Messaging
Do you ever put together emails, decks, RFPs, or keynotes? Aha—you’re a Launch copywriter. The way you say things tells your audience not only who you are, but who Launch is. This is a brand of exploration and innovation, and if we can get people excited about the potential we offer them, we’re already halfway into a relationship. You can do that through the copy you write.
The guidelines in this section aim to give you the context you need to make intentional choices about how you present your work to the market, and have your copy come out sounding like Launch every time.
Voice
Great copy connects with the audience on a personal level. In order to give our audience the confidence to make bold decisions, they have to trust us. That means we need to write copy like Launch is a person—casual, conversational, and human. When you speak for Launch, it should feel like you’re talking to a friend.
Quick tips:
- Write like you talk. Speak plainly, be direct and open, and make the topic easy to understand.
- Use people-first language. Avoid referring to your audience as users, etc. Be clear that you understand the people you’re talking to.
- Get to the point. Don’t couch your message in sales fluff or technical terms.
- Let your passion show. We do exciting things, and it’s cool to be excited about them!
Our copy, both written and verbal, should be assertive, candid, curious, encouraging, and energized.
Assertive
Sure, self-confident, bold: We’re professional and colorful in our copy. We take a stand. We don’t waffle or dither. We make people feel confident in us because we sound confident in ourselves.
Candid
Open, direct, straightforward, colloquial: We don’t hide behind technical language or try to sound impressive. We demonstrate our expertise by talking about our work in a way that anyone can understand. We’re straight and honest when talking to our clients.
Curious
Wondering, explorative, open-minded: We are design thinkers who are thirsty for knowledge. Tangled and unusual business challenges openly excite us. We ask a lot of open questions and explore unconventional solutions, staying focused on the why behind the ask.
Encouraging
Reassuring, motivating, optimistic: We want our clients to become as interested in and knowledgeable about our areas of expertise as we are. We choose positive, coaching-oriented language and speak with excitement about the future.
Energized
Lively, enthusiastic, ebullient, witty: We’re colorful and expressive, which infuses humanity into high tech. Think about it: are your favorite speakers the ones who have the most facts, or the ones who clearly love what they’re talking about?
Hyphenation and text-break rules
There are a number of ways to make a large body of text easier to read. Hyphenation is great at making a paragraph look cleaner on the page, but it's difficult to use well. Rather than replace one problem (suboptimal page design) with another problem (mixed / misguided hyphenation implementation), the general rule for all Launch communications is to leave hyphenation turned off.
Additionally, Microsoft Office tools have trouble breaking up two-word sets that have a slash (“/”) dividing them when they appear at the end of a line, such as ”mixed/misguided“ shown below. To alleviate this issue, the best practice is to add a space before and after the slash, making it read “mixed / misguided”.
Do:
Don’t:
Grammar rules
We’ve seen some, uh, creative use of the English language in Launch documents over the years. For the sake of credibility and consistency, please check over your copy for the following:
Active voice
Things don’t happen to us—we happen to them. Ferret out any use of passive voice and replace it with active voice. For example, “Users are guided through a training module by the program” would become “The program guides people through a training module.”
Do:
Don’t:
Sentence-case capitalization
Avoid capitalizing words that are not proper nouns or an established acronym. We’re going for casual and friendly, right? Clauses like “We’re Experts in Software Engineering, Machine Learning, and Data Platforms” sound formal and old-fashioned. “We’re experts in software engineering, machine learning, and data platforms” is more casual.
Do:
Don’t:
Contractions, commas, and conjunctions
- We’re fans of contractions (“we’re” as opposed to “we are”). They sound casual and approachable, just like us.
- We use the Oxford Comma. When you have a list of more than two things (say, “software engineering, machine learning, and data platforms"), make sure you include the comma before the “and.”
- On that note, at Launch, we write out the word “and”—no &s or +s in body copy. Writing out “and” instead of using ampersands helps with clarity.
Do:
Don’t:
Remember, your friendly neighborhood marketers are always willing to do a grammar check over your document if you want an extra pair of eyes. Reach out anytime to marketing@launchcg.com.