Copy Toolkit

Green Fern

In collaboration with product marketing and editorial teams, I helped shape the H2 2024 Product Copy Toolkit for the Financial Times. This toolkit served as a strategic resource for crafting compelling, user-centric messaging across FT’s digital subscription products.

The Challenge

Despite FT’s strong brand identity, their growing portfolio of products (e.g., FT Premium, FT Edit, FT Digital Edition) created copy fragmentation. Each product team often wrote messaging in silos, leading to:
  • Repetition or conflicting descriptions
  • Lack of emotional relevance to specific user segments
  • Limited testing infrastructure for value propositions
  • A ‘one size fits all’ tone that didn’t always land
The key UX challenges were:
  • How do we differentiate each product while keeping a consistent brand voice?
  • How do we translate positioning documents into clear, compelling microcopy?
  • How can we ensure the copy system is modular and flexible for campaign use across acquisition, retention, and app messaging?

Research & Insights

Before writing anything, I worked with the Product Marketing team to extract strategic positioning from Master Product Documents (MPDs) and customer segmentation data.
I also reviewed campaign performance insights, marketing feedback, and qualitative user persona profiles. This helped identify:
  • What benefits different audiences care about (e.g., status, independence, credibility)
  • How tone needs to flex across seniority levels, industries, and reading habits
  • Where product confusion or message fatigue was occurring
  • Emotional language that resonates (e.g., confidence, empowerment, discovery)
Example insight: FT Premium readers want content that signals authority and gives them a competitive edge. Meanwhile, FT Edit users want surprise, completion, and manageable reading formats.

Solution

We created a modular messaging toolkit for four core products:
  1. FT Standard Digital / FT App / FT Brand
  2. FT Digital Edition
  3. FT Premium
  4. FT Edit
Each product was structured with:
  • Core theme: The most strategic, default messaging
  • Testing themes: Alternative narratives for A/B testing, personalization, or context-specific campaigns
  • Headlines and support copy: Modular lines formatted for emails, app cards, banners, and paid media
  • Emotional + Functional benefits: To shape tone and CTA logic
  • UX voice consistency: Ensuring everything aligned with the FT brand voice: intelligent, independent, and clear

UX Copy

Here’s how we structured and wrote the content:
FT Standard Digital / App
Core Theme: Unbiased
“Independent journalism for independent thinkers.”
Designed to communicate credibility and clarity in a world of disinformation.
Testing Themes:
  • Essential → “Critical analysis of critical events.”
  • Confidence → “Your compass through complexity.”
  • Status → “What does your newspaper say about you?”
  • Global → “See what’s around the corner. From every corner of the world.”
Each theme was designed for different use cases: from paid ads to email headers to app onboarding banners.
FT Digital Edition
Core Theme: Familiarity
“Read your edition of the FT, anywhere.”
For users seeking a newspaper-like experience with full content curation.
Testing Themes:
  • Insight → “Get 10 years of market trends at your fingertips.”
  • Accessibility (US-targeted) → “Don’t wait for tomorrow’s FT. Download it tonight.”
    These copy variants help position the product for global and time-conscious readers.
FT Premium
Core Theme: Stay Ahead
“Upgrade your instincts from ‘sharp’ to ‘sharpest.’”
Targeted at senior professionals needing exclusive insight (e.g., Lex, Moral Money).
Testing Themes:
  • Completeness → “Understanding. Unlimited.”
  • Expert → “On-point analysis for the sharp end of business.”
Here, we wrote with a tone of authority and exclusivity. Value was framed around competitive edge, status, and expert commentary.
FT Edit
Core Theme: Discovery
“The unexpected. Every weekday.”
Encouraged exploration beyond the headlines. Emphasized curiosity and manageability.
Testing Themes:
  • Manageability → “40 minutes of mind exercise a day.”
  • Depth → “For hungry minds, not grazers.”
    Tone here was more conversational and accessible, matching its lower price point and younger demographic.
While the toolkit is still in rollout, early adoption across email and acquisition campaigns has shown:
  • Faster content production: Copywriters and marketers no longer start from scratch
  • Improved testing velocity: Clear themes enable structured A/B tests
  • Stronger tone consistency: All teams now use the same brand-aligned language
  • Greater user relevance: Messaging now matches user intent and mindset at each journey stage