Why brand voice still matters
Anyone who runs a design agency knows how hard it is to develop a genuine brand voice. Every line on your site carries thought, debate and refinement behind it. At Crux, original thinking is what moves the work forward. We build ideas from the ground up, shaping language carefully until it genuinely reflects who we are and how we work.
That voice is earned, which is why it’s immediately noticeable when it turns up somewhere else.
Recently, during a routine SEO review, we discovered that another agency had copied, reworded, and republished large sections of our website content. Service descriptions, process explanations, even the tone we’d spent years refining had been lifted, blended and presented as original thinking.
They’d even referenced Crux by name in one article as an example of branding excellence, without asking our permission.
We contacted them and asked them to remove the reference. To their credit, they took it down immediately. But the wider issue remained: our words, our thinking, still quietly powering someone else’s site.
It’s not catastrophic. But it is disappointing.
Those lines weren’t filler. They were the result of careful thinking about how we work, how we explain ourselves, and how clients understand the difference between us and other agencies.
Seeing that work turn up elsewhere blurs the lines between brands. The time spent shaping it, refining it, getting it right, starts to feel diluted. What was carefully considered begins to look interchangeable.
When shortcuts start to blur the lines
The frustration isn’t just creative, either. Shortcuts like this have wider knock-on effects that are easy to miss.
When the same language appears across multiple sites, search engines struggle to understand where it came from. Original work quietly loses visibility. Clarity drops. Everyone involved ends up worse off.
It also creates confusion for clients. Prospects may recognise the same ideas in different places and assume the thinking is shared, or worse, assume responsibility sits elsewhere. Expectations slip. Trust becomes harder to hold.
And over time, it lowers the bar for the industry as a whole. When originality is treated as optional, the value of careful thinking erodes. The work becomes thinner. The difference between brands becomes harder to see.
The quiet cost of cutting corners
This article isn’t about naming or shaming, and it’s not an isolated incident. It’s becoming more common, particularly as AI tools make it easier to generate “new” content by remixing existing material.
The temptation to cut corners is always there. It’s quicker, it’s easier, and with the tools available now, it can feel almost harmless. But over time, it costs something far more valuable than speed. Trust erodes quietly.
It also made us stop and look at our own processes. We’ve tidied up older content, started checking more often, and are more conscious about protecting the way our voice shows up.
Anyone who’s ever worked through draft after draft to land on the right words will understand the frustration. It’s not about claiming territory. It’s about recognising the thought and effort that sit behind those decisions.
Originality still matters. Integrity still matters. And building from scratch is still worth the effort.
At Crux, that remains the standard we strive to meet. Every line we write and every idea we develop starts with original thinking and deliberate intent. That’s what our clients expect, and it’s how we continue to work.
