The Word Garden: Sydney’s ‘first copywriting agency’
Supplied image of Miranda O'Connell
An ad agency that claims to be Sydney’s first dedicated copywriting specialist has opened for business.
Called The Word Garden, ex-Haygarth executive Miranda O’Connell is behind the launch, and has teamed up with ex-journalist Leslie Hayden, ex-PR exec Sylvia Tarlinton and former client-side comms consultant Katy McEwen.
The agency launches its Sydney office with a client list including Channel 5, RecruitLoop, Fruit at Work, Snowgoose, Reach Communications, Retail Doctor Group, Evocatif and Torchmedia.
Its mantra is ‘Plant the right word in the right place and it will bloom in hearts and minds’.
“After doing our research, we found that the only other specialist copywriting agency in Australia is in Perth,” said O’Connell. “So there’s clearly a gap in the market for a copywriting agency with strong marketing communications skills on top. There aren’t many copywriters who understand the strategic side of the business.”
The new agency has plans to open an office in Melbourne and a recruitment arm next year.
Great idea.
You just have to look at most current marketing communications to see that persuasive, well written copy has not taken a back seat, its been kicked off the bus.
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Love the idea and like to the overall look of the site. But holy smokes the usability of the site in Firefox is just terrible. I left feeling very frustrated, please fix. I am using FF8.0
But love the idea, good luck.
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Congratulations – although you might find that XXVI beat you too it as Australia’s first dedicated copywriting agency! We launched in Sydney way back in 2005 and now have 5 full-time employees and over 40 clients – some of which are international like IKEA and PHILIPS. There’s plenty of work to go around though and Australia needs good writers. Best of luck to you all. X
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Would it be gnome-ist to say that picture is a bit dodgy?
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And the smart girls at Apostrophe (http://weareapostrophe.com.au/) in Melbourne are doing pretty well too.
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As Scott says, there are a few ‘dedicated copywriting agencies’ in existence in Sydney, our recently launched agency, Copy&Co. included.
XXVI we’re definitely the first though and Scott raises a great point – good writers are always in demand.
Break a leg Word Garden;)
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Maybe we should start a Copywriters Union! LOL!
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If @Love it thinks The Word Garden site is lacking, he/she/ should have a at the XXV1 site. Micheal Jackson would still be alive and moon walking if Dr Conrad had simply read him this stuff every night.
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How much to hire the gnome? does he charge by word or by hour?
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Great to see another dedicated copywriting agency in Sydney, just like The Writing Den (http://www.thewritingden.com.au). Congrats on the launch!
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Ah, “the first” is always a claim fraught with risk. The Copy Collective (www.thecopycollective.com.au) is a dedicated copywriting agency with nine writers on the books. Nice people too (and I should know, I are one.)
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@Andrew: were, not we’re
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How do you get hold of them? No website or contact numbers that I cam find. mark@hydrate.net.au
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I am loving all this shameless self promotion 🙂
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@Mark – their web address is linked within the article.
I too thought it odd that they were the “first” copywriting agency. However there’s a good demand for the service, and it’s always good to have competition in an industry. Good luck to them!
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and who could forget ‘christopher copywriter’ and his extraordinary self-promotion skills from last week.
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Sebastian we saw it the second it posted, but there is no way to edit a post it seems.
(We did ask:)
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We don’t claim to be the first, but we’ve been providing similar services to happy clients for several years as well. Best of luck with it! http://www.writewords.com.au
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Am I missing something? The Word Garden’s own website says the business has been operating since 2004….
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@Tony Ricardson said “You just have to look at most current marketing communications to see that persuasive, well written copy has not taken a back seat, its been kicked off the bus.”
Yes, I agree. But unless the clients put away their track changes and let the writers actually do the writing, nothing will change – regardless of whether you call yourself a specialist writing agency or not.
(And Tony, on this occasion I’m not going to call the apostrophe police on you)
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If anyone from Word Garden is reading this, you probably want to remove that ugly index.php from all your urls by going into your Concret5 admin area and going dashboard->sitewide settings->enable pretty url’s and getting your web developer to add the resulting output to your .htaccess file.
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So it seems as though you’re not the first copy agency in Sydney – but hey, it was a good headline that got people engaged.
Attention – tick.
I’m interested to know how a Copy agency integrates with ATL/BTL agencies on a daily basis and how you work with ADs, AMs and other barnacles that affix themselves on the backs of copywriters.
Interest – tick.
I desire to own that gnome.
Desire – tick.
Hope you get plenty of action!
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How could a harmless self promotional article like this get 22, now 23, comments? Everybody get back to work! Not you Miranda – you and the gnone enjoy the spotlight. Best of luck:)
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@Peter Rush – because everyone loves Miranda!
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@ Peter. Well, I don’t know MIranda. (I’m sure she’s nice.) But we are all just trying to demonstrate (after the recent debate about trolling and incessant bitching on this thing and other forums) that we can – as an industry, and even as direct competitors – play nicely once and for all. Forums can be such a nasty, spiteful places – so personally I think it’s heartening to see the (almost) universally positive responses on here from a lot of similar writing companies. :0)
P.S We were still first.
(I’m KIDDING! lol!)
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And I know you’re going to hassle me for the plural typo of place, so lay in to me and plough me like the dirt I am…(Hey that’s half a bottle of Rioja for you – bloody good stuff though!)
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“After doing our research, we found that the only other specialist copywriting agency in Australia is in Perth,” said O’Connell.
Not sure how far you researched this one! But we are a dedicated copywriting agency here in Melbourne (Fitzroy). We’ve been going for 4+ years now! Our specialisation is SEO Web Copywriting, along with Social Media copywriting and other forms of online marketing along with conversion optimisation and ROI performance analysis.
We rank on Google Page One for top keywords such as ‘copywriter melbourne’ and ‘seo copywriter melbourne’…. Just to toot my own horn! 😉
Insert shameless link to my site here: http://www.meriwords.com.au/home.html
🙂
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