Garda

The relationship

Tony Burrows, Garda Design’s Managing Director, first got in touch via LinkedIn in 2018.

He was looking for extra copywriting support on larger client projects. We met, I showed him some of my work, and soon afterwards we began collaborating.

We have worked together ever since.

Most of the work has been for Garda’s clients: construction firms, commercial fit-out specialists and other companies with something more difficult to explain than a simple product or service.

The relationship has lasted because Tony brings me in at the point where copywriting can still make a strategic difference:

• When the client is still working out what makes the business different
• When the brief may be right, partly right or quietly wrong
• When the right questions can still prevent a costly detour

That is where I am most useful.

The challenge

Most of Garda’s clients work in markets where the prospect already knows the sector in-depth.

The people reading the copy – contractors, developers, procurement teams, project managers – have seen it all before. They know the language. They know the claims. They have read the same words on every competitor’s website:

Quality. Service. Delivery. Experience. Attention to detail.

All of those things may be true. But as a litany they prove nothing.

The job is not to say the right things louder. It is to find the argument that makes an experienced reader stop and think: this one is different.

That is harder than it looks. Good businesses are often poor at explaining themselves. They know what they do. Their clients know why they keep coming back. But the reasons tend to live in conversations, habits and work that has been done well for years without ever being properly put into words.

My job is to uncover those reasons and turn them into copy that gives buyers a reason to choose properly, rather than settle for someone cheaper.

The work

When Garda brings me into a project, the best starting point is a meeting with Tony and the client.

I listen. I ask questions. I try to find out what actually matters.

Who is the audience? What do they already know? What do they care about? Why does this business win work? Why does it keep clients? What does it do that competitors claim to do but often do not?

Sometimes the brief is right. Sometimes it is nearly right. Sometimes it becomes clear that the thing being asked for is not quite the thing the client needs.

During my partnership with Garda, I have written website copy, brochures, newsletters, case studies, email campaigns, social posts, news stories and much more. The format changes. The discipline does not:

Understand the business. Find out what makes it distinct. Then communicate it to the people who matter.

The result

Good copy does not just describe a business. At its best, it helps the business understand itself.

That is what the best projects with Garda have produced. Clearer language for what the business does. Sharper material to put in front of the right people. A more considered answer to the question that matters most in a competitive market: why us, and not someone cheaper?

Some of that work has supported pitches. Some has strengthened relationships that were already good. Some has simply replaced copy that was getting in the way.

The relationship has lasted because it is built on shared standards. Tony brings me in when the thinking still matters – when there is still time to get it right. I bring the questions, the structure and the writing.

Neither of us is especially interested in work that merely looks finished. It has to make the client easier to understand, easier to trust and harder to dismiss.

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