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How to Become an
Advertising Copywriter Contents: There is precious little current career advice out there for aspiring
advertising copywriters. Here are my recommendations, based on what worked for
me. You may scoff at some of them; then again, you may be more gifted than I.
This advice is aimed at the average aspiring copywriter, who wishes to enjoy a
better-than-average career. Get a degree. A college degree is sort of expected in the advertising industry. You may think that talent alone will get you through, and it might. Nonetheless, you’ll want to take advantage of the resources available on college campuses, like the library, internships, and classes in art, politics, and chemistry. Get good at learning new things quickly, because that’s an important part of the job. A working knowledge of basic statistics will help you make sense of marketing research. Knowing classic literature and the rules of formal composition will help you defend the ad copy you write. All the creative people I know-- especially advertising copywriters-- are voracious and wide-ranging collectors of bits of knowledge. Who knows in what combination those bits might emerge as a freshly minted concept? Certain majors seem to open doors in the creative department. These include advertising, marketing, communications, English, journalism, psychology, liberal arts, and media studies. More-important, might be participating in extra-curricular activities such as your advertising club (both college and local) and AAF-sponsored events. I run a free copywriting mentorship designed for college juniors and seniors
who really want to become advertising copywriters. It will help you gain
real-world experience while you build your book. After you finish reading this,
you can read about my copywriting mentorship here.
(Don’t worry - there’s a link at the bottom of the page too.) For my own recommended reading list for aspiring advertising copywriters, click
here. About advertising internships. Get your advertising internship in the creative department. Most internships are in other departments, where it’s easier to evaluate your work objectively. Also, most creative directors don’t have the time or inclination to properly mentor young talent. Mentoring is developed to a much higher level in other fields, to their gain and advertising’s loss. Hold out for a copywriting internship. If you take an internship in the media department, for instance, then for the next few years, you will always have more experience in media than in copywriting. It will go from being a foot in the door to being a career in no time flat. You may have to be aggressive and create your own internship. Don’t let the internship coordinator limit your options. Call the agencies whose work you admire, and wrangle an interview with the creative director. Once you’re in a copywriting internship, try very hard to turn it into a job offer, even if it means torpedoing your GPA. After your first post-graduate job, nobody looks at your academic transcript. Everybody looks at your book. As a creative department intern, you may be left largely to your own devices. Go up and ask the creative director for a copywriting assignment. You may be teamed with an intern art director, but you’ll get more out of the experience if you can occasionally partner with one of the senior creative people. If truly abandoned, wander the halls and introduce yourself. Key people to know-- in addition to the creative director-- are the creative department secretary, production department manager, senior production people, and staff copywriters and art directors. Also, introduce yourself to the account services people. If they know that there’s an additional resource in the creative department (you), they often can initiate small projects that they haven’t bothered bringing into the shop before. At most advertising agencies, there’s a weekly status meeting where all the
projects are reviewed, tasks assigned, and timelines checked. It’s usually
Monday morning. Whenever that meeting is, you should clear your work/school
schedule so you can attend with the intent of getting an assignment or two. How to build your copywriting portfolio. Building your portfolio, or book, is a career-long process. You’ll never stop adding and subtracting portfolio pieces based on who you’re pitching. As your career as an advertising copywriter progresses, you’ll amass a large collection of portfolio-worthy work from which to select your presentation. Right now, though, you need only show enough good work to get a job as an entry-level advertising copywriter. Get copies of the ads you create while a copywriting intern. This is especially important if you don’t turn your internship into a job, because you’ll need those completed samples of agency-quality work to show potential employers. Follow up with the art director or production person to get the files or prints. You may also want color copies of comps if you’re proud of them. Produced radio spots are presented on a copywriter’s reel, which is a compilation of finished spots. The term “reel” is a hold-over from the days when radio spots were presented on ¼” audiotape at 15 IPS (inches per second). These days, most copywriters and ad agencies use cassette tapes or CDs, and it’s wise to have both. Radio spots that did not get produced are presented in script form. Make sure your production notes at the beginning of your script give enough information that the reader will be able to “see” the characters and setting. Produced TV commercials also are presented on a copywriter’s reel. The term “reel” in this case refers to a film reel. Many TV commercials are still produced on film, then transferred to another format for broadcast. A copywriter’s TV reel used to be presented on broadcast-standard ¾” videotape, but these days most copywriters and ad agencies use the VHS videotape format. You may include TV commercial storyboards in your copywriting portfolio. You can show fully functional websites on CD. However, high-quality print-outs of screen captures will suffice for your copywriting portfolio if your copy is readable. Otherwise, you can simply provide a list of websites you’ve written (make sure, though, that the current websites still contain your copy). Toss out any student work that you feel unsure about. Enlist the help of an
understanding art director to polish the pieces you feel good about - competent
art direction is rare enough in an entry-level copywriter’s portfolio that
it’ll make you stand out. Although you want your copywriting portfolio to be as polished as possible,
you’ll typically be presenting to the creative director (or a senior
creative). He or she has plenty of practice understanding roughs, scripts, and
even scrawls on scraps of paper. Your first job in advertising. With luck, you’ll roll directly from your advertising internship into your first job. Otherwise, it’s up to you to make calls, send résumés and samples, and talk to creative directors. Most creative directors do their own hiring, so sending a résumé to the human resources department is a doubtful strategy. An equally doubtful strategy, is sending a cover letter or résumé that takes the form of a script, an ad, a movie poster, a storyboard, or a cut-out figure of yourself that turns into a mobile or a desk toy. Things are confusing enough in most ad agency creative departments without having to wonder what the heck a cover letter is asking for. Show your creativity in the samples of your work-- and you should send three or four samples of your best work. What if three or four samples are your entire book? Send them all. At the interview, be prepared to discuss the marketing problems the samples were created to solve. As a prospective entry-level copywriter, you won’t be expected to have a big book. You will be expected to be able to articulate ideas. Give priority to landing a job at an ad agency as opposed to an in-house
corporate creative department-- the variety of clients will build a stronger
book. The local Ad Club directory is a good place to start searching, but
don’t limit yourself to a local agency if your life is relatively
unencumbered. Adweek is a pretty good resource for job listings in the
U.S. Ad people move around a lot, so if you use a directory, call to confirm
that the listed creative director is the current creative director. Every few weeks, I get an email from someone who took that job in media or account services, or on the client side as a marketing person. They want to know how to go from being an account executive, product manager, marketing director, or whatever, to being a copywriter. Unfortunately, I don’t know. I’ve never personally known anyone who successfully went from any other marketing/advertising job, to copywriting. Once your career gets going in another direction, it may be easier to start your own ad agency than to get a job as a copywriter. This first job will define your career. If you want to be an
advertising copywriter, start as an advertising copywriter. The freelance trap. While you search for a job, you may have the opportunity to freelance your copywriting services to local businesses. This is a terrific way to build your book and gain experience; it is also a dangerous trap for starting copywriters. Here’s how the trap works. You get small accounts. You plan to leverage those small accounts into bigger accounts. Say, Abe’s Flowers (with one shop) into Ben’s Flowers (with three shops and an on-line store). Soon, you find that Ben’s Flowers is being courted by two ad agencies and a veteran freelance copywriter, all of whom worked on Proflowers or Conroy’s. See how that works? It’s easy to leverage down. It’s hard to leverage up. Two years later, Abe’s Flowers and its ilk are keeping you too busy to look for an agency job. Meanwhile, your fellow alumnus, who went to work for a small ad agency straight out of college, is now at a larger agency writing ads for Mazda, or General Electric, or Doritos. By all means, take the Abe’s Flowers account-- and any other freelance assignment that comes your way. Do your level best with it. But, keep looking for a staff copywriting job at an advertising agency. At an ad agency, you’ll get to work on accounts with names people know. You’ll also learn the ins and outs of the advertising business. The client experience and agency disciplines will stand you in good stead if and when you do start out on your own. Back to the table of contents. Keep track of your career. It’s easy to get so busy working that you neglect your career. Review your work at least once a year. Evaluate what you’ve learned. Where your strengths are. And where you need to keep pushing yourself. Then, look for opportunities that will give you what you need. Maybe you need to ask for more broadcast assignments. Or, maybe you need to look for a job at an ad agency that has more broadcast work. After two or three years, you’ll have some print and some broadcast experience. You’ll have created a few ad campaigns. You’ll have worked on accounts in several industries. You’ll have met clients, both to gather information and to present your work. You’ll have collected a few advertising awards, and you’ll have enjoyed the thrill of overhearing complete strangers talking about one of your ads. Oh, and congratulations. You’ll be an advertising copywriter. Back to the table of contents. © John Kuraoka. Reprinted with permission. John Kuraoka is a freelance advertising copywriter and 20-year veteran of the ad industry (all of it on the creative side). He services ad agencies, design studios, and companies worldwide from his home office in San Diego, California. He writes print ads, radio and television commercials, brochures, direct mail pieces, websites, and even point-of-purchase displays and package labels. His work has been recognized in creative shows from local (AAF regional competitions) to international (Clio, Graphis, Communication Arts). He also has taught copywriting and delivered seminars on marketing in association with the SBA. John's copywriting website, www.kuraoka.com, has more information about him, his business experience, and his life as an advertising copywriter. He also has a website that offers advertising and marketing help to small businesses: www.TightwadMarketing.com.
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