RuckRaft® is a new tow float and dry-bag system for swimming with your outdoor gear.

Product

Above Below is an outdoor gear company created by two brothers from Yorkshire. Their first product, RuckRaft®, allows you to combine point to point hiking across the landscape with wild swimming, while carrying all of your outdoor kit. So RuckRaft® is a both a new category of product, and enables a new category of outdoor adventuring: cross country adventure swimming.

Opportunity

Shortlisted for The Great Outdoors Gear of the Year Awards 2020, Innovation Award, the RuckRaft® was still relatively new when I began working with Above Below. There was a one-off window to use copywriting to position the product.

Like DryRobe, Huel, and Grayl, the aim was to differentiate RuckRaft® as a premium and original product. One which defines it's own category and also speaks of membership of a friendly and adventurous community, distinct from the inevitable imitators.

Challenge

The copywriting challenge was to link the premium materials and considered design of RuckRaft®, with the emotionally compelling desire of exploring the outdoors in a new and exciting way. Yet doing so in a way that wasn't off-putting by sounding too technical or elitist.

After all, RuckRaft® is intended for anyone and everyone who fancies a cross country swimming adventure. There are no strict rules here - the product is all about opening up new possibilities and the use cases are surpsingly varied. You might fancy a relaxed drift down a river, 50 metres of breaststroke across a small lake, or a 10km endurance swim along the coast. You could swim ashore from a sailing boat, or simply discover a new cove along from your favourite beach spot. The use case is user determined.

Scope

I worked on three copywriting and content sprints:

• Website copy and structure
• FAQs and shortform copy for social media
• Copywriting design system: a single reference document, created in Google Docs, bringing together all of the technical feautures, copy and content relating to RuckRaft®

Need to explain the true benefits of your technical product? Email 'yes' to: dan at 10tiger dot com.