Copy vid day 3: holding out for a hero.
‘The copywriters… I don’t know what they are or where they come from or what they do. It just doesn’t seem to be… Who are their heroes?’ – John Salmon.
‘I don’t think we have any modern day heroes, actually in craft.’ – one of the younger ladies.
‘We never got down to the nitty gritty of being taught the craft to a T.’ – Kat Hudson, junior copywriter.
‘In modern agencies I think there’s less and less time to actually coach and mentor people.’ – Tom Harman, ACD, TMW
That’s an interesting area.
I think it’d be great if there was more mentorship, but I also feel that the inclination for self-improvement really has to be there for that to work.
When I started at AMV I was definitely a writer. English was my best subject at school, I wrote in my spare time for ‘fun’, my parents and brother are/were professional writers… So when I got the AMV placement I also got The Copy Book (I was already mildly obsessed by D&AD) and read it again and again and again. By choice. Luckily for me, five of its authors worked in the agency (David Abbott, Tim Riley, Alfredo Marcantonio, Richard Foster and Tony Cox) along with several of the copywriters who were asked to contribute to the updated version (Mary Wear, Nigel Roberts, Malcolm Duffy, Peter Souter, Sean Doyle etc.) and others who were fucking good writers but have not contributed to that book (Victoria Fallon, Tony Malcolm, Nick Worthington, Jeremy Carr, Tony Strong – sorry if I’ve forgotten anyone).
Occasionally I had to write long copy ads, and if that was the case I’d read all of David Abbott’s old work, but then I’d also go around the offices of some of the above writers and ask them to help my make my writing less shit. It was somewhat embarrassing and uncomfortable, but it made me a better writer, so huge thanks to all who helped me.
Alas, those greats have now been scattered to the winds. If you’re lucky you might be able to find an agency (TBWA currently has Souter, Carr and Doyle) with a few of them, but otherwise their expertise is harder to come by, either because they’ve retired or because they’re freelancing from a nice big house in Norfolk, and that means the greatest, thickest links of the copywriting chain are now broken. So now all the aspiring copywriters of the next generations have to go and weep in a corner, watching through their fingers as the onset of shitty copywriting rivals the onset of climate change as the 21st Century’s most damaging development.
But fuck that right in the motherfucking ear…
If you really want to be great at copywriting there are loads of things you can do. Here’s just one suggestion: track those writers down and beg them to make you a fraction as good as they are. Write to them every single day. Stalk them like Peter Souter did with David Abbott. Pay them if you have to. Here’s another suggestion: read every single ad that has ever got into the Copy section of D&AD, then write them all out until the rhythms of great writing seep into your pores. I’m sure you can think of some more yourselves (hint: they involve the consumption of great writing followed by the production of a lot of writing of your own).
A wise man once said: you can have the thing you want or you can have your excuses.
i’m sure the cops are following all this.
what with the new trolling laws.
anyway. worth chipping in.
juniors. hey.
fucking boooooo.
when i was 22 i gave a totally articulate point of view on all things copywriting.
I used to work in an agency where I saw some great lines. I never partook, myself.
Here’s an opinion about copywriting, after 4-5 pints.
Copywriting is a thought.
It’s having an idea about a subject matter that you think is so convincing in your own mind, you can’t help but express it somehow.
Now here’s where it gets a bit wanky, but bear with me.
Remember that quote from Michaelangelo?
Something about the statue already being inside the block of marble and it’s the artist’s task to set it free?
For me, it’s a bit like that.
You have this thought, this idea.
It’s something inside your mind and you need to set it free.
You start chipping away at the block of marble.
Bit by bit.
In your head, you already know what it’s supposed to look like.
But it’s the chipping away every day that gets you closer to what it looks like in your head.
That’s the craft bit.
The editing, re-editing, and editing your words over and over again.
Like when Alexandros wanted to get Venus’ tits just right.
It wasn’t about showing marvelous tits, but the idea of a statue without arms and what she might look like with them.
Copywriting is an idea to persuade people.
Whether anyone’s right or wrong isn’t the question.
It’s about which group inspires you to sit down and do your 54th fucking edit of the copy you’re writing.
And I bet you this line of coke here right on my desk (and I swore I’d lay off it), it ain’t the head-band-girl, beanie-boy, and blue-hair-graduate.
you have coke S&C? hey, what’s up?
I would like to lay whatever blame is due squarely on the holding companies.
They hacked away what used to be known as middle management for cost reasons.
The cost of that cost reduction was losing the people who could teach the juniors.
Craft skills then predictably suffered. And that’s how we got where we are.
Now you have some guy in a scarf from Sweden on a three year million plus contract at the top of the creative tree. and a bunch of untrained digital kittens at the bottom.
It’s leftovers from Cannes in ’92 Vinny. Hope there’s no expiration date on it.
Wasn’t there a period where it seemed like young teams were neither copywriter or art director?
They did ‘a bit of both’?
Who taught them to say that? Who expected them to say that? Who rewarded that behaviour?
They ought to share some of the blame.
You can’t mentor someone to be better at what they do if they don’t identify with their craft.
@Vinny
“Digital kittens”. Like it.
And to your point, Alan Waldie remained a guiding light at Lowes for long after he was actively generating ads (or so MrsG tells me). And was a touchstone for so much work before it was officially reviewed internally.
Regularly he would look at work, smile quietly to himself, reach behind him to one of The Annuals (he had them all) – pull it out, open it to Page 74 and simply point. Start again was the message.
Not the only way. Not necessarily the best way. But I wonder whether that sort of guidance is available much any more?
For the record, Alan Waldie did not have blue hair. Nor did he wear a beanie.
@Mister Gash: I sometimes point out ideas in reviews that have been done before. It was seen as “being negative” and “hindering the creative flow”. Now I just keep my mouth shut and comment anonymously on the work when it’s up and point to the original idea, grab a bag of popcorn, and see the shitstorm unfold.
A lot good sense written here by Ben and commenters, but where’s the big shock in all this, this much we already know…
Experienced, talented people are important to the business both to do great work and mentor the young. But they have been marginalised and replaced due to cost-cutting.
The craft of copywriting has been hit hardest by this.
The young are cheap, inexperienced, largely blank canvases that need proper training and nurturing, without which they tend to be a little rudderless (one in a hundred young people comes in and is immediately brilliant, but the odds say that’s unlikely to be you). Advertising is largely attracting and hiring the wrong young people. Ad colleges don’t give any real, useful training.
P.S. If someone has told you that writing tweets and facebook posts is copywriting, they have lied to you, sorry.
“If someone has told you that writing tweets and facebook posts is copywriting, they have lied to you, sorry.”
End of debate right there.
Aren’t you on a hiding to nothing if you show your writing to other writers? Either way won’t they hate it? If it’s good they’ll hate it because they didn’t write it or hate it ‘cos it’s shite. Aren’t we better off just pleasing our mums?
@S&C
Good strategy for these troubled times. Pass the popcorn.
…’English was my best subject at school, I wrote in my spare time for ‘fun’, my parents and brother are/were professional writers’.
I’m curious as to why you studied Social Pyschology rather than do an English degree.
Well, you can only choose one degree subject and I’d never had the opportunity to study SP before. But as I studied it I could still study English informally by reading and writing.
Also, I was better at writing new stuff than analysing old novels and poems, but Eng Lit. degrees are generally about the latter.
Thanks for the insight, Ben.
Did you not do S & P at school.
Sems to be on the curriculum now.
SP seems to be very interesting indeed.
I’m already lining up a SP degree for my 5 yr old!