Strategic writing

for startups, investors & new brands

Converting vague and messy ideas into clear stories and visions.

When crafted well, a few words can mobilize millions – of customers, advocates, dollars and more. 

But grounding your story in a relevant social context is difficult and time-consuming, especially when there isn’t established language to easily describe what you do.

The more niche your product (or the more technical) the harder the problem. You can’t just hire a copywriter to build your site without a clear story about why you exist.

My work specializes in putting words to the tricky, technical spaces that haven’t yet been distilled—simplifying complex ideas into digestible content that doesn't suck to read.

Drawing on my chops as a journalist, marketer, and a design strategist, I help founders, investors, and their teams convert their best ideas into press-ready websites, long-form content and mini-manifestos.

Then we package it into fun, breathable content that drives sales, opens opportunities, and changes hearts and minds.

The Goods

I’ve worked with startups, Fortune 500s, and professional services firms in a wide range of formats and brand voices (as professional or cheeky as you need). If you have an idea that you don’t see on this list, just drop me a line.

Website Copy

Newsletters

Op-eds & Editorial

Guides

Public Reports

Thought Leadership

Press Releases

Decks & One Pagers

Blog Posts

Branded Content

Case Studies

Video Scripts

Other focus areas 👀

Sometimes, before you can start writing you need to do primary research. Together, we create maps of your cultural world(s), which helps create fodder for playbooks, storytelling and growth.

  • Great positioning starts with deeply understanding your customer and your market. My work combines customer research, marketing analytics, cultural signal gathering, and strategic design to create brand strategies that ‘say something.’ 

  • Every once in a while, the language you use to describe your business stops feeling right. When that happens, narrative strategy helps align stakeholders around a new, shared vision. I work with founders to articulate these new brand worlds—a little positioning, a little PR, a little manifesto writing.

  • Foresight is about scanning the social environment for signals of change, and organizing them into themes, drivers, and insights that help organizations find opportunity and avoid risk.

    Knowing how to plan for long-term growth takes clear, sober thought and critical awareness. You can build this capability before it hits you in the face.

“Sam is a strategist’s strategist. A bullet-proof thinker that helped me articulate, in two weeks, ideas I’d been grasping at for months.”

Steven Ebert, Founder at New Vision

“Sam wrote the language for our site almost entirely on his own. He made our typically complex language extremely simple.”

Marc-Andre Roberge, CEO at Nectar

Select Projects

  • Customer success playbook for Microsoft Store

    Defining customer service best practices for their stores team after a pandemic-led shift to online shopping.

  • Building Acquire into a 30+ person agency

    Operating a thirty person marketing agency, developing growth strategies for SaaS & e-commerce startups.

  • End-to-end brand communications for Nectar

    A full-stack comms project focused on converting a “theory of change” into a website overhaul and thought leadership strategy.

  • Envisioning the future of book discovery for Amazon

    Developing a theory-framework on the ways book reading and discovery will change over the next 3-7 years.

  • Narrative strategy for the Autodesk Foundation

    Substantiating a theory of sustainable growth toward the year 2030, and the foundation’s role in shaping this vision.

  • Dimensionalizing Lululemon’s brand & product pipeline

    Expanding Lulu’s brand identity with qualitative research on the future of connection and transformation.

  • GTM & brand strategy for Quantified Citizen

    Helping QC describe their business, with a comprehensive theory of change, research manifesto and GTM strategy.

  • Hypersprint on Hypersprint for New Vision

    Running New Vision’s brand strategy process on itself—a meta case study in process development.

See More

Quality is a Moat

As AI makes it easier to produce basic brand materials, the premium on quality thinking and writing rises. ‘Saying something’ means grounding ideas in sound positioning & research.

Partners Not Clients

I try to really care about your business and think about your problems as if they were my own. Happy clients are the best proof, so I bring my A-game to every project I take on. 

Numbers & Narratives

Working in growth marketing exposed me to the (often) wide gap between what we think intuitively and what the numbers say. Wherever possible, I try to think, communicate, and persuade in data.

High Leverage, Maximum Utility

Nobody wants to waste time or money on busy work. I always prioritize the projects & tasks that have the highest impact and utility.

FAQ

  • Typically, projects start with a scoping phase where we build the vision for a discrete output. That phase is typically hourly. Once we know where we’re heading, we can shift to a project fee, or some other simple arrangement.

  • I can typically turn around urgent requests within 2-3 business days.

  • All my client projects are currently run through Acquire Agency.

Select Clients

Microsoft+
Nectar+
Volkswagen+
Campari Group+
Solidarités Internationales+
Sheertex+
Alchemy+
StyleDemocracy+
Travelzoo+

Amazon+
Lululemon+
Autodesk Foundation+
Clearbanc (now Clearco)+
Quantified Citizen+
Drippi (Exit 2023)+
Hush Blankets+
Tkees+
KOHO+