Neil Whitfield's path to brand writing began as a designer, where he learned that half the work happens in the words. Now Creative Director at Reed Words, he shares how his design foundation shows up in how he writes, leads, and constructs brand stories.  

Where’s your hometown and where do you live currently?

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I’m from Darlington, a market town in the North East of England, but I grew up in Yorkshire. I currently live in Chelsea, New York.

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In a few sentences, describe what you do.

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I’m the Creative Director of Reed Words New York. We’re a Verbal Branding agency, helping clients find better, clearer ways to tell their story. That could be naming, brand strategy, or just amazing copy. I oversee the writing team, push creative standards, and still do a lot of writing myself (I wouldn’t have it any other way).

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What are the skills that make the biggest difference in your work?

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To be a creative leader in this space I think you need patience, a thick skin, and to be generous with your time and ideas (I’m still working on the skin part). But above all else, it comes down to an ear for great writing. It’s something that can’t be taught in my opinion — it just has to be fed and nurtured over time. Reading, writing. Every day of your life. 

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As someone with a design background, what drew you to a writing practice and career in copywriting? 

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Being involved in brand design for over 20 years, it became very apparent, very quickly, that at least half of the brand creation process is verbal. Great strategy is anchored in compelling and emotionally resonant storytelling, and choices we make around voice and copy have a massive impact on how visual design is interpreted. You can’t separate the two. I’d always done both, and one day the ECD of the agency I was at gave me the opportunity to specialize — and I never looked back. 

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What’s a lesson from your design training that still shows up in the way you write or your leadership style? 

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The design program I was in was very much focused on ways of thinking — we were left to our own devices as far as medium and execution were concerned. So we were taught how to understand context, how to synthesise meaning and play with expectations. I carried all of that into my career, and it all still resonates today. I still consider myself a designer — I just do it with language. 

You work at a copywriting agency - do you miss being involved in the design process? Do you feel like writers get enough influence in the final expression of a brand?

That’s a tricky question, for all the reasons I’ve already mentioned. I think writers do have an influence; great strategy is great writing, and brand personality is codified and expressed through language. But do I think we get enough credit? Absolutely not. One of my favorite quotes is from All About Eve, where Addison DeWitt says of writers: “their function is merely to construct a tower so that the world can applaud a light which flashes on top of it.” Most of the time I’m happy to just do great work, but a bit of recognition might be nice. Meaningful brand writing awards are few and far between.

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How do you think working internationally has influenced the way you approach your work or in how you develop brand voices? 

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I wouldn’t be the person or the professional I am today if I’d stayed in the UK. Travel — and I mean beyond sanitised tourism — untethers you from your default point of view. There was a moment when I was working in Bahrain when the penny dropped that the western perspective is just one way of looking at the world, and not one held by the majority of humans. We can be myopic (and sorry to say it, but Americans are worse even than the Brits at this) in our sense that we are the center of the universe. Working in different markets and cultures teaches us a whole new level of cognitive empathy, enabling us to imagine how our work sounds to people we’d never even thought about before. 

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What’s a piece of feedback that still haunts you?

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I don’t really take feedback personally. I don’t think you can survive very long in this business if you do. Negative feedback makes the work better. 

What does haunt me is behaviour. I’ve seen some terrible things from managers, leaders, people who hold positions of power. From the basic bad working styles to actively abusive. And when it happens, when the dust has settled and people are (hopefully) held accountable — I just say “That is not the leader I will be. That is a line I will not cross. That is a tone I will never take.” I work on it every day. 

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What’s a piece of advice that still fuels you?

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I am a collector of pithy one-liners and nuggets from managers, peers and movies— some almost certainly unpublishable. The one I cling to most often is (to paraphrase) “We’re not saving lives here”. There is a freedom in knowing that what we do is important, but it’s not that important. I’ve seen designers, writers, coders, managers and founders work themselves to the brink of mental breakdown to get great creative work out into the world. It’s easy to fall down that rabbit hole, and we have to remember that what actually matters is our health and that of the people who matter to us. Everything else is just… stuff.

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‍‍What is your favorite and least favorite brand right now? Why?

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My least favorite brand is Palantir. Everything it says and represents is horrifying to me, even naming it after the seeing stone that corrupted Sauruman and drove Pippin mad. The horrible obfuscating tech-speak, the euphemisms for civilian espionage and the violation of civil liberties. It’s like they know they’re the baddies and are just leaning into it.

For favorites, I like anything that feels true to itself. We live in grim times, so it’s great to see brands like Fashion Brand Company using unforced joy to lighten the mood — more of that please.

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What do you think distinguishes a good brand from a great one? 

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Brands that are comfortable in their own skin. We are constantly fed hyper-targeted, over-processed goop masquerading as authenticity. When I think of the brands that defined my youth — like Sega, Nintendo, Adidas, Diesel, Marvel (pre Disney) — we didn’t like them because they sounded like us, or hunted us down “where we were”; we loved them because they were cool. Even Apple seems to have forgotten that.

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Do you have rituals for finding inspiration, or do you let it come naturally? And what’s your favorite offline source of inspiration?

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Writing rituals are real. It needs to be early, quiet, ideally dark. I need to be in My Chair™ with strong coffee (and a granny blanket in winter) and carefully chosen low-volume non-verbal music in the headphones. You’d be surprised how many corporate narratives have been co-written by Hans Zimmer.

Tell us about your writing outside of brand work and other creative pursuits. How do they intersect—or purposefully not intersect—with your verbal work? 

I can’t stress enough how important it is for commercial writers to break out of the work work and write for fun when they can. Brands are characters at the end of the day, and there is no better way to learn how to create them than through fiction and storytelling. I write novels (very, very slowly) and short stories. I find competitions with prompt based briefs particularly fun because they push me out of my comfort zone. Playing with horror, comedy, suspense, drama — it forces me to use muscles I didn’t know I had. Apart from romance. Dead in the water, every time. 

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What’s your favorite way to procrastinate?

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Helping people who probably don’t need my help. If I can not do the thing I’m supposed to be doing while getting involved in another project or side-quest that doesn’t need my input at all? I am all over it. 

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What about the industry do you wish you knew starting out in your career?

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Everyone else is terrified too. And nobody knows anything for certain. Be confident in your talent, invest in yourself, get comfortable with saying no, and for god’s sake — exercise. 

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BONUS ROUND

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If you could ban one copy line/phrase, what would it be?

We make the impossible possible. 

Favorite personal mantra?

If they tell you something’s wrong, they’re probably right. If they tell you how to write they’re probably wrong.

If you weren’t in this industry, what would you be doing?

I came very close to joining the Royal Navy as a marine engineer. I was building boats on the Leeds Liverpool Canal before going to art college to study painting. Who knows.

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Neil has a career spanning two decades and three continents. From London to Bahrain, Amsterdam to New York, working with some of the most recognizable brands in the world, including Mastercard, Philips, Diageo and Beam Suntory.His obsession with meaning and clarity has taken him from graphic designer to verbal identity specialist. Building brands with language. Choosing just the right words to bring personality to life, and make strategy inspiring. Giving brands the voice they need to create lasting connections with their audience.