We are the world’s marketing effectiveness company.

I want to share a little bit of tradecraft with you.

It’s about writing.

Specifically, how to write more effectively in collaboration with others.

I write for a living. I write advertising strategy. I write and consult on industry award papers. And I teach writing skills for various agencies and trade bodies. After some years running in-person storytelling training for the IPA, we’re now in the process of developing a new online course.

One thing that comes up, time and time again, is this. People tell me that whatever skills and techniques they learn or apply in the classroom often end up being compromised in the real world when other people get involved.

We’re in a people business, after all. Few presentations, or pitch documents, or case studies, are the work of one person alone. And rightly so. The need for collaboration is a fact of life. In an industry with a lot of smart people with big personalities and strong ideas, it can be a superpower. At the same time, it can also be a recipe for disaster.

Imagine this scenario. You’ve written something and you’re happy with it. You show it to your colleague, or your boss, or your junior. They take a look, and rub their chin, and say, “I don’t get it. That part there just isn’t working for me. Why don’t you say this instead?” Then they suggest something completely out of keeping with everything else, and you hate it.

So what do you do?

On the one hand, you could just say no. Like an egotistical dick. You could also say no to any other people who don’t like, or don’t get, something about what you’ve written. And much good may it do you, because chances are, you’re wrong.

On the other hand, you could roll over and say yes. You could take whatever suggestions you’ve been given, or find a compromise position between their ideas and yours, and put them in. Then you can do that for everyone else too. The plus side of this is that you’ve been a people-pleaser. At least until you present your pitch document or whatever, and your audience rejects it for the rambling and incoherent Frankenstein’s Monster of incompatible styles and ideas it truly is. Then you’ll get the blame.

At this point, I’d like to share with you a quote from the writer Neil Gaiman.

Yes, that Neil Gaiman. If you don’t know who I’m talking about, try googling his name. He’s had some personal issues in the past couple of years, shall we say. But none of that changes the truth of this:

“Remember: when people tell you something’s wrong or doesn’t work for them, they are almost always right. When they tell you exactly what they think is wrong and how to fix it, they are almost always wrong.”

To understand why this is so true, imagine applying it to other worlds beyond writing. Try food: you go to a restaurant and order a meal. It tastes disappointing, at best, or disgusting at worst. It’s just not working for you, and no amount of explanation or justification is ever going to make it taste any better. But if you then march into the kitchen and tell the chef how he, or she, ought to cook the dish, you’d better hope you come out of there alive.

In writing, when someone says “I don’t get that,” or “Can you explain that bit to me?”, the most tempting response is to explain it. Sometimes it works. A lightbulb will suddenly go on behind their eyes, and they’ll say, “Ah! Now I see what you’re saying! That is so clever!” When this happens, there is a temptation to feel pleased with yourself and to think, job done. You should always resist it.

If any part of your work needs explaining to anyone, for any reason, there’s a problem with it. It may be easily explainable, but you’re not always going to be there to explain it when that work goes out into the world. So chances are it will confuse people, mislead them, or fail to land the point you want to make.

You should always, always, revise anything that anyone raises any issue with.

But at the same time, you should never simply accept the suggested fixes you’ve been given. That’s where the misfits and the mismatches come in. You need to think it through. Think, if I were that person and I had that problem understanding the message, what would be the best way to make them understand? In some cases, you may end up arriving at, or somewhere very close to, the suggestion they gave you. In other cases, the best fix may lie somewhere else altogether. It may be, for example, that you need to set things up earlier, to provide the context in which the disputed part will now make sense.

At this point, I should also mention the use of AI. And here I’ll give you another quote, from Cal Revely-Calder, Literary Editor at the Daily Telegraph:

“To use [AI] if your job is to write, whether creatively or critically, misunderstands your brief. Writing is thinking. They are inseparable processes. Circumvent them and you may as well not have bothered.”

If you outsource your writing to a machine, you outsource your thinking.

There are, of course, any number of tasks that AI can do better and faster than even the most skilled human being. But writing isn’t one of them.

So here’s my advice to you, in a nutshell.

If you want to write better when you’re working in collaboration with others, you should always think again when any part of your work is challenged, for any reason. But you should never simply replace it with whatever the other person (or AI) happens to give you.

If you do this, your work will be stronger, clearer and more effective.

And everyone will be happy.

First published in WARC 20 May 2026.