Messaging Architecture
This is the document that sits between a position and a page. The position says where you stand. The architecture says what gets claimed, in what order, with what evidence, to whom.
Around fifteen pages. It is the densest thing the studio makes, and the document that turns a position into something a writer can actually be briefed with.
Why the third rewrite costs the same as the first
Because each one starts from nothing. With no architecture there is nothing for a writer to inherit, so every brief opens with a week of reconstructing what the company believes, and every writer reconstructs it slightly differently.
You can read it on any site that has had three marketing leads. The homepage argues one thing, the product pages argue another, the paid landing pages argue whatever tested least badly, and the sales team has quietly built a fifth version that works and is written down nowhere.
None of this is a style problem. An architecture is the record of which claims the company is making and which ones it has decided it cannot support yet. That second half is where the money is saved.
The fifteen pages, section by section
- Three or four pillars
- Each with the claim, who it is aimed at, the evidence behind it, and what it deliberately leaves out. Four is usually one too many and we will argue for three.
- Proof points, sorted by strength
- What you can actually evidence, ranked. Just as useful: the pillars currently carrying no proof at all, which is where a quarter of work goes next.
- Hierarchy
- What leads, what follows, what gets cut when there is one line of space. Including the version that has to fit an ad headline, which is where most architectures come apart.
- Objections, with answers
- The five that come up on every call, answered without the defensive tone. Written from the transcripts rather than from a room with a whiteboard in it.
- Where the message splits
- The places it legitimately changes by audience, and the places it must not. The second list matters more and is almost never written.
- Language rules for the claim set
- The words that belong to your argument, and the near-synonyms that quietly weaken it. This is not a voice guide — brand voice guide is — but the pillars depend on some specific vocabulary and it gets pinned down here.
- A one-page brief template
- So the next person to write anything, in-house or not, starts from the architecture instead of a blank document and a Thursday deadline.
How it gets built
It starts from a positioning document, ours or yours. Pillars get drafted against interview transcripts, never against a whiteboard.
Then we try to break them. Each candidate pillar gets the hardest page written against it in rough — normally the pricing page, or the one aimed at your most sceptical audience. A pillar that cannot survive a paragraph is not a pillar, and it is far cheaper to discover that here than on a homepage.
The numbers
- Price
- €5,200, or €7,600 for this and the Brand Voice Guide together. That pairing is the only discount on the site.
- Turnaround
- 15 business days from sign-off. Add five days if the voice guide is bundled, since half the research is shared.
- Revisions
- 2 rounds, one structural and one line-edit. Beyond them, €85 an hour.
- Payment
- 50% to start, 50% on delivery. The published figure is the final amount payable.
Everything written after it
Website Copy
Pages written from a decided argument, which is the only reason a five-to-eight-page site can be quoted at a fixed date.
Launch Copy
A launch is the hardest test of an architecture. The same claim has to survive an ad, a subject line and a long page in the same week.
Brand Voice Guide
How the argument sounds, as against what it says. Cheaper bought with this than after it.
Two questions this raises
Yes, if you can state your position in a sentence, defend it against the competitor you lose to most often, and name what you concede. Send us that sentence and you will get a straight yes or no.
If you cannot, the first three days turn into an unpaid positioning project and the document ends up describing an argument nobody signed. Better to buy the brand positioning work, or the cheaper positioning diagnostic first.
Whoever writes anything. The designer choosing what goes above the fold. A founder writing a cold email. The agency you hire for paid social. The support lead writing a status update at midnight.
It is built to be handed over, which is why the pillars come with briefs attached instead of adjectives, and why there is a one-page version at the front.
Send the position you already have
Even a rough one. Paste the sentence you use in a first sales call and you will hear within two business days whether the architecture is the right next purchase or the wrong one.