Case studies
I am highly experienced in luxury, lifestyle, financial, and technology copywriting. My clients span the globe, and demand tight deadlines and swift turnaround. I also hold a regular ghostwriting position at Forbes Business Council, an invitation-only organisation for thought leaders and entrepreneurs.
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In collaboration with Zellis executives—and with only the most negligible of subsequent amends—I penned an engaging, compelling website, achieving a highly consistent TOV whilst detailing Zellis's products, vision, and ethos. I advised extensively on structure and layout with regard to UJ, and laid out recommended future actions to be taken to maximise UX across their sparkling new online hub.
Writing a major website—from scratch
Zellis is the UK and Ireland's market leader in payroll and HR software. They wanted a total revamp of their website's 15 primary pages—and I was equal parts proud and delighted to do the honours.
Product rebranding for a leading L&D provider
Emerald Works provide award-winning learning and development solutions to businesses across the UK. They asked me to rewrite from scratch a microsite which constitutes one of their major offerings—and then to not only ideate a new strapline, but a wholly new name for the product, too.
After conceptualising around 50 new names and straplines and documenting the rationale for each, Emerald happily adopted and implemented both the name and tagline I'd most strongly advocated for.
History, stories, and stats—in one epic landing page
Mind Tools build exclusive learning and development resources as a subsidiary of Emerald Works. As part of their 25-year anniversary campaign, they asked me to write a landing page celebrating the landmark—and with total artistic freedom over the content, media, and tone. I wrote a warm, sentimental chronicle of the company, jam-packed with cheeky anecdotes, milestone achievements, and a hopeful eye toward the next quarter-century.
Punctuation typography—and other microscopic copy adventures
It was during my time in the employ of the world's third largest retailer that my smouldering passion for microcopy, orthography, and writing as a visual art was set inexorably aflame.
Typesetter's vs typewriter apostrophe
I could count on one hand the number of people on the planet who would have noticed—let alone cared—that the creative assets of Tesco's single most recognisable marketing campaign of all time was suffering from a slight case of typographical inconsistency when I came on board.
The names of the Food Love Stories classically describe who's made the meal, and what the amateur chef has named their dish (Jini's 'make it better' jambalaya, for example). Each therefore contains numerous representations of the notoriously indistinguishable typesetter's apostrophe (the curly U+2019—which ironically the very website builder I've used here does not include) and the so-called typewriter apostrophe (U+0027), whose moniker actually obscures the more technically accurate straight single quote.
After some confused back-and-forth regarding what on God's green earth I was rambling on about, my recommended typographical changes were implemented across the Food Love Stories, leading to a far cleaner and more sensical orthography across the entire range of assets.
Perfect weather for a BBQ?
At the time of Tesco preparing to launch their new Fire Pit range, a selection of ready-to-barbecue meats, their groceries website contained all three common orthographic representations of the word (barbecue, barbeque, BBQ)—but their expansive editorial guidelines were yet to adopt a standard.
I put together research for the campaign team, not only outlining the word's etymology, but also advancing the case for barbecue with a C, drawing strongly on both the linguistic phenomenon of hypercorrection and the conflated pronunciation of two disparate phonemes. Finally, I collated SEO analytics to illustrate that my assertion was supported by what users were actually searching for.
I was delighted when Tesco not only accepted and actioned my recommendation of barbecue with a C (and of BBQ when space was at a premium), but also created a brand-new subsection within their editorial guidelines to set my proposal in stone. (And thank the Lord they did—for on occasion I still wake in a cold sweat, haunted by the abominable spectre of barbeque with a Q.)
Ghostwriting for one of the world's foremost business magazines
European PPC agency and Google Premier Partner Push brought me in to ghostwrite on behalf of the C suite for The Drum, the most widely read marketing website in Europe. I leapt at the opportunity to demonstrate my faculty for producing lengthy, accurate, and engaging analyses of subjects I'd never even heard of until yesterday—and for an audience of experts, too.
With my eagle eye for detail and ability to translate complex, unfamiliar topics into jargon-free, entertaining articles for lay reader and specialist alike, I produced tens of high-performing pieces, including a dozen or so as Push's co-CEOs.
Note: for obvious reasons, I can't disclose specific pieces of ghostwritten work.
Selling sumptuous sofas in time for spring
As a point of urgency, British department store Sofa.com brought me in, sat me down at 9am, and asked for a comprehensive blog promoting their Spring 2020 range—to be delivered by 5.30.
The Sofa.com brand is characterised by humour and wholesomeness, so maintaining that TOV whilst advancing the key selling points for a wide variety of furniture was tough. But after drafting, scrapping, then rewriting from scratch, I successfully delivered Make Your Home a Haven: Our Ultimate Guide by day's end—no amends required.
Note: the live title was added post-publication by the company.
UK COVID crisis: strategic insights collaboration
American personal finance company NerdWallet commissioned a survey of almost 1,000 British SME owners to assess the efficacy of the Government's coronavirus measures.
Working with data analysts to rapidly aggregate and visualise the results, within days I'd written a 3,000-word epic account of the Conservatives' handling of the pandemic with regard to their emergency business loans and financial schemes, replete with animated graphics and figures for a dynamic and altogether urgent reading experience.
Finding the fun where they thought there was none
Some of my favourite projects are those which at first glance appear a little dry—because where others see only mundanity and a chore, I spy a glimmer of mischief, a tiny speck of potential.
Don't get me wrong: purveying bike racks, automatic gates, and litter bins is a noble profession. But writing a riveting 2,000-word blog about traffic cones—now that's a challenge.
So I took it upon myself to create a monumental piece that was both charming and genuinely useful—and thus was born The Comprehensive Guide to Bollard Maintenance. You don't know true joy as a copywriter until you've waited 1,600 words just to bow out with the subheading What a load of bollards!, let me tell you.
