01About the studio · Menlo Park, CA

a quiet room on santa cruz avenue, a style manual open on the bench.

Fennel & Anvil keeps one small room at 1265 Santa Cruz Ave., where a writer, an editor, and a keyword map share a single table. The studio exists for one kind of client: an early-stage B2B software company that needs its search presence built in a defined season, by named people, for a fee stated in advance.

See the sprint fees Read the studio canons
A printed article proof marked in magenta pen on a studio bench beside a hammer and a pressed fennel sprig
02The bench

why a studio, and why ninety days

fennel for the green work, anvil for the finishing.

The name is a working description. Fennel is the growing part: research, drafts, the slow accumulation of pages that earn their place in search. The anvil is the discipline: a hard edit, a fixed calendar, and a date on which the work is declared finished and measured.

Most content programs fail for want of an end, not for want of effort. Topics are chosen by whoever has a free afternoon, and a retainer rolls forward whether or not a single page has moved. The studio answers with the sprint: ninety days, six long-form articles, on-page work entered in your CMS, and a written report in week thirteen.

We work only with early-stage B2B software companies, because their buyers research in a particular way. They read comparisons, search for the problem before they know the product, and consult three or four pages before they ever book a demo. Writing for that reader is the whole of our practice.

A sprint is staffed by two people from the first call to the last report: the writer who drafts, and the editor who reads every draft against the studio style manual. You are never handed from one desk to another midway.

03Studio canons

five rules written into the style manual

The manual is a document, not a mood. Each rule below is checked line by line before an article leaves the bench.

  1. On subject

    one intent per page

    Every article is built around a single search intent. A page that tries to answer a how-to query and a pricing query at once serves neither reader, and the map assigns them to separate URLs.

  2. On sources

    cite your own material first

    Drafts draw on your documentation, your recorded sales calls, and the 60-minute product walkthrough. Claims about the product are traceable to something your team has already said or shipped.

  3. On claims

    no position is promised

    New pages on a young domain climb over months. The studio will not guarantee a ranking, and the report records what is measurable on day ninety, not what would flatter the invoice.

  4. On review

    a second reader, always

    No article reaches you unread by the editor. A subject-matter review by your team falls at week five, and its corrections carry into every article that follows.

  5. On ending

    every sprint closes

    The engagement has an end date and a report. Whether to continue is decided on evidence, in a next-sprint brief, and never by default.

04Habits of the room

what you can set your watch by

i. Mondays sprints open on the first monday

Kickoffs fall on the first Monday of each month, so the calendar is known before the contract is signed.

ii. Week five your team reviews the facts

A subject-matter read by someone at your company is booked into the schedule, not left to chance.

iii. Week thirteen the report arrives in writing

Indexed URLs, impressions, clicks, and ranking positions, followed by a plain reading of what to do next.

05Who does what

the two chairs at the bench

roles within every sprint
RoleResponsible forYou see them
The writerKeyword map, research, and all six drafts, written in your product’s vocabulary.Kickoff call, product walkthrough, week-five review
The editorA line-by-line read against the style manual, plus on-page entry in your CMS.Revision round on each article, and the day-90 report
Your reviewerOne person on your team who checks product facts at week five.About one hour of their time in total
→Begin

the studio takes a limited number of sprints each month

One fixed fee per sprint, invoiced half at kickoff and half at week seven.

$7,380
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