computer could fool someone into thinking there was a person in charge, it passed the test. We’ve ctrl-alt-deleted the […]
Strategists! Step away from the acoustic guitar - We All Need Words
Here’s what I want from Airbnb. I want a website and app that work beautifully. I want to find an apartment so I can pretend I live in Brooklyn (even if it’s just for a week). And I want to make a few quid from my own apartment on the side. Here’s what I don’t […]
When everything stops - We All Need Words
When is a Christmas hamper not a Christmas hamper? When you’re Gail’s Bakery and you put together a ‘survival kit’ to see you through the oh-so-slow bit between Christmas and new year. Perfect for those of us (us) whose first-world problems go off the scale when there’s no way to get a perfectly-steamed flat white […]
#Hashtags: home of the lame joke - We All Need Words
Hashtags started out on Twitter as a useful way to tag topics, so others could search for and add to the conversation. Think of the times Twitter has come into its own, like the #Arabspring or the #londonriots. When hashtags are done well, they’re really useful. But that’s becoming increasingly rare. Mostly they’ve gone the […]
A tea by any other name - We All Need Words
Spot the difference between these two boxes of Teapigs tea. They look the same; they taste the same. The only difference is their names. Once upon a time this ‘Everyday Brew’ was called ‘English Breakfast’. After all, this is Teapigs’ signature blend and their tea is fancier and tastier than PG Tips. But some of […]
No, I don't want to see your brand dodecahedron - We All Need Words
Brand strategy has puffed itself up to be so important it’s put on a pedestal, and it’s high time we knocked it off. Let’s drop the diagrams and faux-strategy once and for all. We’ve all been there. Brand presentations that take about three-and-a-half days to go through. The first part often goes over that particular […]
' Find your happy ' makes us sad - We All Need Words
At first glance it looks normal. It looks like a line. It sounds like a line. It reads like a line. Kind of. Because it isn’t normal at all. It’s been brandified. ‘Find your happy’. You can see how they got there. Rightmove is all about finding a home, but research probably told them that […]
Ten signs a copywriter is on autopilot - We All Need Words
It’s easy to blame bad writing on cautious clients or the scars of two-thousand-and-one track changes. But much of the blame has to lie with copywriters themselves. Too many of them have knocked out sloppy words for far too long. We want it to stop. So we’ve written, not rules exactly, but provocations. What if […]
When small independents learn big companies' tricks - We All Need Words
As of today the contents of my fridge have changed. Bye-bye big name labels and uniform vegetables. Hello real food delivered from local shops by Hubbub. If you haven’t come across them already, Hubbub is roughly what you get when you cross the good bits of buying local with the convenience of ordering from Ocado. […]