Brand style guide

Tow and Collect

What to say

How Tow and Collect sounds, the sectors it sells into, and the one line that is regulated.

Anyone

Professional-grade kit for people whose property is part of how they are judged.

Tow and Collect is the more expensive answer and the copy does not apologise for it. Say what the machine is built to do, name the guarantee, and let that carry the risk.

The line

Professional-grade pasture cleaners for property owners and organisations.

That is the positioning. Premium, and risk-reversed by the guarantee.

Say the sector

The single most useful thing you can do is name the reader's own problem. A horse owner should recognise themselves in the first line, not a generic one.

Sector Who they are
Horse Lifestyle blocks, equestrian centres, riding schools, studs.
Alpaca Alpaca and small-livestock blocks.
Clay Bird Clay target clubs, picking broken clays off the ground.
Goose Poop Councils, reserves, waterfront parks, golf courses.
Turf Sports grounds, golf courses, turf farms.

"Collects horse manure, clay targets and goose droppings" works harder than "collects everything", because the list is what makes someone recognise themselves.

An organisation buys differently from a lifestyle block. A council has a budget cycle, a procurement step and often a committee, so copy aimed at one names the outcome for the public who use the space. Copy aimed at a lifestyle block names the Saturday it gives back.

Superlatives are allowed

"The best pasture cleaner you can tow" is on-brand.

The reason it works is the guarantee. The customer's downside is covered, so the copy can be confident without over-promising. Do not write a hedge and a guarantee into the same sentence. Pick the guarantee.

When you name the guarantee, say the actual term. "Two year guarantee on the frame" beats "guaranteed for life", which is not a thing anyone can honour.

Say this, not that

Say Not Why
Professional-grade pasture cleaners for property owners and organisations. Pasture cleaners for everyone. The positioning is what justifies the price. Widen it and you remove the reason to pay more.
Tow and Collect - 1500 Pro E Tow and Collect 1500 Pro E The hyphen is the naming convention.
Keep Your Arena Clean Keep your arena clean Title Case for headings and buttons.
Add To Cart ADD TO CART All caps is a small label or a badge, never a button.
Backed by our guarantee. Risk free. Name the actual thing rather than the feeling.
Collects horse manure, clay targets and goose droppings. Collects everything. Name the sector.

The one line that is regulated

You can say what the machine picks up. You cannot say what that does inside an animal.

"Collects horse manure" is a fact about the machine and it is fine.

"Reduces worm burden", "healthier horses", "stops parasites" are animal-health claims. Those are regulated in every market we sell into, by the ACVM Act in New Zealand, the APVMA in Australia, the VMD in the UK and the FDA in the United States. A machinery company is not allowed to make them.

This costs nothing, because the customer already knows why they are picking up manure. Naming what the machine does is the whole message, and letting them finish the thought is fine where us finishing it for them is not.

A disclaimer does not fix it. Neither does a caption, a photograph or a subtitle. A picture of a glossy healthy horse next to worm-control wording is the same claim made with a photograph.

The mechanics

Item Rule
Name Tow and Collect. Three words, no ampersand, capital T and C.
TOCO Internal shorthand only. It never appears on anything a customer sees.
Models 1500 Pro E, 1500 Pro, 1220, Mini 700.
Model naming A hyphen: Tow and Collect - 1500 Pro E.
Model numbers Metric everywhere, the US included. They are working widths in millimetres, so they are names, not measurements. Nobody converts them.
Manufacturer Metalform (Dannevirke) Ltd.
Case Title Case for headings and buttons.
Exclamation marks Not one. Anywhere.
Em dashes None. Use commas, full stops, colons, or "and".
Person Second person. "Your paddock", "your arena", "your grounds".

Spelling, units and prices change by market

Each country has its own site.

  • New Zealand and Australia: metric, $.
  • United States: imperial and US spelling, $. This is the site that sells most, and "tyre" or "metres" on it reads as a foreign site.
  • United Kingdom: metric, UK spelling, £.
  • Europe: metric, UK spelling, and no prices, because that site takes enquiries rather than orders.

Never mix systems in one sentence or one table. And never put a phone number, an email or an address into something that will be reused across markets, because every one of them is different.

When you are not sure

Ask before it goes out. Anything touching animal health, a guarantee term or a finance offer is worth a second pair of eyes, because those three are the ones with rules attached.