Writing
In the UK, we were the original writing agency.
When we started in 1989 we genuinely broke the mould. We were not an Ad or PR agency. Neither were we a design company. Instead, we were the first company to focus on the words that lie at the heart of business communications.
In truth, that also meant specialising in the messaging and structure of documents as much as their finely crafted sentences.
After all, what’s the point of a piece of writing – no matter how beautifully it has been written – if it doesn’t achieve its communications objective?
Our writing services
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What do you want to communicate? To whom? And how is that uniquely better than your competition?
Before the writing comes the thinking. And the thinking starts with messaging. Our in-depth approach to messaging produces a highly defined set of messages for your company which clarify the competitive position for your company, your division, or for your campaign. Together with supporting information, they provide the perfect intellectual framework for your collateral or bid documents.
Our messaging clients have included many of the world’s largest technology organisations including Arqiva, BT Global Services, Ciena, Fiserv, Hitachi Vantara, Grant Thornton, HP, IBM, Merrill DataSite, TomTom, Travelport and Unisys.
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Writing for marketing is all about understanding what you’re trying to achieve.
Are you trying to generate inbound traffic, or establish credibility? Is the aim to create and nurture relationships with customers and prospects, or to lead the debates of the day? Are you trying to raise brand awareness? Or change it?
All of these considerations – and more – have consequences for the structure of your marketing documents, and determine the appropriate tone of voice.
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Sometimes it helps to think about what things are called.
For example, if you are going to win or lose a contract purely on price, then you could argue that the executive summaries at the beginning of your bids don’t matter.
But if you know that winning depends upon your ability to articulate a proposition more powerfully and competitively than the rest of the pack, then executive summaries can make a direct impact on the bottom line of your business. If that’s the case, it might be better to call them executive propositions.
We can we can help you create competitive bid messaging, write executive summaries for must-win bids, and develop high quality content for pre-sales.
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First, we developed our own eLearning in-house.
We explored the special writing challenges and learnt how to develop SCORM-compliant assets with Articulate Rise – one of the industry’s standard development tools.
Now, we offer that unique combination of writing and technical skill to clients such as Hitachi Vantara. Get in touch if you’d like to find out how we could do the same for you.
The Structured Writing Method
At the heart of everything we do is a writing method which works for every business document. It is a linear process that encourages you to spend most of your time thinking, planning and collaborating before writing begins. This structured approach ensures that you not only produce documents that are clear and engaging and structurally fit for purpose, but that you do so faster. The method provides a logical, linear process that everyone can follow.
What they say
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Experian
“I really enjoy working with Writing Machine as they take the time to understand the brief, add their own thinking and research and the content often requires little reworking before its approved. It makes life so easy, and is the result of the time they take to fully understand the brief.”
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HP
“Following just a 45 minute telephone briefing, Thinking & Writing came back to us, just one and a half days later, with a highly polished Executive Summary. I was particularly impressed with the quality of the work, given the limited amount of time and information the individual had to work with. A great innovation.”
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Ciena
"Writing Machine offers a superb service and excellent quality content. That is hard to find in high-tech B2B marketing."
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Nespresso
“It is great to work with you as an agency. The writing of the Best Practice stories inspires our eCommerce Community across the world.”New List Item
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SITA
“The explorative interview technique was marvellous. Within ten minutes they had encouraged people to share things that we’d been trying to find out for some time”