Announcing Understudy - an astonishing, new AI engine trained on your clients' own voices and 65 years of professional persuasion. Now every draft sounds like them, starts sharper, argues harder and persuades readers to act.

1.  The Blank Page Tax

Writers burn their best hours getting a draft to 'good enough to edit'.

Volume formats such as social media posts, email sequences, ad copy, SEO content, etc charge you this tax dozens of times every week. It's invisible on the timesheet but it's there costing you money, every day, in every agency.

2.  Voice Drift

Every writer reads brand guidelines a little differently.

One's interpretation of 'warm and authoritative' is not the same as another's.

Across a roster of clients and your team of writers, consistency is an ongoing, expensive editing problem. The senior writer spends hours correcting drift which shouldn't have happened in the first place.

2.  Generic AI

I'm fairly certain your writers have tried it.

And now they know the problem:

Raw ChatGPT or Claude produces copy that sounds nothing like your client - and has to be rewritten before it's usable.

The rewrite eats the time saved; you end up no better off - and sometimes worse off.

If any of this sounds familiar, keep reading. Because it's exactly what Understudy was built to fix.

However, first I should tell you briefly why my involvement matters …

David Ogilvy - who knew rather a lot about advertising - once said I “know more about direct marketing than anyone else in the world”.

I was his Worldwide Creative Director at Ogilvy & Mather Direct for seven years. And I've:

Understudy is built on everything I've learned. Which is why it produces copy that not only sounds like your client, it persuades like a master copywriter.

AI is coming for copywriters ... or copywriters can command the AI.

Right now, you're choosing which one happens to your agency.

This is not some distant threat.

Your clients already have ChatGPT. And some of them are already using it - possibly on briefs they used to send you.

The question isn't whether AI enters your world, because it already has. 

The question is whether it arrives as something to erode your value or multiply it.

The difference between those two outcomes is not the technology - that's the same either way. The difference is whether the AI your agency uses knows how to write persuasively and knows your clients.

Generic AI doesn't. Understudy does.

This is the choice in front of you.

The agencies who make this choice early will look to their clients like the ones who were ahead. The ones who don't will spend the next two years explaining why their rates are still justified.

"The problem isn't AI exists, it's the AI your writers use doesn't know how to persuade anyone - and doesn't know your clients either."

Let me be blunt about this …

ChatGPT is not your friend. Neither is Claude, used raw.

Yes, they are extraordinarily capable tools.  But they produce extraordinarily generic output.

You know this, your writers know it. They've tried it, got something vaguely plausible, then spent the next hour beating it into shape so it didn't sound like every other piece of AI slop floating around the internet.

The rewrite eats the time you thought you'd saved.

But there are actually two separate problems here, not one.

The first is voice.

Generic AI doesn't know one client's voice is dry, precise and never uses exclamation marks ... and another's is warm, conversational and always speaks to the reader as a trusted friend.

It doesn't know the approved vocabulary, forbidden phrases, or the tone which took three years of careful work to establish.

So it guesses. And the guess is generic - useless to an agency like yours.

Even when AI gets the voice approximately right, the copy is still weak.

The structure is flabby, the opening doesn't pull, the argument doesn't build and the call to action feels like an afterthought. It sounds vaguely like your client but it doesn't do what copy is supposed to do: persuade people to act.

This is because generic AI has been trained on the internet. The internet is full of copy - most of it is bad - so AI has learned, at enormous scale, how to write mediocre copy.

And it reproduces mediocrity fluently and confidently.

Your clients don't need more barely average copy produced faster.

They need harder working copy which gets more responses, converts more readers into buyers – and gives them a reason to keep paying your fees.

"Understudy solves both problems. And the way it solves the second one is what makes it genuinely different from anything else on the market."

Every client voice in Understudy is built on two foundations.

The first is your client's own approved copy and tone guide - the actual words they've approved, the actual voice they've built.

This is what makes the output sound like your client rather than like everyone else.

The second foundation is 65 years of my work.

Every book I've written, course I've taught. Every framework, principle and hard-won lesson about what makes copy persuade people and what makes it fail:

• The structure of an argument
• The anatomy of an opening
• How to handle an objection
• How to ask for action without sounding desperate
• How to write a headline that does three things at once
• How to make a reader feel understood before you ask them for anything

… all of it is in there.

So when your writer asks Understudy to draft an email for a client, they don't get output trained on the average of the internet.

“They get output trained on your client's voice and on 65 years of professional knowledge about how persuasive writing actually works.”

The difference in quality is not subtle. It's the difference between a draft sounding like your client but saying nothing very well ... and a draft that sounds like your client and makes a proper argument, properly structured, with a proper reason to act.

Your clients will notice and their results will reflect it.

And agencies whose clients get better results keep those clients longer, get bigger budgets and get recommended to others.

Your writer still edits and improves. But they're starting from something genuinely good, not just something recognisable.

Here is something worth understanding about every generic AI writing tool available today.

They are built for individuals; one user, brand and voice.

You set up a prompt, fill in a profile, or paste in some brand guidelines … and the tool tries to write in the one voice for that one person.

As you know, this isn't how an agency works.

Your agency has a roster. Ten clients, twenty clients, fifty clients - each with a distinct voice, set of approved vocabulary, things they will and won't say.

Each voice can be managed by a team of writers, not one person. Each brief potentially handled by any writer on any given day.

Generic AI tools have no answer to this. You end up with a different setup for every client - managed separately, with no consistency across your team and no sensible way to pool usage or control costs

“Most agencies using generic AI tools are, in effect, solving the same problem from scratch every time a new brief comes in.”

Understudy is built specifically for a roster.

Each client gets their own isolated voice, trained on their own material.

Your whole team accesses every voice under one flat plan - no per-user charges, per-client subscriptions, or separate logins for each account.

As your roster grows, you simply add voices; your plan scales with you. Your writers don't change how they work, they just have more voices available.

“No other tool on the market is built this way; Understudy is built for the way agencies actually operate.”

Think about the last time a client questioned your fees.

It almost never happens when results are strong. It happens when the work feels like it could have come from anywhere. When the copy is competent but not compelling, recognisably your client's voice but not doing anything particularly interesting with it.

Understudy changes the starting point of every brief.

Not just the speed at which a draft arrives, but the quality of the argument and persuasion inside it. The:

• Opening actually pulls
• Structure builds logically toward action
• Close gives a genuine reason to respond now rather than later

These are not small differences, they are the differences between copy clients are proud of and copy they merely tolerate ... between campaigns which produce results worth talking about and campaigns that disappear into the noise.

When your agency consistently produces work that performs better, the conversation about fees changes.

You're not defending your rates, you're being asked to take on more.

There's a subtler point worth making too. The agency who introduces a client to their own AI-voiced drafting tool - managed, curated and quality-controlled by the agency - becomes harder to replace than the agency who simply produce copy.

“You're no longer just a supplier of words, you're the custodian of your client's voice in the AI era - a different and considerably more defensible position.”

The efficiency case is real and worth stating plainly to you.

Because your writers start from a draft already approximately 80% of the way to where it needs to be, the blank page disappears.

Their job becomes editing and improving, not excavating.

This shift recovers roughly 25 hours per writer per month.

Those aren't 25 hours of cost saved, they're 25 hours of billable capacity recovered.

At a conservative $75 per hour charge-out rate - well below what most UK agencies actually bill - that's $1,875 per writer per month.

Run the numbers on your own team:

Understudy's most popular Agency plan cost: $997 / month.

Three writers recover 75 hours a month.

Billable value: $5,625.

Your net gain: $4,626 every month. A return of 5.6 times your investment.

Five writers recover 125 hours.

Billable value: $9,375.

Your net gain: $8,376. An ROI of nearly 9.4.

Ten writers recover 250 hours.

Billable value: $18,750.

Your net gain: $17,751. Nineteen times your money back.

Remember Understudy's plans are single flat fees shared across your whole team.

Every writer you add compounds your return.

“At three writers, the Agency plan pays for itself in under six days of recovered time. Everything after that is profit.”

And those 25 hours per writer are not 25 hours of dull administrative time. They're 25 hours of the most cognitively expensive work your writers do: the cold start, the blank page, the first draft that goes nowhere.

Getting this time back doesn't just increase output, it reduces the grinding fatigue that makes good writers leave.

If you've seen enough to want to try Understudy, the next section tells you how.

If you'd rather keep reading first, this is of course fine too. But the offer doesn't get better further down the page.

Pick a client and we'll build their voice in 48 hours.

"Your whole team runs it for a month for $1"

Simply sign up.

The person who does becomes your organisation's 'Superuser' - the account holder who manages your team's access.

We send you an email explaining exactly what we need to build your first client voice:

• Tone guide
• Examples of approved copy
• Any specific instructions about vocabulary or style

You send us the material, we build the voice within 48 hours.

Your team simply logs in – there's nothing to install or configure, you just use a web browser - and they start generating first drafts which immediately sound like your client.

"48 hours - the sooner you sign up, the sooner the clock starts."

I've been in this business long enough to know the best way to sell something is to let people experience it.

So here's what I'm proposing …

Pick one client - ideally one whose voice you know well, so you can judge the output immediately.

We build their voice – this costs $297, which covers the curation work that makes or breaks quality.

Then your whole team runs Understudy for a full month for $1.

That's full, unrestricted access, with the entire token allowance of whichever plan you're trialling - the same usage you'd get if you were paying full price.

If it earns its place - and I'm confident it will - you continue on a plan from month two.

If it doesn't, you cancel before the month is up and you pay nothing more. The $1 month is yours either way.

Naturally your data stays yours. If you don't continue, we delete your client's material.

The risk is as close to zero as I know how to make it:

“$297 to build the voice, $1 for your first month, judge Understudy on what it produces.”

Studio - $497 per month

Five million tokens included - approximately 407* drafts and answers pooled across your team - up to five client voices. 

 For boutique teams running a handful of accounts.

Agency - $997 per month (most popular)

Fifteen million tokens included - approximately 1,221* drafts and answers pooled across your team - up to 15 client voices. 

 The roster workhorse. Most agencies will live here.

Enterprise - $2,497 per month

Forty million tokens included - approximately 3,256* drafts and answers and unlimited voices.

*Estimated figures - actual numbers may vary depending on usage

Each additional client voice beyond the first is a $297 one-off build.

Your monthly plan covers your whole team.

Need more headroom in a busy month? Top-ups start at $39 per 2 million tokens and you can move up – or down - a tier any time.

Understudy was built by some technical friends - who also know a thing or two about great copy - using my 65 years of professional knowledge about what makes people read, believe and act.

After he bought my agency, I was his Worldwide Creative Director at Ogilvy & Mather Direct for seven years.

I've:

Every book I've written, every course I've taught, every framework and principle developed across those 65 years. ALL of it is what Understudy is trained on - not as a vague influence, but as a specific, deliberate foundation built into every client voice from the start.

This is NOT a generic AI wrapper with a thin prompt on top. It's a professional system built on my lifetime of knowledge about persuasion, tone and what actually makes people act.

Every draft it produces starts from this foundation, then expresses it in your client's own voice.

“There is no other AI writing tool built this way.”

Most AI tools are built by engineers who just understand technology. 

Understudy was built by people who understand technology and persuasion.

I know what some of your writers are thinking ...

… they've heard, "AI will replace copywriters" enough times the phrase makes them tense.

Let me be direct about this.

Understudy removes the block and the blank page, it does NOT remove the writer.

The blank page is not where the skill lives. The skill lives in editing, improving, the judgement call about whether a line is merely good or genuinely memorable.

"Understudy handles the cold start. Your writers handle everything that matters."

What I expect will happen - and what makes sense when you think it through - is writers produce more, feel less ground down by volume work and spend more of their time on the part of the job they enjoy and are good at.

A writer who starts from a professionally written draft - which already sounds like your client - and spends their hours judging and improving is a better writer, not a redundant one.

"AI can't capture our clients' voices"

It's trained on each client's own approved copy and tone guide, tuned by us.

You start at approximately 80% of the way to sounding like your client and your writer finishes.

Try it on one client for $1 and judge the output yourself. 

"Our clients will just use ChatGPT and cut us out"

Generic AI is off-voice, weakly argued and has to be rewritten.

Understudy sounds like your client, argues and persuades properly and is managed by you.

It's the reason clients stay with you rather than going direct to a chatbot. You become the agency who gives them client-voiced AI output - not the agency who got replaced by it.

"It's too expensive"

Your primary return is better performing work which keeps clients longer and justifies stronger fees.

Your secondary return is billable capacity - at approximately 25 recovered hours per writer, the Agency plan returns between 5.6 and 19 times its cost.

Your $1 first month - with the full plan allowance included - lets you prove both before you pay anything beyond the voice build.

"It'll replace my writers"

Understudy only removes the blank page, not your writer.

Output per head rises. Your team spends their time judging and improving.

That's not replacement - it's leverage.

"What about data and privacy?"

Your client's material stays theirs.

If you ask us to delete it, we will.

"What if our bills become unpredictable?"

Each plan has a clear included token allowance.

Top-ups start from $39 for 2 million tokens if you need more headroom.  And you can see exactly where you are at any point.

Move up - or down - a tier any time. Cancel any time.

"We don't have time to set it up"

You don't have to.

Just sign up and send us the material we need to create your first voice.

We build it in 48 hours, sometimes less.

Your team logs in and starts - there's nothing to install or configure.

Sign up and become your organisation's Superuser.

You get an email telling you exactly what we need to build your first client voice.

Send us the material and we'll have the voice ready within 48 hours.

Then let your writers use it on real briefs for a month.  And watch what happens to the quality of the persuasion …

… voice consistency …

... the time it now takes getting a draft to 'good enough to edit' …

... what your clients say about your work.

If it earns its place - and I believe it will - you'll know by the end of the month.

If it doesn't, you cancel and pay nothing more. The $1 month is yours, your client's data is deleted.

But consider what every week of delay actually costs.

Your writers are paying the blank-page tax right now, today, on the briefs open on their screens.

Every brief going out with voice drift is a small erosion of a client relationship you've spent years building.

Every hour spent beating generic AI output into shape is an hour that didn't bill and won't bill back.

And somewhere, an agency not unlike yours will sign up to Understudy this week, build their first voice and start widening a gap that will not announce itself until it's already wide.

"The risk of trying Understudy for $1 is negligible.

"The risk of not trying it is real - it's just quiet enough that it's easy to ignore."

Sign up now. Your first client voice will be ready in 48 hours.

Three levels of membership - pick the one that fits you.
(The vast majority of our members choose 'Agency')

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