With a lean team and growing project load, Google’s Real Estate division needed high-quality content support—without pulling focus from strategic initiatives.
Prose embedded seasoned freelance writers, including a former Google comms lead, to handle everything from essays to a 250-page book. Fully integrated, always on-call, and fast.
Google Real Estate scaled content without adding headcount, met urgent deadlines, and maintained a consistent voice—freeing the internal team to focus on high-level priorities. The partnership continues to expand.
There’s no question that Google has been a leader in designing the modern workplace experience — more casual, friendly spaces where workers feel comfortable to be creative and social without giving up their productivity. The company’s Real Estate and Workplace Services team is a key part of the magic behind these famous not-so-corporate workplaces around the world. With a focus on innovation and sustainability, their goal is to design vibrant work environments that help Googlers around the globe collaborate more effectively and respectfully integrate with the communities around them.
In 2021, the REWS team partnered with Prose to expand their content capabilities through freelance staffing. With a lean internal team and a high volume of projects, they needed flexible, high-quality writing support they could tap into at any time.
The REWS team’s core challenge was capacity. Creating consistent, high-quality content often came at the expense of higher-level strategic work, including stakeholder engagement and long-term planning. They needed access to freelance communications professionals who could jump in quickly, understand Google’s voice, and translate technical information into clear, compelling narratives.
The team wasn’t just looking for an agency—they wanted an extension of their team: trusted writers and editors they could rely on for everything from long-form thought leadership to proofreading under tight deadlines.
“We needed Prose because they assign writing support almost immediately and meet quick deadlines on top of understanding our voice,” explains Joe Vandenorth, the team’s Head of Marketing.
Prose assembled a dedicated bench of experienced freelance creatives, including a former Google head of communications and other senior-level writers and editors. We started small—proofreading internal materials and building simple collateral—and quickly ramped up to support more strategic initiatives.
Today, Prose supports a wide range of writing and editorial needs for REWS, including blog posts, ghostwritten essays, internal fact sheets, long-form content, and research briefs. Our freelancers are integrated into the team’s workflows, joining kickoff calls, responding to last-minute requests, and adapting to shifting priorities as needed.
To ensure ongoing alignment, REWS holds weekly check-ins with Prose and maintains a direct line to their dedicated account manager, allowing them to quickly tee up new projects as they arise.
“Prose works fast, delivers quality work, and brings professional writing rigor to everything they do,” says Joe.
He recalls an early project that set the tone: proofreading a 250-page book under tight print deadlines. The Prose team not only handled grammar and flow edits but helped refine the messaging to ensure the book captured a decade of insights from Google’s design and construction teams.
After partnering with Prose, the Google real estate team is able to flex and scale its writing support in a way that was not possible before. The team continProse’s freelance staffing model has helped the REWS team:
The team now has a reliable, on-demand resource to handle everything from quick-turn copy to complex, high-stakes deliverables. And the partnership continues to grow.
“Working with Prose has just been so easy,” says Joe. “And we’ve only tapped part of their capabilities, so we’re excited to continue to see where Prose can take us.”