All of your messaging, boiled down to one reusable framework
We brainstorm your story through seven categories together, then boil each one down to the lines that actually land. You end up with one concise document: the seeds for your website, your brochures, your emails and anything else you ever have to write.
We brainstorm your story through seven categories together, then boil each one down to the lines that actually land. You end up with one concise document: the seeds for your site, your briefs, your conference posters and anything else your team ever has to write.
- A character who wants something they can't get on their own.
- Meets a guide with a plan, and is called to act on it.
- Avoids what they feared, and ends up somewhere better.
You're the guide in this story, and they're the hero. That one move is what makes the rest of it click, and it's why the framework stays readable by anybody you hand it to.
The plan
How we get you there
Same three stages on every project.
Who this is forOwners who can explain the business in person and can't get it onto a page. Usually because the page is trying to speak to everybody at once.Centers whose work matters to several audiences who don't share a vocabulary. Usually with a site written for peers and a funder who isn't one.
Clarifyyou're here
What you're actually saying, and who you're saying it to.
Beautify
Every place you say it: the site, the mark, the print, the email.
Amplify
Systems that carry it to the people who need to hear it: search, email and outreach.
Why people call me
Three things that mean it's a messaging problem
All three usually get mistaken for a design problem first, and redesigned twice.
Every page hedges
Written to avoid excluding anyone, so it commits to nothing. A reader who could have been perfect for you can't tell whether you meant them.
You explain it better out loud
In a room you're clear and specific, and people get it immediately. Then the written version goes vague, because writing it down felt like it needed a formal voice.
Nobody agrees internally
Three people describe what you do three different ways. None of them is wrong, which is exactly why the website has been rewritten twice and still isn't right.
Scope
What ends up in it
You leave with a consolidated, reusable framework to apply across all your marketing: seven categories, brainstormed wide, then boiled down to the most resonant messages in each. Those lines are the seeds. Everything you write afterwards grows out of them, and your marketing becomes magnetizing.
Your character, and what they want
Not a demographic. The person on the other end, what they're actually after, and who they get to become once they have it. Every other line in the framework answers to this one.
The problem, four ways
The practical thing that's wrong, how it makes them feel, why it shouldn't be that way, and what's causing it. Most marketing names only the first, which is why it slides off.
Empathy, and why you're credible
The line that proves you understand, and the proof that you can actually help: years, names, numbers, the testimonial that says it better than you could.
The plan, in three steps
What working with you actually looks like, short enough to say out loud. People don't buy until they can picture the next three moves.
What you ask people to do
The direct ask, and the softer one for people who aren't ready yet. Both written out, so no page ever ends with nowhere to go.
What they get to avoid
Three to five things, no more. This is the pinch of salt in the whole framework, and keeping it short is what keeps it from reading as a scare.
What success looks like
Eight to ten lines on where they end up, in the words they'd use. This is the flour in the recipe, and it's where most of your marketing copy will come from.
Your one-liner
The answer to "so what do you do?" Problem, then what you do about it, then what changes. It isn't a tagline or a mission statement, and it's the line you'll use most.
The before and after
What they have, how they feel, what an average day is like and how they see themselves, answered twice: before you, and after. Useful far past marketing.
Why it's short
One document, and everything grows from it
A brand messaging framework nobody opens is worth nothing. So the whole exercise drives toward one concise document you'll actually keep near you: your greatest hits, in your words. Writing a home page, a conference abstract, a sales email or a sign for a booth all start the same way after that: you open it and pick the seed you need.
What makes it stick
- It's one storylineA character, a guide, a plan, a result. You can hold the whole thing in your head, which is why people keep using it.
- Every line is yoursTaken from how you actually talk, and from what your best clients say about you, so it never reads like a template.
- Short on purposeLines, never paragraphs. The constraint is what forces the choosing, and the choosing is the value.
- Anyone can run with itA new hire, a freelance writer, your printer. Hand it over and they're writing in your voice by the afternoon.
Why the big deck gets shelved
- Forty pagesRead once at handover, then never again, because nobody has forty pages of time.
- Three adjectives for voice"Professional yet approachable" tells a writer nothing they can act on.
- Written about youYour history and your values, where your audience should have been.
- No lines in itPlenty of strategy, nothing you could paste into a page and ship.
There's a second reason this comes first. Deciding your audience while it's one line in a document costs you nothing to change your mind about. I'd rather charge you less now than rebuild a site later with both of us pretending that was the plan.
What it does to the words
Same organization, two very different sentences
The second version isn't more creative, it's better informed. It says something only your people knew, so the person reading it recognizes their own situation and keeps going. Any competitor could run the first one unchanged. Nobody else can run the second.
“We are a full service logistics partner with over 25 years of industry experience, delivering innovative supply chain solutions tailored to the unique needs of our valued clients.”
A whole sentence about them, and not one word a reader would recognize as their own problem. Every competitor in the category could run it unchanged.
“You shouldn't find out a load is late from your own customer. We track every load ourselves and call before you have to ask, so your deliveries land on time and your customers love you for it. Get a quote back tomorrow.”
Same company, same 25 years, same service. The reader now has the problem, gets the win, and has something to do about it.
“The Center conducts interdisciplinary research to advance evidence based approaches and promote translational outcomes across diverse stakeholder communities.”
True, and it describes four hundred other centers equally well. A practitioner reading it can't tell whether any of it is for them.
“Clinics keep adopting programs that were never tested in a clinic. We test them where they will actually be used and publish what worked and what didn't, so the guidance you put your name on holds up in the room. Start with the two page summary.”
Same work, same rigor, same funding. It names a problem a practitioner recognizes, shows them coming out ahead, and offers a first step that costs nothing.
The reader became the hero
Count the we's and the your's in each version. That swap alone does most of the work, and it's the move almost nobody makes voluntarily.
A real problem got named
Something specific enough that the right reader winces. Vague copy is usually a symptom of not having decided who it is for.
They get to win, then act
Say where they end up, then give one next step sized so yes is easy. Most pages end with a reader who agrees with you and then leaves.
That is the whole difference between a polite nod and an oh heck yeah, and it's available to any organization willing to decide who it is talking to.
Writing in the age of AI
Something for your AI to write toward
Writing got easier. Sounding like yourself got harder. Ask a model to draft your about page with nothing to go on and it writes toward the average of everything it has ever read, which is the most forgettable sentence available on any subject. It isn't wrong. It just isn't you, and it'll be confidently not you at a speed you can't match by hand.
Without a framework
- It fills the gaps itselfEvery blank you leave gets answered from the average of the internet, and the average has no opinions.
- Each draft drifts a little furtherNobody is comparing today's email to how you sounded in March, so the voice moves without anyone deciding to move it.
- Everyone gets the same helpYour competitors are typing into the same models. Pointed at nothing in particular, it hands all of you the same paragraph.
With one
- You have something to paste inThe framework is the brief. Who you are for, what you lead with, the words you use and the ones you never use.
- Anyone can hold the lineA new hire, a freelance writer or a model all get the same instructions, so the voice survives whoever is at the keyboard.
- You can tell when it's offA framework makes a bad draft obvious in a sentence instead of a vague feeling that something's wrong with it.
Hand it to your AI, and it writes from your DNA
I can build the framework as a priming document: a prompt at the top, your whole story underneath, and worked requests at the bottom. You paste it in once. After that you can brainstorm as much marketing copy as you want and fine-tune what comes back, and every draft starts from the same brand DNA, so what you are editing is the wording and never the positioning.
Requests it comes with
- Ten homepage headlines under 60 characters
- A six-slide pitch outline, with speaker notes
- Ten blog topics aimed at your ideal client
- Ten keywords to target, and where to use them
The cheaper writing gets, the more the deciding is worth, because the deciding is the only part a model can't do for you. I use AI on this work every day. It's useful in direct proportion to how clearly I can tell it who you are.
Process
Brainstorm, boil down, put it to work
The answers are already in your head and in what your best clients say about you. My job is to ask in the right order and then be ruthless about what makes the cut.
We talk
Twenty-five minutes to hear what you do, who keeps choosing you, and where the explanation currently falls over.
Brainstorm, together
We work through the seven categories in a working session, out loud, both of us throwing ideas in. Wide and messy on purpose, because the good line is usually the ninth one.
Synthesize
I take the raw material and boil each category down to the lines that carry it. This is the part that takes the experience, and it's where the document gets its edge.
You push back
You read it and tell me where it doesn't sound like you. A draft that commits gives you something to argue with, which gets us there faster than a draft that hedges.
The framework, and the notes behind it
The document you'll use, plus the full brainstorm underneath it, so you can see what got cut and why.
Put it to work
We walk through using it: which line seeds a home page, which seeds an email, which goes on the booth. Whether I build any of that is a separate decision you make later.
Investment
How pricing works
A fixed price, agreed before it starts, and the document is yours whether or not I build anything afterwards.
Just the messaging
The brainstorm, the working session, the framework and the notes behind it. The quickest way to find out whether we work well together, and you keep it either way.
Ahead of a build
The same work, used as the plan the site or the brand is built from. Quoted separately from the build so you can stop after it and still have something worth having.
When something changes
A new program, a new audience, a change of direction. Usually a short revisit, because most of the framework still holds.
Grant-funded work. This usually sits under dissemination or communications planning. I quote against your budget lines and invoice per deliverable.
Questions
What people ask before they hire me
Isn't this just copywriting?
How long does it take?
Do I have to buy a website afterwards?
What if our team disagrees about the answers?
We already have a brand guide. Is this the same thing?
Does this work for a research center?
The rest of the system
This is the thing everything else is built from
Which is why it's first, and why it's quoted on its own.
Adrial helped us break down our core ideas into relatable chunks and build a comprehensive marketing framework. Now, we can confidently answer our own questions on what to write.
Andy PavloAssociate Professor, Carnegie Mellon University
I'd rather hear it out loud
Twenty-five minutes, and nothing to prepare. Tell me what you do the way you'd tell somebody standing next to you at a conference. Usually your best sentence comes out of your own mouth in the first five minutes, and some people take that and run with it on their own.