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Flower and Bees
The Jacaranda voice guide: how every page, product and message should feel
About this work
The flower does not chase the bee. It opens, it is honest about what it holds, and it is easy to find. This manual applies that idea to the words a business publishes. It separates hype, which is invented feeling, from emotion, which is real feeling named accurately. It sets out five parts every page needs (recognition, the cost, the after, the proof and the small door) and nine rules of truth, warmth and the door. Then it works through the surfaces where words are actually made: the landing page, the product card, the first-touch email, follow-up and the sales call. Part Six applies the method to each of the six Jacaranda Labs ventures, and Part Eight is the toolkit. Every example of copy in the book is constructed; none quotes a customer or reports a result.
Case disclosure
Jacaranda Labs owns the six ventures the book uses as its worked examples (TightBucket, AttestOS, DeskOS, STPi, Tapstall and Open Practice). Every example of copy in the book is constructed; none quotes a customer or reports a result. It is an insider's manual, not an independent evaluation.
Contents
- 1 · The mistake in version one
- 2 · Hype is invented feeling. Emotion is real feeling, named accurately.
- 3 · Where the metaphor holds, and where it breaks
- 4 · Recognition: does this person understand my day?
- 5 · The cost: why does this matter now?
- 6 · The after: what would it feel like?
- 7 · The proof: is this real?
- 8 · The small door: what do I do now, and what if it does not work?
- 9 · Order, and the four ways to break it
- 10 · Rules of truth
- 11 · Rules of warmth
- 12 · Rules of the door
- 13 · The landing page
- 14 · The product card
- 15 · The first-touch email
- 16 · Follow-up, replies, and knowing when to stop
- 17 · The sales call
- 18 · A page from nothing
- 19 · Collecting the buyer’s words without inventing them
- 20 · One feeling per page, and the four you cut
- 21 · The tired-stranger test
- 22 · The reader who is wrong for you
- 23 · TightBucket: relief, because the leak has a name
- 24 · AttestOS: quiet confidence, because nobody gets annoyed
- 25 · DeskOS: calm control, because everything open is on one desk
- 26 · STPi: being seen, because the applications go out while you rest
- 27 · Tapstall: pride and order, because the numbers are clear and the customers pay
- 28 · Open Practice: capability, because you did the real thing today
- 29 · When three people and a system all write
- 30 · The Mechanism Audit, turned on your own words
- 31 · The banned lexicon, and what to write instead
- 32 · The nine rules, on one card
- 33 · The 30-second check
- 34 · The seven templates
- 35 · The promise Codex
- 36 · The collection sheet
- 37 · The message audit worksheet
- 38 · The venture map
- 39 · The blank page
Also in the catalogue
