Inspire
Beyond Spell-Check: The Strategic Value of Editorial Excellence
Tags:
Brands, Corporate, Culture, Marketing and Advertising, People
When people think of proofreading, they often think about finding spelling errors—a job that can be mostly, but not completely, done by running spell-check. Alternatively, they imagine red ink-wielding martinets marking up documents to meet some arcane, unknown goal. (At a former agency, I was not unkindly referred to as “Captain Comma.”) However, a true top-level editor-proofreader will provide much more than basic correctness and consistency, and a group of proofreaders, such as the editorial team at BNO, will provide an even greater layer of security.
A well-seasoned, experienced editorial team becomes a strategic extension of your brand. Aside from ensuring the basics and essentials of proofreading, it is our job to learn the brand, its voice, and its relationship to its audience inside and out. For instance, how does a pharmaceutical brand speak to HCPs? How does it speak to patients, and how does that differ from how it speaks to caregivers? Is this voice consistent across materials?
Editorial teams as brand stewards
Considerable effort is applied to creating specific personas and voices in marketing, and then leveraging them in brand creative. But is there a gap in ensuring those voices and personas are being consistently applied? Brand teams looking at a vast range of materials for different audiences might not notice inconsistent messaging, but a specific audience—who only sees a targeted subset of materials—very well might.
Another major benefit of a dedicated editorial team is that they can help brands and companies create editorial style guides. Most companies and many brands have style guides for correct use of logo, type size, colors, etc., but comparatively few lay out the preferred usage of, for example, “U.S.” vs. “US”, or “healthcare” vs. “health care”, or indeed, “vs.” vs. “vs” vs. “versus”! An easy-to-use, comprehensive editorial style guide can be communicated to all stakeholders to ensure proper and consistent usage from the initial creative stages, avoiding the constant back-and-forth between editor and creative, minimizing cycle time and rounds of review.
The hidden ROI of editorial services
What are the tangible benefits to your organization? Well, there are the obvious ones; messaging inconsistency will dilute your brand message at best and confuse your customers at worst, and even in 2025 people still notice typos. If a brand doesn’t pay attention to their ad quality, it’s not much of a reach to start questioning their overall commitment to quality.
Other, even more impactful benefits include reducing exposure to regulatory scrutiny (including, in the pharmaceutical world, CAPA letters from the FDA) that may result from the incorrect application of regulatory information, such as missing sections of the ISI. Even a visually small error such as typing “50 mcg” when you meant to type “50 mg” … one can imagine the potential effects of such a mistake when applied to patient dosing.
The less obvious benefits are subtler but no less impactful. “Content creation,” or what we used to call “writing,” is a valuable asset but one that can lose effectiveness without editorial guardrails. Style guidelines, as well as an editor to enforce them, prevents wasted effort and strengthens brand identity, especially if your brand doesn’t have a single dedicated writer. A powerful brand voice and identity helps you stand out, particularly in crowded marketplaces. In many ways, the identity is the foundation that all of the marketing sits upon, for instance, helping a television viewer notice your ad without even having to look at the screen. Diluting that identity with inconsistent tone and voice in turn dilutes the efficacy of the promotion.
An experienced editor or team of editors can even contribute to an overall improvement of the creative process by recommending certain touchpoints for editorial review. For example, in a project with several contributors, it might make sense to wait until the copy is final before editorial review.
Whatever your industry, whatever your brand, whomever your audience might be, there is an opportunity for an editor and an editorial team to help you improve your messaging, optimize your copy, and secure your unique brand voice.
