Signature Offer:

One Giant Leap

Discover the power of language
to elevate your brand.

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into
an ownable
market position

Standout brands don’t just have a defined tone of voice - they have a whole strategy around how they show up in terms of language.

From positioning to storytelling and tone, One Giant Leap gives you the words you need to propel your business forward.

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From this…

OGL: From This

No clarity

You struggle to express what you stand for and (surprise) so does your audience.

No consistency

You want to grow your business, but your brand feels disjointed and bland.

No differentiation

You can’t shake the suspicion that your brand is drowning in a sea of sameness.

No framework

You’re stuck in endless debates about what’s on-brand and off-brand and why.

…to this

After taking One Giant Leap, you’ll feel fully confident scaling the brand, with every aspect of your comms aligned with your strategy for growth.

You’ll be able to consistently strengthen your position in the market, and connect with your audience on a deeper level.

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What’s in
a  ?

One Giant Leap is made up of
three interconnected parts.

Brand Language Review

An expert analysis of your status quo, identifying gaps and opportunities for your brand to connect more impactfully with your target. Including:

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  • Preparatory Checklist
    To help you secure stakeholder buy-in and set the scene for success.

  • Brand Language Discovery
    A questionnaire to get us quickly onboard with where you are and where you want to be.

  • Brand Language Review
    The presentation of our findings, including competitor analysis and actionable insights.

Brand Positioning

A chance to interrogate and refine your brand positioning, or simply distill it into language that resonates with your audience or team. Including:

  • Brand Positioning Kick-Off
    A call to co-design this phase of the project.

  • Brand Positioning Workshop
    A 4-hour session with key stakeholders to interrogate and evolve your market position, followed up with a written summary.

  • Brand on a Page
    Document(s) articulating your new brand position - e.g. purpose, mission, vision, values, positioning/platform, manifesto - finalised via 3 rounds of amends.

  • Embed your Positioning
    A plan including a customisable email to roll out the new positioning.

Tone of Voice Guidelines

A document enabling all writers to quickly understand your brand, so that writing from your brand POV feels effortless, even fun. Including:

  • Tone of Voice Kick-Off
    A call to review reception of the work to date and co-design the final phase.

  • Tone of Voice Workshop
    A 4-hour session with key stakeholders to interrogate and evolve your tone of voice, followed up with a written summary.

  • Tone of Voice Guidelines
    A branded document setting out your newly defined tone of voice - finalised via 3 rounds of amends.

  • Embed your Tone
    A plan including a customisable email to roll out the new tone of voice.

The Investment

One Giant Leap
From £18,500

Included in your package:

  • Brand Language Review

  • Brand Positioning Copy

  • Tone of Voice Guidelines

Split payments and bespoke proposals are available.

Let’s get started

Case study

・

Case study ・

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Penguin Random House

An iconic brand in a changing world.

Challenge

Back in 1934, Allen Lane was searching for a “dignified but flippant” symbol for his revolutionary new publishing venture. For decades, this phrase stood in for a fully fledged brand personality.

Now one of the most beloved brands in the world, and with a big birthday on the horizon, Penguin needed to consolidate a forward-looking new positioning with language that people across the company could understand and buy into.

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Response

A positioning line was already in place, so we worked alongside the Brand Team to unpack it into a set of roles for Penguin to play in the lives of readers, an emotive manifesto, brand pillars to inform content and social strategies and, finally, a fully defined tone of voice.

After an audit of tonal guidance across various teams, we led discovery workshops to explore the Penguin tone and how it could be evolved. We collaborated with multiple stakeholders, including a design team working in parallel on a new visual identity, to encapsulate Penguin’s personality in three memorable traits.

Under each of these, we then crafted writing guidance and examples, empowering a wide group of writers to embody the brand in different channels and for different audiences.

We also helped embed the new guidelines by workshopping them with key teams, investing the whole company in the value of a brand that’s rooted in their heritage, but also fit for 2024 and beyond.

Armed with what team members described as “the missing key”, “game changing” and “a joy to see come to life”, Penguin is now able to distinguish themselves in the market and connect more meaningfully with their audiences.

Faced with an iconic and historic brand, Sally brought no preconceptions to the table, instead listening to our challenges, spending time with our teams, and taking a thoughtful approach to developing a tone of voice that balances our heritage with our needs today. Sally is smart, nuanced, and super-focused on her clients’ needs, and I couldn’t recommend working with her more. .

Zainab Juma, Head of Brand

Past clients

・

Past clients ・

We thoroughly enjoyed our time collaborating with Leapling. As an early stage startup, we had several critically important challenges we needed help with.

Through thoughtful workshops and asynchronous working, Leapling helped us clearly articulate the fundamentals of who we are, why we exist and work out where we sit in the market.

Sally has an amazing ability to drive the strategic vision while simultaneously being detail oriented and deliver this through impactful copywriting.

Merlin Mason, Product Engineer
& Project Lead, Samaya AI

Sally helped us to define and produce a refresh on our brand positioning. She ran a very productive workshop, then helped focus our thoughts and beliefs into a new narrative for our brand and copy for all our touch points. We are really happy with the results!

Chris Frost, Founder
& CEO, Cogs

Smart, current, curious, imaginative, lashings of empathy and able to get the essence of brand message or an idea incredibly quickly. If you need words, concepts or an opinion on where your project or brand should be heading, Sally is the person to call.

Liam Morgan, Founder & CEO, Cogs

Our
Process

How we turn brand language into a
superpower for your business.

1: Review

Brand Language Review

  • No need to write a brief - simply complete our discovery questionnaire so we can start thinking about your business objectives, audience insights and channel strategy.

  • We’ll use your answers to review your current brand language (including messaging, tone and storytelling) and that of your competitors.

  • We’ll present our analysis back to you, applying literary theory as well as brand strategy, and including opportunities we can exploit in Phase 2.

2: Reset

Brand Positioning

  • A kick-off call allows us to map out stakeholders, timings and deliverables.

  • We’ll facilitate a workshop to get under the hood of your business, brand and audience.

  • We’ll share our workshop summary with you, and any implications for next steps.

  • We’ll present our first draft of your brand positioning, typically in the form of the ‘Brand on a Page’, including purpose, mission, vision, values, positioning/platform, plus a manifesto.

  • We can refine this together via three rounds of amends.

  • We’ll work with designers (yours or our own) to bring this work into your brand’s visual identity.

  • We’ll help you roll out this document across the business with embedding ideas and a launch email you can customise for your team.

3: Refine

Tone of Voice Guidelines

  • A kick-off call allows us to review Phases 1 and 2, and how the work has been received across the business.

  • If needed, we’ll facilitate another workshop to dive deeper into stakeholders’ aspirations and challenges around Tone of Voice.

  • We’ll share our workshop summary with you, with a recommended structure for the guidelines.

  • We’ll present our first draft of your new Tone of Voice Guidelines.

  • We can refine this together via three rounds of amends.

  • We’ll work with designers (yours or our own) to bring this work into your brand’s visual identity.

  • Finally, we’ll help you roll out this document across the business with embedding ideas and an email you can customise for your team.

Language builds
brands.
Why treat it as an afterthought?

Get ready to...

  • Work on a brand that sounds as good as it looks.

  • Champion a vital piece of work for your business.

  • Take the subjectivity out of conversations about brand and marketing.

  • hidden

After studying English at Cambridge, and Copywriting & Art Direction on the legendary Watford course, Sally spent 20 years honing her skills as an award winning conceptual creative in London’s top advertising agencies. Rooted in the primacy of the idea, these experiences set Leapling apart from design-led branding studios.

A Masters in Creative Writing, alongside stints as a Writing Lead in Google’s Creative Lab and Head of Copy at Deliveroo, cemented Sally’s belief in the power of language to take brands from good to great.

These skill sets come together at Leapling, in the form of hands-on, senior talent you rarely get access to at an agency.

Hi, I’m Sally

Who is
this for?

Is your brand ready for One Giant Leap?

Size: Any

Whether you’re a solopreneur or a large company, your brand can be elevated through language.

Sector: Any

We love partnering with all kinds of brands, but especially those in the arts and culture sector.

Stage: Growth

  • Need to reach new markets or audiences with your brand?

  • Joined a business or brand team, and want to push things forward?

  • Finally ready to be more thoughtful with your brand, instead of writing on the fly?

FAQs

  • No, your brand could even be pre-launch. From baby brands to cultural institutions, it’s always a good time to invest in getting your positioning watertight, your messaging on-point, and your tone of voice working for you.

  • There might be more than you think. Brand names, product names, your business pitch, internal documents and terminology, sales copy, even the wording on or around the product itself - these are all part of your verbal identity.

  • Each phase of One Giant Leap underpins the next, giving your brand the most thorough and connected transformation possible. But there’s a whole range of ways to work with Leapling, including each of these phases as a self-contained offer.

  • You can make this clear in the discovery part of each phase, and we’ll factor it into our work. But this is an opportunity to inject some fresh, expert thinking on your entire communications strategy, without the costs of appointing an agency or hiring in-house. We’ll always ask to consider the whole picture, but there’s no pressure to implement every part of our work, and no harm in seeing how it could all come together :)

  • Leapling mixes sharp brand thinking with a rare feel for words, sealed when founder Sally was trained in Practical Criticism while studying English at Cambridge. Close textual analysis gives us a fresh, rigorous, deeper way of talking about brand language. However, it’s just one tool among many and always applied in view of your specific business needs.

  • Absolutely. One Giant Leap includes emails and presentations to help introduce and embed the outputs across the wider business. Beyond the offer, you can also work with us to create campaigns and copy assets in all kinds of channels - we’d love to chat through the options.

  • We have a network of trusted freelance designers to help brand our outputs, or develop your visual identity in parallel. If you have a design team we’re more than happy to collaborate with them too - Penguin Random House was a recent project in this vein.

  • Leapling is based in London. We’re happy to travel to your workplace for workshops and meetings but most of the work will take place remotely. And if you’re outside the UK, or in-person workshops aren’t feasible, we can find ways around that too.

  • Around 8 weeks from beginning to end, including some flex to coordinate diaries.

  • Nothing too unusual. We can work with your preferred video-call and live-doc platforms - Google, Zoom, Teams, Keynote, Notion, etc.

  • We’d love to keep working together, either as your retained or ad hoc strategic writing partner, or as a project-based copywriter to help roll out your new positioning and tone of voice.

  • We take on a One Giant Leap project every quarter, so get in touch now to see how soon we could start working together!

Don’t be one of the herd.
Be one of the heard.

Clear, consistent, distinct brand language
isn’t just an asset. It’s a necessity.

Get in touch via the form to book
your discovery call.