Mechanisms of Note.
Over the years we've written tens of thousands of words of interviews — for 7mesh, for Above Category, for Pegoretti — with everyone from a Canadian national mountain-bike champion to the founder of Rapha. It's a happy place for us. We love hearing stories, and we love writing them down.
Our love of a good story is something we bring to bear on every e-commerce project, but you won't see a word of it on a quote. A quote has the design and the build on it: the pages, the commerce, the dates. Simple things to write down, with a great deal of complexity inside them. The storytelling comes along anyway as part of the overall package. It arrives somewhere within the lines of the work, and it tends to land as a surprise to the brand — you do this? You never said a word.
The gap
When we start designing a site, and then building it, a gap opens up. The design asks for photography, for words, perhaps for video, and it asks for them in quantity. These things make a site. They are the fundamentals of the culture, the community, the brand — whatever the ephemeral thing is you're trying to build, it's the summation of all that.
Alongside the gap comes the pressure. The team now has a thing to fill. There may be historical content, and it helps, but the site has to be driven, and the driving falls to the same few people who run the business. Anyone with responsibility in a company knows this pressure. It's the constant one, whether you're aware of it or not, to push on and write about the things in your industry.
Sit down and talk
When a project kicks off, as soon as it feels like the right time, we start our search for stories with an offer to interview the people in the business — about a page like the brand's who-we-are moment, or an idea they've had for a piece. It might be a five-minute chat or half an hour. We transcribe it, shape it, give it an edit, and it becomes a strong piece of content. What it required of the person was to sit down and talk to us. And once the idea is seeded and the results shown, we're away, and from then on, the recorder never really stops.
The talking is the mechanism. With some gentle questioning, an eye on where we want to get to and a working knowledge of the brand, a conversation gives rise to more thought than a blank page does. You aren't sat at a keyboard, relying on your own inertia. A question propels you somewhere new. What comes out is married to the voice of the brand and the voice of the person — which may be the same thing or two different things — and it's very in depth, and surprising in the turns it takes.
Its potency is that it unlocks a frustration, or an energy; people have things they want to say. Often there's a search term worth going after, or a corner of the industry they want to be known for — and are, inside the building, though nobody outside has been told. A conversation brings it out. We've been working this way for several years now, and it works.
A cup of tea with John
Our story moments don't stop when the site goes live, either. With John at Blind John's Guitars we have what we call a Cup of Tea Chat every couple of weeks. Sometimes the subject is strategic: there's a lot of traffic for a phrase, it's relevant to the business, so let's talk about that. John brings his insight, and twenty minutes later there's a piece for the site. The rest is mechanics, the motions you go through to get it up.
It's a simple thing. And we've seen the relief it brings when we offer it — send us a WhatsApp voice memo and we'll work on it — because a founder has just reclaimed a lot of time, and put down a weight they may not have known they were carrying. This Note began as a voice memo, as it happens.
Tens of thousands of years
For all its wonders, when you ask an AI a question it goes and reads the web. A relevant site — open to all technologies and all people, with words and phrases that marry up to the entity behind it — has never mattered more. Long-form editorial is coming back into play. That's a nice thing, and it shouldn't be a surprise. It's been in play for tens of thousands of years. We humans love stories.
Listen, or read
There's one more thing the recording can do. Clean the audio up a little — especially where there's a back and forth, which is where a conversation needs to be for this to work — and it can sit alongside the written piece, podcast style. Do you want to listen, or do you want to read? We might get into that with a few clients this year. It could be quite fun.
Finding a way to free up the gears and unlock stories for our clients is one of the most rewarding parts of every project. You won't see it when we write up the quote or within the details of what we're going to do for you. But it's there. Let's call it our culture: a culture of wanting to hear great stories, wanting to get them out into the world, and helping in any way we can.
You aren't sat at a keyboard, relying on your own inertia. A question propels you somewhere new.