Barry Enderwick is a brand and marketing consultant in Silicon Valley whose background includes 11 years at Netflix. In his time there, Barry “got to experience how to figure out what the brand should be, based on consumer research”, he says, “and understanding what role you need to play in consumersâ lives.” After seeing Netflix grow into the international brand we know today and in such a “pragmatic real-world wayâ, Barry went on to help many other companies scale their business. In 2018/19, Natalie worked with Barry on web copy, email drip campaigns, and landing pages for Silicon Valley blockchain company, Propy.
Working with Natalie Smithson
“If you hire Natalie youâre not just hiring a copywriter, youâre hiring more of a marketing partner â or business partner for that matter â because sheâs someone that wants to really understand whatâs happening behind the scenes, dig into the customer experience, and then provide the kind of copywriting from the get-go thatâs already positioned to be in excellent shape, as opposed to just copywriting. Youâre getting someone whoâs gonna partner with you to give you a much better result.â
Barry Enderwick
Copywriting is “critical” to building a global brand
In his work, one of the biggest challenges Barry faces is that “people want brand but theyâre not sure how to get it”, he says. “Theyâre not quite clear on what it means; they think of brand as an amorphous cloud that they canât really wrap their arms around”.
Another problem, says Barry, is that “a lot of people think that you buy brand awareness. It’ll work for a month but because you donât have the brand development index high enough where people can recall or be reminded and they know who you are, itâll just evaporate after youâre done spending. So express the brand in your marketing, but make sure the marketing is returning on investment.”
“At the core of what I do is figuring out how to sharpen the messaging with regard to brand promise and the personas weâre talking to or trying to address. And of course, messaging is copywriting, right? Itâs critical. Copywriting, to me, is the skeleton. Itâs like the foundation, I guess. The bones of a house if you will. “
Barry Enderwick
Natalie “provides a perspective that would never have been possible given how close we were to it”
Before working with a copywriter Barry needs to know that they’re “able to match tone and voice for the company”, he says. “To make sure that theyâre on board with how the brand is expressed, and that the vocabulary that theyâre using is in line with the buyer personas. Otherwise, it’s not gonna work out”. And “if you don’t lay everything out in text first”, says Barry, “things that should be on the page that the consumer needs to know about can just fall away”.
Working with Natalie, “one of the things that was a pleasant surprise â because a lot of copywriters donât dig into this”, says Barry, “was doing actual interviews with customers. Trying to really dig into and figure out personas is not something a copywriter typically does.” But without research, “itâs ego”, he says, “and you end up getting copy thatâs too clever by half”.
“To me, Natalie’s research shows initiative. But second, it shows a willingness to really dive into the subject matter so that when she goes to create the copy Natalie is miles ahead of anybody that would have just said, okay, what am I writing? So I was very much impressed by that.”
Barry Enderwick
The message is “greatly improved by having Natalie weigh in”
âYou know, itâs all too easy to write something and think that youâve captured what youâre trying to capture,â says Barry, who also writes a lot of his copy himself. âHaving an outside perspective, and I would say a learned outside perspective because of the research that Natalie does, was excellent because it provided a perspective that I was not gonna have otherwise. And sheâs a delight to talk to and work with, so that helps as well â it was fantastic.â
Hire Natalie
I’d like to thank Barry for taking the time to interview for this piece. You can follow him on LinkedIn, Medium, and Twitter.
Silicon Valley image: Christian Rondeau on flick (cropped)
