Positioning, campaigns, creative and media—built around one clear idea.

Tell us what needs to change

What we make

Brand strategy

Positioning, naming, messaging hierarchy, and the one sentence everything else obeys.

Positioning paper · naming shortlist · message map · voice rules

Campaign strategy & creative

Organizing ideas built to run across channels and seasons—concept, key lines, and rollout logic.

Platform concept · key lines · art direction · rollout calendar

Website copywriting

Page strategy, message hierarchy and copy that makes the offer clear and the next step easy to find.

Page map · headlines · body copy · calls to action · metadata

Media planning & measurement

Channel planning, placement, and measurement—spend directed at response, not vanity reach.

Channel plan · placement schedule · plain-language reporting

VALUE, LOST IN THE EXPLANATION.
If that sounds familiar, we're for you.

Ideas made clearer

Four examples of turning complicated messages into clearer ones.

  • The one-line brand

    A positioning document is a negotiation. A position is a sentence.

    Starting from a crowded value proposition, we cut until one line survives—one a customer would repeat without being paid to. Everything else becomes support, or scrap.

  • The redacted brief

    If a claim can't be proven, it can't be printed.

    Remove claims customers won't believe, then build the campaign from what can be proven.

  • Signal over noise

    Media that can't answer "what job is this impression doing?" is décor.

    Give every channel one job—introduce, convince, remind or move—and measure whether it did it.

  • The five-second homepage

    Visitors don't read pages. They audition them.

    Make the offer, audience and reason to believe clear at a glance.

01 / 04

The long version

THE LONG VERSION — 78 WORDS

Most organizations do good work, then bury it. The offer hides behind qualifiers. The message tries to please every audience at once. Every department adds a paragraph, and the customer—who has seconds, not minutes—moves on. Nothing was wrong with the product. The explanation just cost too much attention.

IN SHORT — 8 WORDS

Confused customers don't buy. We fix the confusion.

How we work

  1. Understand

    We begin with the business, customer and competition before developing the message.

  2. Distill

    Cut to the one idea worth the customer's attention, and get agreement on it in writing.

  3. Make

    Campaigns, content and media built consistently around that idea.

  4. Improve

    Measure the response, keep what works and improve what doesn't.

Founder-led.
Directly involved

IN SHORT is a Winnipeg-based advertising company bringing strategy, creative and media together around one clear idea.

More about IN SHORT and how the work connects →

You deal directly with the people doing the work—no layers between the brief and the thinking.

  • Every engagement is scoped around the work that is actually needed.
  • Clarity is a courtesy to your customer—and an advantage over your competitor.
  • You'll know what we did, why we did it and how it performed.

Let us help

Start with the short version.

Tell us a little about your business and what brought you here. A few lines is plenty.

[email protected]