I sat on the bus, staring at my Zoom, and listening curiously at Jeng Teng and her team from the Community Foundation of Singapore (CFS). This was the first time I’d seen a team explicitly want to hire a writer for their annual report, and I was impressed by the thinking that was behind it. Never mind that the Community Foundation of Singapore was generously funded by the Lien family, who’d been behind the Overseas Union Bank, which eventually merged with UOB.
Yes, CFS had money, but I was more interested in how they were intentionally spending this money on good writing.
Jeng Teng shared about how they’d wanted their report to be cogent, and integrated, rather than sounding like a disparate sum of parts.
Too many times, annual reports could sound like that. Like it was pulled together by many different departments without a single, strong voice that tied the whole report together.
And today, if you want to find an external writer that would write your annual report, it can be difficult. Because these writers often don’t know your company as well as you do.
In a recent sales call with Singapore Shipping, a listed company, I realised that the CFO was also unwilling to invest that much in writing. He just wanted to get the cheapest price for what he saw as a compliance function.
Even though they were earning millions of dollars, and the annual report could potentially raise their market cap, they were unwilling to spend that much.
But look at DBS, and how it has invested in its annual report. I know from insider conversations that they spend somewhere close to $60,000 per year for their annual report design.
But what they also do is to in-house their writing function, ensuring that there’s a strong narrative that pulls through.
So the thing you must look at is whether you’re able to have a strong writer in house.
If you don’t, then it’s time to outsource it. Here, I will rank according to those I find doing this work.
Yes, you need the pricing
| Agency | Pricing? | Why choose? |
|---|---|---|
| Media Lede |
For a typical 36 page copywriting and copyediting project, it starts from $2000 to $2300 Just for copyediting, it would be $1000 to $1500. | Small agency with 2 full time writers who have written and edited their own books, and 4 designers |
| The Nutgraf | For a typical 36 page report, expect $4,000 to $5,000 for both copywriting and copyediting. | Big agency of 20 with journalists |
| Hong Xinyi | For a typical 36 page report, expect $3,000 to $4,000 for both copywriting and copyediting. | Freelance journalist with plenty of experience |
What type of editing do you need?
Generally, there are three types of editing.
- Developmental editing
- Copyediting
- Publication editing
So who should you choose for this work?
Choose us at Media Lede for our domain expertise, and value for money
2 years ago, when we did one of our first annual reports, we asked OaksPlus, the client, why he didn’t just go back to his previous agency. His answer?
The copy felt abit ChatGPT-ish.
It was true. It lacked heart and soul for something that described a childcare centre, which you’d expect to be full of life and joy.
We’re writers, editors, and ultimately, publishers at heart. Yes, we may not have the brand name expertise of decades at local newspapers like The Straits Times, but we make up for it with persistent practice, and honing of our craft.
When we receive a brief, we go through a long time talking to the client to understand what they actually want to put across. Take for example Presbyterian Community Services, who assigned us their copyediting brief for their annual report.
We saw the copy, and realised that it was not very cogent. Working with the team, we asked what the main message was, and slowly got to the heart of the matter.
The Nutgraf, if you’ve the budget
Of course, The Nutgraf means the ‘essence’ of the story. They are the ones who have been awarded over and over again for big works.
If you’ve the budget, go with them.
We recently had a smaller budget with a 7k budget that we hoped to assign to them, but that was unfortunately too little money for them to take on.
Why choose them? Because they are trained as journalists, and have worked as journalists. Does that mean they are good?
Yes. They can find you the story and the angle, and put a decent story together. Does that mean smaller agencies can’t beat them? I don’t think so.
Hong Xinyi
I’ve been very impressed with Hong Xinyi, who’s been beating The Nutgraf at their own game. You’d expect that no one would pass her projects, given that she’s a solopreneur, but I was still surprised to see her winning tender after tender.
She’s clearly got the goods, having written for big, global companies.
Please contact her, and make the market viable for smaller players like us!
Choose the smaller players
Being a writer and editor is no mean feat in today’s world, where everyone is talking about how AI will destroy writing.
But we ultimately see it as a craft, and we try our best to understand stories, and build something useful from them.
I will share a final story about why we still continue this work, despite it seeming like our days are numbered. One of the most transformative stories I did was one on migrant workers, where I followed them for 24 hours. I went to their dorms, observed how they stayed, carried their poles, and stood in the hot sun with them. And when the client told me to edit it again and again, I still did it.
Because I knew that this ethnographic story could not be done by technology – yet.
I still had to sit there, establish a connection, and get them to share their deepest stories.
At the end, what do writers do? It’s oft said that we tell stories. I don’t think that’s all to it.
I think we are more like midwives, delivering other people’s stories. And in an annual report, that’s what you need. You know your company better than any other person. And sometimes, it’s tempting to just keep talking about it from your lens, freezing out your readers. Your readers think,
Why is this relevant to me?
You might just want to make it engaging for others too.
That’s where we come in.