First run · before work starts

What arrives, what is asked, what is written

Scene: an empty table at eight-thirty, kettle filled, shutters not yet fully open. Problem: engagements begin with enthusiasm but without a shared list of what must be read first. Method: the first hour follows the same questions every time. Deliverable: a first-run note everyone signs before creative hours accumulate.

When a brief arrives, it usually brings slides, a product link, perhaps a competitor folder. We ask for those items forty-eight hours before the first session so the table can be set like a folio index — not stacked randomly. The first hour is not for solutions. It is for naming what each document thinks the company is saying.

We ask who can approve language that will appear with the founder's name. We ask which surfaces must change in the next ninety days and which are frozen. We ask where previous agencies left narrative debts — paragraphs everyone avoids but no one deletes. Answers are written on a single page with initials, not recorded in a call summary alone.

We ask what must never appear in copy — not as a vague brand fear, but as a list: claims you will not make, comparisons you will not draw, words your legal counsel has already flagged. That list becomes a margin on every proof pass until the engagement ends.

We ask how production partners expect to receive direction — Figma links, Word documents, printed proofs — and we write the handover convention down before anyone opens a design file. Misaligned handovers are how hierarchy erodes between studio and channel teams.

What leaves the first session: a first-run note with agreed reading order, named approvers, forbidden constructions, handover format, and the date of the first proof pass. If that note is not signed, we do not begin copy craft — we schedule a second first run until the room shares the same paper.