Case study
How fractional support helped Animal
rediscover what made it iconic
Animal had a tonne of history (and a lot of nostalgia baked in). We helped them sharpen their messaging, update their tone, and roll the new voice out across key pages and campaigns — without losing what made the brand feel like Animal in the first place.
fractional support
The brief
Helping Animal sound
like Animal again
As a brand based in Poole (near Jack), we were properly psyched when Animal came to us with a pretty familiar problem: their brand still had loads of love, but their copy was starting to drift into “forgettable” and they were losing market share.
After the acquisition and a few years of change, their copy had slowly drifted into a safe, generic outdoors-y tone. Meanwhile their customers (and competitors) were still speaking like surfers. And that was leading to a drop in sales.
Animal didn’t want a shiny rebrand. They just wanted Animal to feel like Animal again, everywhere people actually meet the brand: website, catalogues, emails, in-store promotions.
So that’s what we helped them with.
Turning back time
with a new brand voice
We started by going back to the good stuff — old Animal copy, the surf culture it came from, and the language their people actually use, speaking to their pro surfers — then pinned it all down in a simple voice guide the whole team could apply across web, email, catalogues and campaigns.
Found the
real Animal voice
We revisited the old copy and the brand’s surf roots to pull out what had been lost: laid-back confidence, surf-first language, and that anti-corporate feel. Then we turned that into a brand language system.
Spoke to the
pros out on the water
We spoke to a load of Animal-sponsored pros and people close to the brand from the early days to sanity-check the language. What felt authentic, what felt forced, and what they had always loved about Animal.
Turned it all
into a voice system
We turned the voice into something usable: a brand voice guide with the exact phrases, patterns and “say this / don’t say that” guardrails that stop the copy drifting back into generic outdoors-speak.
Trained the
team and rolled it out
We didn’t just hand over a PDF and bounce. We trained the team on using the voice and helped apply the voice across key touchpoints, including website, email, catalogues, and in-store so it felt like Animal was Animal again.
Ongoing support
for their “best
year in a decade”
Once the voice was pinned down, we stayed on as fractional support to help the team actually use it across retail decks, partner copy, seasonal catalogue updates, PDP refreshes, emails and campaign bits. At the end of the year, they told us that they’d had their best year in a decade.
Seasonal pdp +
catalogue updates
New drops and new seasons are where voice usually slips. We kept product stories, headings, benefit bullets and on-site messaging aligned, so each new drop felt like Animal again.
Emails and
campaign support
We handled the ongoing stuff that drives revenue too: campaign emails, seasonal promos, PDP page updates, light rewrites and in-store promo material.
On-brand
partner copy
When partnerships came up (like Debenhams), we helped Animal show up consistently, with co-branded pages and messaging that adapted (but didn’t lose) the Animal tone for the partner’s audience.
Retail decks &
catalogues
We turned the voice into retailer-ready messaging: clear positioning, clear range story, proof that matters to buyers, and catalogues designed to make it easy for the buyer to say yes to listing Animal.
Boost to average open and CTR in their promotional emails.
Over the year of fractional support, we wrote over 2,000 product pages and descriptions.
We became their in-house-but-not copywriting team for 2 years.
Average turnaround time on urgent tasks the team needed to get out of the door.
Leaving the team with tools to write their own on-brand copy
Once the team hired in-house, we left them with documentation, training and on-call "hey, does this sound right?" to make sure the new (old) Animal voice stayed in place.
Brand voice guidelines
The tone-of-voice guide lived as an easy reference for anyone jumping in to write an email, web update or press release.
Distinct verbal assets
We gave them key phrases they can come back to again and again to make things feel on-brand and uniquely Animal.
Practical examples
We left them with a huge amount of copy, ideas, headlines and unused campaign language to reuse and recycle.
Talk to us about your brand's project
If you're an ambitious ecommerce of FMCG brand and your copy and messaging isn't doing your product justice, let's talk.
Grab a 30-minute slot on our calendar and we'll get clear on what you're trying to achieve, what's not working and suggest the best next step.
If we're a good fit, we'll follow up with a simple plan, timeline and costs. If not, we'll tell you straight up (and point you in the direction of someone who can help).
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