StrongBrandWords is a small editorial copywriting studio in the Lauttasaari district of Helsinki. We take around twenty engagements a year and turn down about seventy. The work we take is run by a named writer and a named editor; the work we send is read aloud at the desk before it leaves the office; the writing is hand-written, never assembled by a model. These are the six principles the practice is built on, and the four people who hold them.
The studio opened in the autumn of 2019 with one writer, one editor, and the decision that we would not take on work we could not name. Six years later, the four of us still spend the first thirty minutes of every brief deciding whether the engagement is one we should refuse — and only then, if the answer is no, drafting the paragraph that explains why.
We have written for a Helsinki public utility, a Copenhagen restaurant collective, an independent Finnish publisher, a fashion label in our own neighbourhood, a Turku sauna company on its bicentenary, and a single-founder specialty-grain farm on the harvest of 2022. The engagements share almost nothing in common except that, in every case, the client wanted to be read carefully. None of these clients found us through an advertisement, because the studio has not run one.
The word marketing has become, in our part of the industry, a description of volume rather than of communication. Marketing copy is produced quickly, edited lightly, and measured by quantity. Editorial copy is produced slowly, edited closely, and measured by what a reader remembers two weeks after they have read it. The studio is built around the second kind. We refer the first kind to two freelancers we trust and one boutique agency we admire.
The distinction matters because it determines what we will and will not take. A brief that needs forty pieces of competent copy a month is not a brief for us. A brief that needs one finished piece of writing that the rest of the business is waiting on, or a quarter of considered output for a brand that has done the voice work — those briefs are why the studio exists.
"Reading the piece aloud at the desk is the cheapest editorial intervention there is, and the one most often skipped." Lotta Salminen · Editor's note, autumn 2025
Every brief that comes through the door is read by Mikael first — the production lead, who decides whether the engagement is one we have capacity for and one we are the right studio for. If both answers are yes, the brief moves to Lotta, who decides whether the engagement is one we should take on this quarter or one that should wait a quarter. Roughly half of the briefs that survive the first filter are turned down at the second.
The paragraph we send to the briefs we turn down is itself, by now, a small part of the studio's reputation. It thanks the brief for being clear, names the reason we are saying no in a single sentence, points at who we think would do the work well, and ends. It takes fifteen minutes to write. Every one of us writes one because we believe the recipient — even unsuccessful — deserves the paragraph.
We do not write paid-acquisition copy, social-media content at volume, technical documentation, or SEO content farms. We do not write press releases without an editorial argument inside them, and we do not write founder posts that the founder has not read aloud to us first. We do not draft anything with a language model, and we will not start now. We do not take on engagements we cannot name with two senior people in the room. Most of these are stylistic choices; one of them — the language-model one — is a written policy that we have published and signed.
Lotta was a magazine editor in Helsinki and Tallinn for twelve years before she opened the studio in 2019. She runs every Voice engagement, edits every Residency piece, and reads every brief that comes through the door. She has a strong opinion about semicolons.
Elias wrote campaigns for two Helsinki agencies and a Stockholm consultancy before joining the studio in 2021. He runs most of the Quill engagements and the strategy half of every Voice. He prefers to write in the morning and edit in the afternoon and resents anyone who books a call in between.
Sara published a novel in 2020 and a second one in 2023 and writes about brands for half the year so the novels can take the other half. She runs the voice workshops, leads naming sprints, and is the person you want on the call when nobody can agree on what the brand sounds like.
Mikael runs the schedule, the contracts, the calendar, and the invoices. He joined the studio in 2022 from a Helsinki design consultancy. He is the reason every Residency client has a single point of contact who knows where every brief stands without having to ask.
Every engagement is owned by a senior copywriter and a senior editor — both named in the engagement letter before the work begins. There is no anonymous middle layer. The person who answers your first email writes the brief, drafts the piece, and reads the final round.
We do not write a sentence of body copy before the question of who is speaking has been answered in writing. A brief that does not answer the voice question is sent back to the brief stage. Most studios get this wrong by skipping it; the result is copy that sounds like the studio rather than the client.
Every piece we send is copy-edited by a writer who did not draft it, then read aloud by the editor before it leaves the studio. Reading the piece aloud is the cheapest editorial intervention there is, and the one most often skipped. We have not skipped it on a single engagement since 2019.
Every engagement is priced for one round of revision and held to a second if real new information arrives between the first round and the second. Beyond the second round the engagement is no longer a writing engagement and is converted to hourly time at the published rate.
No piece of writing that leaves this studio has been drafted, edited, or assembled by a language model. We use AI for transcripts of calls and for early-stage research summaries; the writing is hand-written. Every piece has a sentence that no model would have produced, and that is what we are paid for.
The studio takes around twenty engagements a year. We are asked about ninety. The work we turn down — for capacity reasons, for fit reasons, for engagements that would be better served by a different studio — is more than the work we take. We say no quickly and we explain why in a single paragraph.
Send the brief, however rough. Lotta or Mikael will reply within two working days with one of three answers: yes and here is how, no and here is who instead, or could we book a call.