Case study
A content strategy and voice & tone project at Back Market · 2024
Back Market's careers site was hosted externally, limiting data access and leaving the copy out of step with how the brand had evolved. I was brought in to rewrite and update the site's content for a global audience spanning offices across Europe, Asia, and the US. The goal was to shift the tone away from a party-culture image and toward something more inclusive and grown-up, while still feeling fun, so that Back Market could attract diverse, passionate candidates who genuinely care about its mission.
I was responsible for all of the site's copy, updating existing pages to reflect Back Market's evolved voice and writing the DEI page entirely from scratch. I collaborated closely with product designers and an HR stakeholder who acted as the product manager on this project.
The through-line of every content decision on this project was a shift in who the careers site was speaking to. The old voice was young and goofy — fun in a way that appealed to a specific type of person but implicitly excluded others. The new voice needed to be inclusive, fun, and authentic: warm enough that anyone could see themselves at Back Market, honest enough to feel real, and still playful enough to reflect the brand.
The DEI page was the only page I wrote entirely from scratch, and it was where the new voice needed to work hardest. There was no formal brief; the direction was to reflect where Back Market is today. My main challenge was avoiding the trap most DEI pages fall into: sounding performative or corporate.
My approach was to lead with belonging before credentials. The headline, "Come as you are," sets an emotional tone immediately. From there I structured the page to move from invitation to evidence to action: we want you here, here's proof, here's what we're doing about it. One of the decisions I'm most proud of is the line "We're working on it, literally." Rather than presenting Back Market as having DEI figured out, I wanted to acknowledge the work still ahead. That honesty, I believed, would resonate more with the diverse candidates we were trying to reach than a page full of polished claims.
Not every decision went unchallenged. On the internships page, I wrote the headline "Let's grow old together." The joke works on two levels: a playful nod to a lasting career and a warm, human invitation. When the product manager flagged it for removal, concerned it wouldn't land with a global audience, I advocated for keeping it. My argument was that the humour was simple and not culturally specific, and that the subline, "Testimony from Back Makers who started as interns," gives it immediate context. The line stayed, and it became one of the strongest examples of Back Market's voice on the site.
Because this project was focused on migrating and updating the site rather than running a formal content experiment, I don't have before and after data to measure the impact of the copy changes directly. If I could, I would track click-through rates on each page to understand which sections are driving candidates toward job listings, and use a heatmap tool to understand how far people are scrolling and which copy they are actually reading. That combination of click data and heatmap behaviour would tell me whether the tone shift is resonating, and where future iterations might be needed.