Know-How Exchange : Career/Training

should I tell you what you want to hear, or should I give you honest and helpful advice?

Welcome to our forum. Please hang around and ask more questions, and offer advice when you can. As you get to know the forum better, you will notice that most people ignore 25 point questions. the next time you ask a question, if you want people to take it seriously, you should probably post it at at least a 250 point question.

Also, I would be very careful about the type of information I would post in an open forum. You list your name on your profile page, and in your question you say that you intend to work for an agency for only a short time, to work on their best accounts and then to quit to become a freelancer. I think you should expect a reasonable agency to Google your name before they hire you. What would they think of your post?

In today's economic climate, it might be very difficult to quickly land a job working on an agencies best accounts. I have never personally worked for a large advertising agency, although I have called upon many of them and represented several of them. Maybe it would be nice for you to have some examples of your work for Microsoft and Google and Coca-Cola, but will this really happen? If you start a small agency today, will you really work with these huge accounts? You might be better served to began as a small agency now and to focus on hot and emerging topics such as social media.

I have been in business twice as a small marketing firm, and I have a dozen years getting small companies to write me small checks. I would be more than happy to offer more specific advice. If you would like to discuss this further by phone, please click on my username for my e-mail address and send me a note. The very best of luck to you.

Dear Christophermthomson,

Copywriter, eh?

Non-profit, eh?

Client side, eh?

Check, check, and double check.

A year under your belt, eh? Splendid.

Now. Psst, c'mer! Listen carefully.

Betchav been writing things like annual fund letters, donor letters, annual report copy, and name, rank, and serial number-like press ads. Stuff like that, yes?

But you feel it's essential to have "agency experience" working on big brands before you can do this for someone else, somewhere else?

Question for ya, old sport.

Do you "feel" this? Or do you "know" it to be true?

Big difference here old boy. Big difference.

Little hint for you. As a junior in an ad agency (because that's what you'd be old bean, pond mud), you'd begin waaaaay at the bottom.

If you could get in.

At the moment, the major players are in dire peril. Pick slips flying hither and yon. Clients bailing left and right. Nasty, it is. Awful. No one is safe. Not even CDs.

Here’s a teeny weeny grain of reality for you. Took me 12 years to figure this out, but I offer it to you now because you seem like a jolly nice fellow, and because there’s no reason for you to make the same mistakes I did. Learning from anther chap’s mistakes and all that. With me?

For the most part, big brand advertising doesn't offer customers much of promise. Just watch television for half and hour. Or read the papers or any magazine and you'll see stuff like this:

“I use brand X because nothing works better!”

Really? Well, if “nothing” works better, I won’t bother buying this thing you’re advertising, I’ll use nothing. Because it works better.

Or this: Oh look, here’s an animated bear going behind a tree to wipe its hairy cheeks in order to advertise toilet paper.

Stunning. Didn’t know bears used toilet paper myself. But I also believe ice is cold, so who am I to judge?

As a junior in an agency, it’s unlikely you’d be working on a big
anything, let alone a big brand. Big brands come will all kinds of big brand baggage and big brand protectors in the guise of internal marketing people.

These people have an important job to do: protect and nurture the brand.

Takes a brave marketing director working for a brave client to sign off on an idea that punches through the clutter because "the new" challenges "the established", the known. This explains why within a category, it's often difficult to tell a lot of big brand advertising apart.

Safety in numbers, in herd mentality. The "new" often creates fear.
Fear underscores and highlights risk. If the idea goes south, risk can be bad for business. This is why ad agencies "test" ads with focus groups and why the results of focus groups direct (and often kill) great ideas.

Make sense?

Before you run to the open arms of the commercial world to do big brand stuff, consider the fact that often, big brands rely on sheer brute force and being able to outspend the little guy to make a sale.

This attitude ignores one critical element. The creation of a lasting relationship based on the giving of value to the customer.

Because of this, big brands seldom generate empathy, they frequently fail to highlight benefits, they seldom present compelling offers that people want, they hardly ever issue sound calls to action, they all but refuse to ask for the sale, and they believe that hell should freeze over before they follow up.

All things that form the relationship building process. Few of which big brands do on a consistent basis because they're focusing on appealing to a really wide audience, not a niche.

If your goal is to become a freelance copywriter (and one who makes a handsome living, not just a decent living, a handsome one), you might be better off in direct response marketing.

But before we get into that, consider the following: with a year under your belt, you still have much to learn.

To become a better writer one must write, which sounds obvious.
But one must also read, which isn't so obvious.

And not just books on marketing. No. The classics. Literature. Fiction. Biographies. Science. Travel. That kind of thing.

Why?

To broaden your thinking, old boy.

A wider viewpoint gives one a wider perspective. The more one has “seen”, the more one can relate and therefore draw upon in one’s writing. Thereby giving one more ideas.

And as a copywriter, it will be your ideas that will make you worth your salt and, more to the point, all the more readable. With me?

Coupe of resources for you:

www.marketingprofs.com/ea/qst_question.asp?qstID=28912

This post includes numerous books to consider reading.

www.amazon.com/Cutting-Edge-Advertising-Create-Century/dp/013012897X/ref=sr...

(See my review of this book on the same page from February 2001)

www.barnesandnoble.com/Hey-Whipple-Squeeze-This/Luke-Sullivan/e/97804701907...

www.freelancewritingsuccess.com/usborne6.php

www.amazon.com/Adweek-Copywriting-Handbook-Advertising-Copywriters/dp/04700...

I’m reading this at the moment and it’s simply splendid.

Also, consider looking at the following websites if you’ve got time or are interested. Hint: were I you, I’d be really interested.

Bob Bly
www.bly.com
Gary Halbert,
www.thegaryhalbertletter.com
Yanik Silver,
www.surefiremarketing.com
Frank Kern,
www.masscontrolsite.com/blog/
Dan Keneddy
www.dankennedy.com
Perry Marsall,
www.perrymarshall.com
or John Carlton
www.john-carlton.com

All right.

This is a long post and no doubt you’re worn out.

I know I am.

Why am I giving you all this information? Because no one ever did it
for me. As a result, I made lots of mistakes. But I learned a great deal about myself, and about what I want out of life.

I hope this helps you. Good luck.

Gary Bloomer
Wilmington, DE, USA

Follow me at www.twitter.com/GaryBloomer