The crazy idea to start a writing-only agency. | Write On
When Jen and I started Write On nine years ago, there were many, many things we didn’t know. We didn’t know how to draw up a real business plan. We didn’t know what to do with things like Quickbooks. And we certainly didn’t know how to interpret all the reports it spit out at us.
But there was one thing we did know. We knew how to tell a good story.
We’d already walked away from our traditional ad agency jobs in favor of more flexibility and freedom as freelance writers, and we knew we didn’t want to go back. So we decided to create the kind of agency that we wanted to work in. And, as crazy as it sounds, that was an agency that only offered strategy and writing services.
It turned out to be a pretty good instinct.
By hyperfocusing on our unique expertise, and building a team of top-talent writers who are as passionate about their craft as we are, we’ve created a specialized offering that isn’t easily replaceable. Sure, there are talented freelance content writers out there, and there are amazing full-service agencies with copywriting services, and there are even giant content marketing companies that will develop and distribute content on their own high-tech platforms. But we haven’t found any other content and copywriting agencies that focus exclusively and obsessively on the art and craft of great writing. And that has made all the difference.
The emphasis here is on great writing. Not just good. Or “good enough.” But truly great. In our line of work, that means more than just being editorially sound. It means being on brand, on strategy, on point, and on time. Every time. We’ve found that this starts by recruiting and retaining writers who live and breathe storytelling, and who’ve probably existed this way most of their lives-reading, studying, writing, and honing their craft sentence by sentence, year after year. On top of that (but never in lieu of it), they’ve also dedicated themselves to becoming true pros in marketing writing-whether that’s as content strategists, long-form content writers, or copywriters.
But there’s more to it than that. We’ve also learned that we must continually invest in cultivating our writers’ greatness, so it can be scaled and replicated beyond what any single person could do on their own. This includes creating a writing community where writers are constantly learning from one another. It requires creative direction that pushes great writers to consistently reach their highest levels of writerly greatness. And it requires project management that ensures a smooth, reliable, and consistent process for getting there.
To put it lightly, it’s a tall order. Perhaps that’s why others haven’t tried it.
Instead, many have focused on broad agency offerings, but shallow copywriting services. And when they have deepened their expertise, the emphasis often seems to be on design. One client told Beth, our creative director, “I’ve been in marketing my whole career, and the mentality forever has been really skewed toward design. I’ve worked with genius designers but they forget the copy. It’s such an afterthought.”
Another client with an in-house creative team told me she’d been chastised by one of her stakeholders for putting a senior copywriter-instead of a designer-in a creative leadership position. “Why don’t I get a real creative director?” she was asked.
Our director of operations, Pati, who’s worked at a wide range of agencies over the course of her career, has seen the same trend. “Copy just isn’t at the forefront of most agencies’ offering nor do they tend to devote a lot of thought or resources toward it. They may talk the talk (content is king), but they rarely walk the walk.”
And yet great writing is exactly what marketing needs. In fact, it’s a really easy way for brands to stand out, simply because there’s so much mediocre writing out there. Author and agency advisor David C. Baker puts it this way in a recent blog post, “We don’t need renaissance people doing storytelling. We need storytellers who have researched, developed and tested truly proprietary methods of crafting stories.”
As an agency led by writers, this is something we’ve believed in all along. But that doesn’t mean it’s always been easy to put this belief into practice. Over the years, we’ve been tempted to stray from our core expertise and develop our own renaissance business. We’ve been asked by clients to design interactive experiences. To program websites. To run online advertising campaigns. And since we’re good at organizing and galvanizing teams, and we happen to know a lot of people in this industry, we’ve thought: Maybe. It feels good to say “yes” to clients. It feels good to make money, too. But it hasn’t ever felt quite right for us.
And so we’ve decided to just lean in harder to the one thing we know how to do really well. To continue to find new ways to innovate in our narrow space. And to form strong alliances with the designers, web developers, marketers, and agencies that can help bring our stories to life in ways that words can never achieve on their own.
Nine years since its inception, the idea of Write On is still in some ways an experiment. Do clients really want this one specialized thing that we have to offer? Have we put too much emphasis and focus on it? The full results aren’t in-maybe they never will be. But so far, our hypothesis has proven to be mostly true. Clients want great stories. And from what we’ve seen, the ones who are willing to invest in storytelling are leading the way in their industries. They’re owning their voices, sharpening their messages, building their brands, and changing the way their customers think and act. Because that’s exactly what well-told stories help them to do.
Originally published at http://www.writeonnetwork.com on October 28, 2019.
