Dear Baby Copywriters,
Congratulations on choosing one of the few fields that let you use your creative writing skills while also making an amount of money. I’m sorry that all your fellow English majors will soon start resenting you.
Or maybe you actually majored in advertising, which is very cool. That’s what I did, just, like, a couple of years ago, and I’m entirely satisfied with my choice. I came out of it with education in the strategic aspects of advertising messaging as much as the creative aspects, I learned about other roles in the industry, and I got a good background in advertising ethics (which is a huge deal). Possibly the most valuable part, though, was getting to produce advertising-y materials for my portfolio — I was able to hook up with an art director (still a dear friend of mine) with whom to collaborate, and I got enough training in rudimentary graphic design to be able to produce some spec ads on my own.
If your educational experience was like that, congratulations! If not, or if you’re just trying to break into advertising from another industry, and your portfolio remains painfully empty, don’t panic. I surveyed high-level agency creative officers for insight on what they’d like to see out of a job candidate who doesn’t have a copywriting portfolio to speak of.
Remember that less is more.
One of the most important things to remember, as you assemble your portfolio and slowly start to panic, is that creative directors know you haven’t had a chance to work in the industry, and they don’t expect a lot of slickly produced samples out of you. Don’t try to overwhelm them with volume to make up for a lack in quality — stick with your best stuff, and if it’s good enough, you’ll be given opportunities to prove that you can do more.
You know what you’re proud of and what you aren’t, and your copywriting professor (if you have one) can help you sort through your samples if you aren’t sure. This doesn’t just guarantee that you’re putting your best foot forward — it demonstrates to potential employers that you have good judgment about what good advertising looks like.
Show spec work.
Let me be very clear here that there’s a difference between spec work (making a fake ad for a brand that isn’t actually your client) and working on spec (doing creative work for a company without actually knowing if they’ll pay you or not). The former is great; the latter is a way for companies to screw naive, unsuspecting young (or not so young) creative professionals.
With that understanding, feel free to include spec work. This is a great chance to show off a little, to challenge yourself, or to put in some time in on a client that, realistically, you’d probably never get your hands on in real life. (Sorry for any bubble-bursting — you’ll almost certainly be able to find fulfilling and enjoyable work, but true rockstar clients are few and far between.) If you’re currently in a creative program at school, talk to one of the art directors about pairing up. You both get good-looking work for your portfolios, and look! You’ve made a new friend!
Except for Nike.
One caveat: Don’t go for the low-hanging fruit. It impresses no one, and chances are good that you’ll whiff. “Don’t do spec work for Nike or Apple,” says one chief creative officer. “[You’re] not going to be able to do better work than what’s already been done for real. Find brands that [you] care about and do spec work for those.”
Another agency principal agrees. “Anybody should be able to come up with something cool for Doc Martens. Try coming up with something cool for life insurance.”
Some of my favorite spec work as a newb was an STD-awareness campaign for the CDC, because I figured if I could sell herpes prevention, I could do anything.
Show how you think.
Creative directors “want to see work that shows how the writer thinks,” the principal says. “They want to see a big idea, one that has legs, and then see it expressed across multiple media.” Do it like any other campaign: Look at the problem, the brand, the audience, the [etc., etc.], come up with a great solution, and then execute — print, digital, web, social media, anything else that works well within the concept. Chances are, you’re going to be assigned simpler digital work before your agency is willing to trust you with high-dollar campaign work, so show that you’re willing to bust your ass on both.
To that end, also be prepared to explain your thought process to a creative director in an interview. You’ll almost definitely be asked which work in your portfolio is your favorite and why, and your answer to that question is more important than you know.
Just, like, write.
At the bottom of everything is your ability to put together a coherent idea and express it in writing. So if you have writing that isn’t necessarily advertising-related but is a point of pride, put it in there. A blog post. A short story. A personal essay. Long copy isn’t dead, and the way you put one word after another is one of the most telling things a creative director wants to see.
“Young writers are tempted to write ad-like pieces that sound like ad-like pieces,” our principal says. “There are words that are simply used up. If it sounds like an ad you’ve heard before, it is like an ad you’ve heard before.”
“Young copywriters who want to be great copywriters should spend time listening to and writing the way people actually speak — conversationally,” says one agency president and CD. “When I was living in Nashville, me and friend would go to a Waffle House, order some food and begin casually listening to the conversations going on around us. We would write down the things that we thought were interesting. Seeing these words written down taught me a lot about how I wanted to write, and I knew then and there, I was never going to write ‘with which’ again and, in my lifetime, I would definitely end a whole lot of sentences with prepositions.”
That’s excellent advice to adhere to.
Further advice from the pros
More tips on landing that coveted junior creative position:
Have a website.
It’s a basic standard now. It doesn’t have to be fancy — a site like Squarespace or Carbonmade will get the job done — and it’s what potential employers are going to want to see. Your PDF portfolio, no matter how slick it is, probably isn’t even going to get opened.
Personalize your pitch.
You wouldn’t write a campaign without knowing the target market, would you? (If you would, we have other things to discuss.) Go to the effort of tracking down the name and email of the creative director you’re interested in working for, and email them directly instead of going through the generic agency email. “Someone who takes the time to find the creative director’s name and email shows a lot more ambition and fortitude than someone who takes the lazy way and blasts their info to every agency’s general email,” the CCO says. And say something meaningful about the agency, the work they’ve done, and why you’d like to work for them, so they know you’ve actually checked them out and aren’t just cold-emailing them.
Know your strengths.
While a versatile creative is a great asset to a team, very few agencies are straight-up looking to hire generalists. A copywriter who happens to know their way around InDesign, or an art director who happens to have some copywriting talent, is far more valuable than someone who professes to do a little bit of everything.
Use this as an opportunity to make yourself better.
Whether you get an interview or not, feel free to ask the creative director for feedback on your portfolio. (Don’t worry, it’s okay to do this — I checked.) It can help you improve your portfolio and maybe even get you another chance to impress that CD. Just don’t get sensitive about it. Negative feedback doesn’t mean you’re a horrible writer — it just means you’re inexperienced and have room for improvement in some areas. You will have plenty of chances in the industry to accept criticism gracefully and not take it personally, so there’s no reason not to start now.
Don’t panic.
Like I said, creative directors know you’re just starting out in your career, and they don’t expect to see slick, agency-caliber work in your portfolio. (Hey, they’ve been in your position before, and they were probably just as worried then as you are now.) Wow them with quality, not flash. Show them, with your work and with your attitude about your work, that you have what it takes to succeed as a junior copywriter now and what it takes to grow into a superstar, Golden-Lion-winning, Super-Bowl-ad-writing creative genius in the future. Or, more realistically, a really good senior copywriter who can concept and write the hell out of a mind-blowing campaign for a regional bank, which can, in its own way, be just as fulfilling.
(Note: I can’t actually imagine a world in which this is remotely the case.)
XOXO,
Caperton
Former baby copywriter, now wildly successful in the industry