March | 2011 | The Complete Works Of William Shakespeare

1,333 Words Of Advice For Copywriting Students, Including The Title

March 24, 2011

I work in advertising. And though I often arrive late, fart in my office and use the word ‘pussy’ in meetings, I am nonetheless considered an advertising professional. Every year, I attend an Advertising Student Portfolio Night, where myself and other ad professionals assess the work of the students studying to take our jobs. We dispense advice and try to help them make their ads better.

I am an advertising copywriter, which means I write copy (‘copy’ refers specifically to words in the context of advertising, as opposed to imagery) to convince people to buy products. I do a thousand other things, too, in the course of my day, but if I were to boil my job description down to three words, it would be ‘I use words.’ Last night, I had the pleasure of reviewing portfolios at an Advertising Student Portfolio Night that was attended wholly by copywriting students. This was a treat for me, because it gave me a chance to talk about something I actually know a little bit about

I offered all the copywriting students I saw the same advice about what I think an industry-ready portfolio should look like, and I’m offering it again here to anyone who cares.

I think a great copywriting portfolio includes five print campaigns of three ads each. That’s it. Let me tell you why I think that.

I believe that print advertising is the most basic, most effective way to convey new information. For me a print ad is a finite, static space wherein a message is focused, conveyed and confirmed using words, pictures, or a combination of both. The ad industry makes very clear definitions between magazine ads, newspaper ads, billboards, and ads in bus shelters, but I’m not doing that here. All those media (and many more) have the above definition and, hence, the same restrictions and challenges, in common. From a writer’s POV, print is the most difficult medium in advertising to execute in because you can’t rely on anything other then the print execution itself to explain itself. The purpose of a student advertising portfolio is to provide the reader with a rapid-fire assessment of your skills and talents. Print is an excellent medium to do this in.

Of these five print campaigns of three ads each, I believe at least two of them should be headline-driven. This means, essentially, words describing a product and/or its attributes and/or benefits composed in a clever, compelling way. The words in a headline campaign should do the ‘heavy lifting’, as industry parlance goes. Copywriting students should do headline ads because, like it or not, this advertising formula (a picture of something with words beside it) isn’t going away any time soon. As an ad copywriter, you will write thousands of headlines in your lifetime. So showing you can do it well, or at least have the potential to do it well, proves you have the basic skill a writer needs (i.e., the ability to write) to survive.

The other print ads in your book should be visually-driven. This means that an interesting image (as opposed to words) does the ‘heavy lifting’. This shows that, besides being handy with a turn of phrase, you’re also able to shift mental gears when necessary and think in pictures. Again, this is a valuable skill to have, because there are situations when words won’t help you. The words ‘I’m so hungry I could eat horse’ do not translate meaningfully into French (or so I’ve been told) so a different tack is needed. Visual thinking is simply another tool in your toolbox of a brain.

One type of ad a student copywriter should never have in their book is a ‘long copy’ ad. This is an ad with a ‘long’ amount of ‘copy’ (hence the clever name) that, as far as I can tell, students are forced to create at the behest of their teachers. You shouldn’t write them because no one will read them. It’s not you; it’s just human nature. People don’t like to read anything that doesn’t immediately interest them. Think how bored you are reading this. Now, the more astute among you will no doubt charge that it’s an advertising copywriter’s job to make boring subject matter interesting. It is. But given that a student copywriter has a short amount of time to produce work of a quality and quantity that will impress potential employers, I can’t in good conscience say that crafting and re-crafting a 3000-word missive about the deliciousness of Triscuits is going to pay off huge. If you want to prove an adroit grasp of grammar and punctuation, write 20 – 30 words of supporting ‘body copy’ about a product appearing in one of your headline-driven ads. This is a more realistic example of how much copy you’ll be asked to write at any given time anyway; few advertisers do long copy ads in the first place.

Let’s talk about web stuff. I know how important the Internet is in commerce. ‘Kay? But I disagree strongly with the mandatory inclusion of things like web banners and iPhone apps in a student portfolio. Why? Because, from what I’ve seen, it results in students fitting mediocre ideas to the demands of a medium instead of letting a great idea speak for itself. If you want to produce an ad tailored to a specific medium, I’m personally more impressed with students who tackle a less glamourous medium than the web or an iPhone app. The marketplace is full of ad spaces that can give a student copywriter the chance to prove how clever they are: the handles on grocery carts, decals on convenience store freezers, tear-away coupons at the bottom of other ads, etc. Plus, by executing an ad in one of these mediums, you’ll have a point of difference between you and all the other students who cranked out the same banner in your ‘Writing For The Web 101’ class. (NOTE: One of the most memorable pieces of student work I saw at last night’s Advertising Student Portfolio Night was a handmade stencil of the Pabst Blue Ribbon logo that could be included in cases of beer and used to quickly spray paint the PBR logo anywhere. The student had made it herself from a piece of cardboard, and included photos of the stencil actually being used. I loved this piece because a), it would invariably appeal to the urban white-collar hipsters who drink PBR and, b), it was a refreshing low-tech contrast to the dozens of web banners, apps and QR code stuff other students had in their portfolios. In an industry that stakes its livelihood on originality, that girl did something no one else was doing, which is the truest benchmark of originality I can think of).

If, however, you insist on putting web, TV, radio or any other executions that rely on electronic media in your book, my advice is to execute it and present it in the medium it’s intended for. If it’s a web banner that explodes, mock up a web banner that explodes and send me a link. If it’s a radio ad, record a radio ad (NOTE: At last night’s Advertising Student Portfolio Night one student actually had radio ads he’d recorded on his iPhone for me to listen to. It sounds like a stupidly obviously thing to do, but it was the first time I’d seen it done.) As a student, no one is expecting you to make it perfect, but there’s something to be said for playing to the strengths of whatever medium you’re using. All too often I see a web banner laid out on paper that requires a 400-word description to make it comprehensible. And I think we’ve already covered the general public’s hatred for reading.

Anywho, that’s my advice for advertising copywriters. Naturally, you can take it or leave it.

Either way, I’ll probably be working for you someday soon.

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