Copy, messaging & brand voice studio for ecomm + FMCG brands
Two brothers helping ambitious challenger brands do words gooder
We're Jack and Joe, two brothers who believe your brand deserves copy that puts what makes you awesome into words. Whether you need us to write for you, train your AI to sound like you, or help you figure out what to say, we're here to help you do words gooder.
Obsessed with helping brands do words gooder
For the last decade-and-a-bit, we've been working with brands of all shapes and sizes, helping them make sure that their copy does their brand justice.
One client saw a 78% revenue bump in the quarter after a copy & brand voice sprint. Nice.
Brands worked with. Big brands. Scale-ups. The odd celebrity. And, once, a talking cat. (Don't ask.)
In a year after a messaging sprint, one client grew from £5.6M to £25.2M. It wasn't all us, of course. But it helped.
A DTC client had banging products, but their copy was a bit meh. Once they nailed it, they grew by nearly 400%.
How to turn your
brand's words
up to 11
Some clients need a hand writing their copy and figuring out their voice. Others want us to train their AI copy to stay on voice (and not churn out slop). Others want to make us a de facto part of their in-house team.
However you need a hand doing your words gooder, we've got you.
Most popular
Copywriting &
messaging sprints
Maybe you're pitching a big retailer. Or you've set big growth goals. Or maybe you're just sick of looking at your website and thinking "yeah, this just doesn't feel like us."
Copy sprints are how we get your words gooder, fast.
We work with you to go deep on your brand, your customers, your competition, your category to figure out how to put what makes you awesome into words.
Then, we get to work. 1-4 weeks later, you've got copy that makes it immediately clear why customers should choose you. Copy that makes you say "oh shit, this sounds like us". Copy so good you're almost tempted to get inked somewhere prominent.
All done and ready for dev in 4 weeks, tops.
Brand voice AI training
You know that feeling when you've spent an hour going back and forth with ChatGPT and you’re still getting copy you know is a bit shit? Nothing worse than that.
We document your voice in a way AI (and you) can actually use, build a copybot around it, and then leave you with something that feels less like prompt-in-copy-out and more like you've cloned a really good copywriter, trained them on your brand and trapped them inside your keyboard 24/7.
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Fractional support
Think of us as your not-quite-in-house-but-feel-in-house copywriters. We’re in your Slack, we know your brand like the back of our hand and we turn things around quick.
(Plus, we’ve spent the last decade obsessing over brands like yours and writing a lot of copy, so we’re great to kick ideas around with too.)
And we’re always around for those 4:47pm “hey, does this sound OK?” Slack messages. Of course.
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We hate sales calls.
You hate them too.
Anyone can talk a good game over Zoom. So we do things a bit differently.
Bring us a headline, a product description, or a bit of copy that's feels slightly off. We'll spend the first half of the call digging into why it's not working, suggest some fixes and then rewrite it together on the call. (Or we'll demo how we get AI writing on-brand copy.)
Then, if it feels like a good fit, we'll talk about what it looks like to team up and discuss next steps.
Prefer to email us? Hit us up on hello@dowordsgood.com
Trusted by brands like...
“An absolute game-changer…
transformational for us as a brand.”
Brothers who write copy.
Not copy bros.
You won't find us posing in front of Lambos or telling you "money never sleeps, dude". We don't have pictures of Don Draper on our walls and we've never used the word "hustle" unironically.
What we actually care about is finding the thing that makes your brand genuinely awesome and then making sure every word a customer sees reflects that. It's the whole reason we started Do Words Good. We just love brands with good copy.
(Although, full disclosure: Jack did start talking like Kendall Roy for a few weeks after we watched Succession. And it was categorically not "all bangers, all the time".)
JACK
BARCLAY
Older brother. Obsessed with brand voice. Has genuinely rewritten a headline 103 times before we sent it over.
When I’m not at my desk pretending I’m Carmy from The Bear, hunting for wild mushrooms with the kids, or working on the home renovation with an AF brewski in hand.
JOE
KARAALI-BARCLAY
Younger brother. Former solo marketer for an ecomm brand. Feels like the walls are closing in if he doesn’t have a process and a system.
When I’m not at my desk: updating my Strava, puppy training, trekking out to craft breweries, or rewatching Mad Men under the banner of “professional development”.
FAQs
What kind of brands do you work with?
We work with ecommerce and FMCG brands of all sizes, but we especially love teaming up with lean teams who have built a good amount of traction and are now thinking of starting to scale spending, launch new ranges, go after new retail listings.
So if you’re gearing up to hit some big, hairy, audacious goals and feel like the messaging that got you here isn’t really fit for the next stage of growth, we’d love to chat.
Will we work with you directly?
Oh yeah, 100%. One of the reasons we started Do Words Good was to make sure that we could work as closely as possible with clients.
Something goes missing in that agency-with-middle-managers model, in our opinion. (And don’t get us wrong, it definitely works for lots of briefs. But for brands that want to really nail their messaging, a lot gets lost in translation in our experience.)
Where are you based?
We’re a 100% remote agency, but Jack is based in Poole in Dorset. And Joe is based in Bishop’s Stortford (soon to be Norwich, however.)
Can you help with emails and flows?
Yeah, 100%. We’re not CRM pros in terms of segmentation, etc… but editing the copy/messaging in welcome flows, abandoned cart flows, post-purchase emails, launch emails, win back emails… that’s all something we help clients with all the time.
Plus, if you’re on Klaviyo, we can work directly in your flows so you can approve and push live lickety-split.
What is your process like?
Our process shifts slightly depending on whether we’re doing a Punch Up or a full project, but it’s always rooted in research first.
Before we write a word, we’ll always review your customer reviews, your competitors, get clear on your brand’s USPs and story and make sure we’re using consumer psychology to work with the way your customers’ brains work, not against them.
Then, once we’ve got that in place and we’re 100% aligned on the job the page/email needs to do, then we write the copy in context (if possible).
That means no Google Docs 99% of the time, but copy delivered in Klaviyo or Figma or in mockups so it’s easy for design & dev to get it live.
(Also, because Google Docs are where good copy goes to die.)
Do you have a minimum project size?
Yes, we’re all about taking on projects where we can contribute meaningful chunks of work, not quick blog posts.
However, if you want to start small, the best entry point is a one-day Punch Up or a 1-week Sprint.
Can we pay by card? Or split the invoices?
Yes, 100%. We know that cashflow is a tricksy beast.
So we accept corporate cards (including Amex), and if you need to split billing out over up to 4 months, it’s no biggy. (No fees or anything like that. Just let us know and we’ll divvy it up.)
What if we don’t have a designer or dev ready?
No problem. We’ll still deliver everything cleanly with clear guidance, and we’re happy to sync with your designer/dev (or recommend trusted people) when you bring them onboard to get them up to speed.
We also have a black book of contacts and a large network of people in the ecomm/FMCG world, so we can always send out the Bat signal on your behalf, too.
Can you guarantee results?
We can’t promise a specific uplift, because there’s way too many variables (traffic quality, offer, pricing, creative, site speed, etc.).
What we can promise is that we’ll give you sharper positioning, clearer decision journeys, stronger objection handling, a clearer, more ownable brand voice and copy written to convert more customers.
And because of that, every client we’ve worked with has seen a meaningful uplift after working with us. But, as with anything, we can’t guarantee results. (Wouldn’t it be nice if we could, though?)
Do you just write copy, or do you help with the strategy too?
Oh, definitely strategy too. We see copy as your brand strategy in words, and we try not to write a word until we’ve done the deeper, more strategic thinking.
(Because that’s how you end up with copy that sounds nice but doesn’t really reflect your brand or grow with you as you grow.)
TLDR: we’ll help you figure out what to say, who you’re saying it to, and what needs to be true for someone to buy… then we’ll write the copy.
Do you use AI at all?
Ah, this is the big question, isn’t it? Yes, we do use AI but almost entirely only for the boring bits.
(We use it to organise our research, run sentiment analysis on customer reviews, double-check trends and studies, etc…)
Occasionally, we’ll use it to explore new angles or to speed up our own process for writing low-impact batch work (like product descriptions).
But all of the thinking, positioning, drafting and final writing is done by us, the old fashioned way.
So you can rest easy that we’ll never send you anything with an em dash or a “this is not X, it’s Y” structure.
Oh! And if you’re a team that uses AI, we build every team that does a longer engagement with us with their own customGPT that writes email captions, social captions and other day-to-day copy in their voice.
Which one is the better copywriter?
Our lawyers have advised us to say “no comment”. And considering games of FIFA used to end in thrown controllers and getting separated, that’s probably for the best.
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