ALL THE WORD STUFF
VRBL Studio is a small, specialized consultancy that aims to do a few things very well and leave the rest to others. Combining strategic capabilities, writing expertise, and a whole lot of practical experience, we help brands find their voice and define their message.
Put simply, we do the word stuff: naming, tone of voice, messaging … what the pros call verbal identity and most everyone else thinks of as copywriting. Our other main area of focus is brand strategy, which encompasses things like research, workshops, positioning statements, and brand manifestos. What we don’t do is design. Getting all the word stuff right is hard enough.
Depending on the situation, we either partner with design studios to expand their capabilities or consult directly with companies. For studios, we can help scope a project and pitch it, or jump in once things are rolling. For companies, we view our expertise as a complement to, and not a replacement for, the knowledge already in place.
And while a lot of our work necessarily involves quiet time (i.e., staring off into space), collaboration is huge for us — brainstorming with our designer friends, connecting with in-house teams.
Because the word stuff matters, that’s why. You can’t develop a decent brand without it. Yet many agencies, especially the smaller shops, simply lack the resources to do it as well as the visual stuff. Or they don’t even pursue those parts of a project. In-house teams, meanwhile, often benefit from having someone from the outside help with tone of voice, messaging, and the like.
As AI makes it easier and easier for anyone to generate perfectly acceptable copy, the question for the people who build and market brands is how to set them apart from one another in terms of what they say and how they say it.
Hozy Rossi started VRBL Studio after twenty years writing and leading creative teams on the agency side (Moving Brands, MetaDesign) and in-house (Dolby, Udemy). Much of that time, for better or worse — ok, mostly for the better — was spent in the company of designers.
Google, LG, PlayStation Studios, UBS, and the New York Philharmonic are among the brands Hozy’s helped over the years. He also published a novel somewhere along the way, but that’s another story.
Contributors to VRBL Studio include Nirali Rodriguez (brand strategy), Susan Weingarten (brand strategy), Erin Higgins (copywriting), and Amy Berkowitz (copywriting).
You run an agency with plenty of design talent but no one with the experience necessary to lead the verbal component of a major project.
You’re a creative director or CMO, and your in-house copy team is struggling to find the tone stakeholders want in their marketing.
You’re an independent designer who needs help with the strategy phase of a project and perhaps also developing creative concepts that align with the strategy.
You’re a marketing lead responsible for getting everyone on the team to agree on the key messages that will form the basis for next year’s playbook.
You’re the lonely voice of reason in an organization that otherwise thinks flooding its marketing channels with jargon and talking points is a winning strategy.
Technology
Atlassian, BMC Software, Google, InFocus, Keyssa, Loggly, McAfee, RingCentral, SourceClear, Udemy, ZetaChain
Media and Entertainment
Fox Sports, New York Philharmonic, PlayStation Studios, Santa Monica Studio, Texture
Consumer Electronics
Dolby, LG, Sony Electronics
Health and Sciences
10x Genomics, Allscripts, Be the Match, Celmatix, Daiichi Sankyo, Ekso Bionics, Embark, Global Brain Health Institute, Highlander Health, MilliporeSigma, Pendulum Therapeutics, Propeller Health, Rainin, San Francisco City Clinic, Siemens, Twin Health, UCSF, Waters
Professional Services
Cognizant, Cooley LLP
Finance
Financial Engines, UBS, Vontobel
Food and Beverage
Ajinomoto, Hennessy
Industrial
Energy Recovery, Flexcon, GCI Construction, SunEdison
Other
Bay Alarm, Near Future, Porsche, Public Interest Registry, VergeSense, Volkswagen
