Brand Consultancies Editing and Proofreading Services

"We are innovative, customer-focused, trusted, and forward-thinking." That sentence sat at the center of a positioning document that cost the client $85,000 and took four months to produce. It was approved in a single meeting, because there was nothing in it that anybody could argue with. Six months later the marketing director and the head of sales were having the same argument about what to say to a prospect, in a different conference room, with the brand book open on the table between them.

The documents we edit for Brand Consultancies

Positioning statements and the brand strategy documents built around them make up most of this work. Brand architecture and portfolio documentation come with them, along with purpose, vision, and values articulations, messaging frameworks, tone of voice guidelines, and naming rationale. We also edit research findings and stakeholder interview synthesis, competitive audits and category convention analysis, rebrand rationale and internal launch material, brand measurement frameworks, proposals and credentials, and workshop and facilitation documents. Our editors work on whether the document decides anything.

What the editing involves

The positioning statement is the paper everything else derives from, and its only real test is whether it excludes something. A statement claiming the brand is innovative, customer-focused, trusted, and forward-thinking has excluded nothing, which is why it survives every review and changes no decision. A positioning worth its fee makes a choice a competitor could credibly make differently, names what the brand is not and will not do, and states the whole of it in language the organization actually uses rather than in the elevated register these documents attract. "We build for the people who read the manual" rules out a great many customers, and that is the point of it.

The statement then has to be tested against the decisions it exists to settle. Whether to take this client, whether to sponsor this event, whether to price above or below the category, whether to hire this candidate, and whether to accept this partnership are the questions a positioning should be able to answer. A firm that prices 15 percent above its category and cannot say in one sentence why is describing itself rather than positioning itself. A statement that settles none of these is not a strategy, and the argument it was bought to end will start again at the next planning meeting.

Guidelines have to show the choice in use. A page of adjectives cannot be applied by a copywriter at 4:30 on a Friday afternoon, while a pair of examples can: one line of copy that is on-brand, beside a line that is plausible, well written, and wrong. Teams pattern-match from examples, and they cannot pattern-match from an adjective. Where the guidelines carry twenty such pairs, the arguments that used to reach the brand lead stop reaching anybody.

Confidentiality and the limits of our role

Everything you send us is treated in confidence, including unannounced rebrands, research, and client material. We are editors, not brand strategists, and we offer no opinion on positioning, naming, architecture, or any strategic recommendation. What we can do is make the document say something specific enough to act on.