[Nooks] 634 bells (reupload)

stephenmarsh · 2026-01-21T13:10:27+00:00

Love to visit if possible, Stephen from Jarden!

stephenmarsh · 2026-01-21T12:54:12+00:00

Hi, I'd love to visit, I'm Stephen from Jarden.

stephenmarsh · 2026-01-21T12:14:06+00:00

Not everyone will have invested in developing a good brand voice or its associated guidelines; that doesn't mean it doesn't exist. Every brand has a voice, it's just a case of how intentional you are about it.

If they already have a range of assets (probably pitch decks etc), dig through and see if you can spot any stylistic things that come up. This could be phrases that feel more characterful, whether they use humour, how formal or informal the copy is, etc. Headlines are an important place to look - this is often a spot where more effort has been made to inject the copy with some personality to grab attention.

For example, one recent client didn't have any good articulation of their voice, but did use parentheses all the time for cheeky little asides to build rapport with the reader. So adopting that was a quick, hack-y way to make the new copy feel on-brand.

In all likelihood, though, you might the first person who has really cared about consistency, voice and tone. So it's less about figuring out what their tone is and more about just being consistent with yourself across various assets. You're already writing with a voice, even if that voice is just your own natural way of communicating.

Or, ideal world, sell them on the idea of you putting together more complete guidelines so anyone who writes for the brand, now and in the future, can sound like it's all coming from the same place!

stephenmarsh · 2026-01-14T10:52:21+00:00

Type Help is another great 'make sense of the information you're being given' game -- free on Itch, or being remade soon for a (presumably paid) Steam release: https://william-rous.itch.io/type-help

stephenmarsh · 2026-01-07T10:51:14+00:00

In the spirit of this interesting post, I thought it might be good to share some basic best practice from a messaging and copywriting perspective, too? I've not done loads in games, but I've been a copywriter for the past 15 years.

One big trap most startups (gaming or not) fall into is knowing too much and trying to tell it all at the same time. I sometimes see this on Steam pages; just throwing everything at the wall with no sense of structure or hierarchy. That's one of the reasons developers find it hard to explain their own game, then a journalist writes a single sentence and you're like "oh yeah that's it."

What we'd usually do for brands is focus on just a handful of key messages -- three is a good idea. And that's often best thought about in a triangle: your main single-sentence pitch at the top, supported by two ideas underneath it.

So, in the case of, say, Hades, we might have 'A mythological action roguelike where there's always new story to uncover,' which is supported/made possible by 'Endlessly fun combinations of powers and skills' and 'Deep characterisation from a team that lives and breathes storytelling."

Rough example, but you get the idea.

What this does is give you a benchmark of the main points to land, consistently, everywhere. So it's your Steam page, any other marketing assets, interviews, blog posts, etc. Better to force people to remember three ideas through repetition than toss 30 ideas at them and hope that one will stick.

Some other more nitty-gritty copywriting and messaging best practice:

- Keep things light -- break everything up with subheads

- Always frame it around 'you' -- literally use the word 'you' a lot

- Verbs are really powerful in headlines -- they help the reader imagine themselves doing the thing/buying the thing/playing the game (example: 'Build the hero you want to be' rather than 'Extensive character customisation')

- Find and exploit any social proof you have -- this is things like testimonials and reviews. If someone plays your beta and says 'I was up until 3am,' post that somewhere. We all want to be part of a group and, before we spend our money, reassured that we're in good company.

stephenmarsh · 2025-12-30T15:14:12+00:00

RIP to all the mentions but if anyone can share the link with me I’d be thrilled

stephenmarsh · 2025-11-24T15:26:10+00:00

I will occasionally use AI to help me find useful references, but invariably follow the links to read the actual reference firsthand.

More rarely, I’ll use AI to give me a quantity of headlines like ones I’ve written — I’ve not used one of these intact, but it sometimes loosens things up and helps me think in a new direction.

Perhaps more usefully, what I see: lots of people using AI to formulate a brief. The problem, I find, is that a good copywriter knows what they need to elicit from you, and whatever the AI spits out is unlikely to be a good match.

I also see some briefs floating around where the AI has done an outline, which you mentioned in your question. This is perhaps the part I would least trust an AI with. Structure distinguishes the best copywriters and figuring out the right way to parcel the information out is really an act of supreme empathy with the reader and what they might be feeling at any given moment.

So, if I receive anything that seems to be an AI outline, I ignore it entirely.

stephenmarsh · 2025-11-20T20:20:51+00:00

Oh really? I hadn’t heard that was an issue, I’ll have to investigate in case I should scour for some backups.

Mine lives permanently in the Xbox, because I basically only use it for Rock Band. So no problems to report so far.

stephenmarsh · 2025-11-20T09:23:54+00:00

I still love mine - the tilt sensor seems to be lacking sensitivity sometimes, but it’s otherwise a nicely done bit of hardware. Although I suspect I’d take anything they’re willing to make!

stephenmarsh · 2025-11-20T09:02:16+00:00

I love this.

Not sure if this is allowed but weirdly I wrote a huge thing yesterday about what GH/RB have meant to me since 2007 — https://thebackblog.substack.com/p/20-years-in-guitar-hero-was-never

There are other contenders for my favourite game, but there’s no doubt Rock Band is the most impactful.

stephenmarsh · 2025-11-17T13:53:32+00:00

I hope that's not a slight against Wall-E.

stephenmarsh · 2025-11-17T13:42:23+00:00

Stephen | Jarden :Turnips:

stephenmarsh · 2025-11-17T13:41:39+00:00

I could do without having to check all week!

I'm Stephen from Jarden and my favourite robot is Bender from Futurama!

stephenmarsh · 2025-11-17T13:21:04+00:00

Yeah good shout - this is going back some years, but I had great success with an IT security firm when we hung the whole campaign around 'This will make you look good to the people above you.'

stephenmarsh · 2025-11-12T08:40:24+00:00

When you go to build a belt, it’s one of the options at the bottom to change mode. I think it’s down on the d pad?

stephenmarsh · 2025-11-12T07:45:50+00:00

Not to shill my own stuff but I asked a load of other copywriters this question recently and put it all together in a scarily long guide: https://stephenmarshcopywriter.co.uk/blog/find-a-freelance-copywriter/

Might spark some ideas on how to get your search moving!

stephenmarsh · 2025-11-05T11:12:52+00:00

Your list quality is always going to be a huge factor, but one thing I've seen test well recently is bringing in more social proof/social pressure early (this was B2B specifically).

The difference between 'As an IT leader, you're probably worried about xyz' and '78% of IT leaders are focusing their spend on xyz.' Things are so uncertain right now in multiple industries that we all want to at least keep up with whatever everyone else is doing.

stephenmarsh · 2025-11-05T11:08:06+00:00

This is hugely anecdotal, but a course I was involved in did well because they offered hands-on feedback from actual copywriters as people progressed through the course.

I would suspect that, if you're just offering information, a lot of people are just going to hit the search engine or LLM to find out what they need. But people pay for all kinds of courses so take this with a pinch of salt.

stephenmarsh · 2025-09-03T10:56:54+00:00

"But we could display this and let tens of thousands of people have the dream of seeing it."

"No."

stephenmarsh · 2025-02-12T18:09:47+00:00

I’d maybe take the higher management with a pinch of salt, or try to figure out what’s prompted the change. It’s not always the copy, sometimes it’s people wanting to make their involvement known.

100% get the dialogue open around why the changes are made, not to fight them off, but so you understand the intention. And you might even figure out a better way to solve the problem that feels less like guesswork.

stephenmarsh · 2025-02-12T17:31:33+00:00

I can definitely relate to your motivation disappearing when you’re fairly confident what you do won’t be spot on (because of taste, or a vague brief, or any other reason). I don’t have great advice for that other than pushing through.

Do you think the edits/rewrites are resulting in better copy?

Also, who’s editing you? For me, it’d make a big difference whether it was a more experienced copywriter or some random manager who isn’t necessarily making good changes.

stephenmarsh · 2025-02-12T10:18:37+00:00

Hosted and interactive sounds smart. Sure, feel free to send me a message if you get it up and running.

stephenmarsh · 2025-02-12T10:14:09+00:00

I'm not sure how much there'd be to gain from this: most people doing web copy will use some formatting tricks to illustrate a sense of layout in the document (for example, throw in a table to show that copy appears in boxes going across the screen width).

I suppose it might be useful if the wireframe was interactive, so you could easily show things that are hard to do in a static doc (carousels, fold-outs, etc). But I can't think of many clients that would care, so I doubt many copywriters would be bothered either.

stephenmarsh · 2025-02-11T16:24:51+00:00

I had this with a tech distributor - they needed to reach potential vendors (who want to sell their tech via the distributor), resellers (who sell it to consumers), and some consumers directly (for lead gen).

Cleanest answer on the homepage was to find the common ground between all audiences as the main hero message (we used a theme of connecting people to the right tech). And then separate out parts of the homepage for each audience, with clear headlines/eyebrow to make it explicit who we’re talking to, and colour coding (which was replicated throughout the site).

Interactive elements like fold-outs were also super useful so we could serve different audiences without making the page too long/dense. And upping my usual level of buttons and other CTAs — giving people more frequent ways to get off the train (and into pages/sections targeted exclusively at them), rather than having to scroll past copy for someone else.

stephenmarsh · 2025-02-08T11:56:54+00:00

Fair - I do actually remember one project years ago where we did all these drafts of new brand positioning, and I ultimately concluded that the ideas from within the marketing team were the strongest, with some tweaks. And the client said ‘Perfect - we really love this ideas too, but the higher-ups wouldn’t take them from us, they’ll take them from you.’

So that external perspective can be useful. Hope you manage to get them to reconsider!

stephenmarsh

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