LUCY & YAK’S QUIETLY REBELLIOUS COPY

We've noticed a theme in the swipe file while we've been uploading it: we 💛 it when brands find a way to stand out and say something new or exciting. And while Lucy & Yak got a lot of praise for their colour and their sustainability, their language has always been about quietly rejecting almost everything about the fashion industry. And this banger is no different.

There's a lot going on under the hood of this one that we really like. It does a twist on a well-known phrase that makes it immediately stickier than "Calling all comfy people" would be. The line is a quiet rejection of fashion's obsession with looks over comfort. And the identity-led "comfy people" creates an identity that people can opt into. All really, really clever stuff we've looked with other brands in the swipe file. But the thing we really love about this bit of copy is that it's a great example of something called disguised repetition. Or, put another way, "picking one core belief and saying it in a thousand different ways". And when you do that, every touchpoint reinforces your one big message rather than a different message every time.

In fact, WARC found that consistent brands are six times more likely to report very large brand effects — those sexy things like awareness, differentiation, salience — because the advantage compounds over time.

Which means the gap between a brand that stays consistent with its message and a competitor that constantly tries new stuff gets bigger and bigger the more you keep saying the same thing.

On top of that, the same study showed how Felix cat food didn't change their messaging for over a decade. In that time, their market share went from 5% to 25% and price sensitivity fell by half. In fact, they moved from being a cheap brand to one of the more expensive ones in the market. Just by picking one core message and sticking to it.

"Hang on a second, won't customers get bored of the same message again and again?"

We know. We know. That's what almost everyone says when we say this.

And if you use the exact same ideas and bits of copy every time, that's what will happen. 100%.

But the beauty of disguised repetition is that you have one big message and everything nods to it or riffs on it or plays a slightly complementary tune.

And with Lucy & Yak, their core belief is that fashion should make you feel good. It should be comfy. It should be bright. It should be guilt-free.

And everything they write is a riff on that idea of joy and positivity.

And by doing that, they don't need big manifestos and values-led copy everywhere. Customers just kind of absorbed it, touchpoint by touchpoint, without really noticing.

Now, we're not going to pretend that finding this big central idea is as easy as a quick copywriting technique. It's hard. Sometimes it feels like pulling teeth.

But once you nail it? Hooo boy. It makes everything so much easier to write.

And it makes everything you write so much better, too.

(Plus it makes AI give you more on-brand copy, too. Huge bonus.)

So go take a look at all of the things you want customers to know about your brand. All the messages you send in emails and on social media and on your website.

What's the common idea that ties all of that together? What's the thing you believe so strongly that you'd rather go out of business than change? 

👆 That's the kernel of your big idea. Start with that.