A small studio with old-fashioned habits.
BrandingNarrative is a nine-person copywriting studio in Randers, Denmark. The studio was started in 2017 by two former magazine editors who had spent the previous decade writing for technology companies and were tired of being asked to produce more, faster, and to a brief that started with "make this sound exciting." We started the studio to find out what would happen if a writing practice were structured the way an editorial newsroom is — with editors, deadlines, drafts, and the assumption that good writing takes a third revision.
We are intentionally small. We have turned down volume retainers since 2019. We work with somewhere between fourteen and twenty clients in any given quarter; about half of them are repeat. Roughly a quarter of our work is on Series engagements — a single deep editorial project — and the remainder is split between Sprints and ongoing Studio Partner retainers.
Our studio is housed in a converted stationer’s shop on Nørresundbyvej, with the original brass fittings and a dreadful coffee machine. We share the building with a bookbinder, a small architecture practice, and a piano teacher. It is not glamorous. It is, however, exactly the right size for the work.
Eleven working principles, in no particular order.
- Read it aloud or do not send it.
- A second draft is not a first draft with mistakes corrected. It is a first draft thrown away.
- Specificity is more generous than poetry.
- No verb is more dishonest than "leverage."
- A homepage is a story told out of order; design accordingly.
- If you cannot say it without a brand voice document, your brand voice document has failed.
- Cut the first sentence. Then read it again.
- Trade a smart sentence for a clear one any time you can.
- No company has ever benefited from the word "solutions."
- A short paragraph almost always wins.
- Edit on paper. Always edit on paper.
The studio is nine people, four of whom started as interns.
- Anneli Vestergaard Co-founder · Editor-in-chief Former senior editor at a Copenhagen monthly. Reads three drafts a day, none of them her own.
- Jakob Lindekvist Co-founder · Strategy Wrote tech copy for fifteen years before he started arguing about it for a living.
- Cosmin Nilsen Senior writer Long-form essays. Naming. Has the most extensive collection of out-of-print style manuals in Jutland.
- Inka Brandt-Olsen Senior writer Launches and founder letters. Used to be a speechwriter; the muscle memory is still there.
- Søren Hagebak Editor Reads everything before it leaves the building. Marks in pencil.
- Linnea Falk Researcher Customer interviews, source memos, the actual numbers behind a "category leader" claim.
- Martin Rye-Bentsen Writer Website narratives. Joined as an intern in 2021.
- Frida Damgaard Writer Editorial content. Joined as an intern in 2022.
- Pelle Hojer Studio coordinator Schedules, invoices, contracts, the dreadful coffee machine.
Eight years, in five entries.
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2017
Anneli and Jakob start the studio out of a borrowed office above a bakery. Three clients in the first six months — a dental software company, a sailmaker, and a literary magazine that is still our client today.
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2019
We turn down our first volume retainer — a six-figure annual from a SaaS company that wanted twelve blog posts a month. We hire our second senior writer instead.
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2021
We move to Nørresundbyvej. We publish our first Editorial Audit framework — the nine-axis rubric is still the spine of every audit we deliver.
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2023
We open the Series engagement format. The first six Series clients all renew within twelve months.
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2025
Studio is nine people. We are not planning to be more than twelve.
If the way the studio works sounds like the way you would want to work, write us a paragraph.
We will read it the same day. If we are not the right fit, we will tell you who is.