I had just been fired from the agency that brought me and my wife to Charlotte 18 months before. I was told that I was “too fiery.” And maybe I was. I was a new copywriter, after all, and had a way of beating the hell out of ideas in order to test whether they could hold water. In some ad agencies this would be fine, but in a conservative one like mine, it was a little too intense. This…
I was building a brand. Alone. For about two years. It was growing fast and things were busy. I needed help. I found interns. It was decided that we not pay them, so I wanted to ensure that their experiences were fulfilling. After all, you can’t expect too much with interns. It’s basically a teaching scenario anyway. I brought on a couple of kids out of UNCC. Good kids. One was Indian. Well, he was American (he lived in Charlotte…
When it comes to building a brand, you should look to Google for best practices. Yes, Google. The search engine. And no, I’m not talking about their brand identity. I’m talking about their actual search algorithm. Stay with me. Branding, as it turns out, is fairly complicated. Or rather, we’ve made it complicated—just look out into your Linkedin thread and you’ll see any number of branding experts peddling their strategies. But essentially a brand is simply the embodiment of a…
I’ve been a copywriter my whole life, but didn’t discover it as a career until I was 32. When I did, I had visions of doing big super bowl ads. That never happened. But I did end up doing work that I’m quite proud of, and that was extremely effective. Only the big, high-profile work was never meant to be. Yet. That said, I always bring big concepts into every project I work on. I’m a big fan of concept. …
I was sitting in my first big client meeting where we were rebranding a Fortune 200. There were four of us from the agency at the table, while the other six seats were filled by C-level folks from the company. About ten minutes into the meeting, after the executives from the company had finished their introductory arguments on why they needed a rebrand, I wrote a tagline on a notecard. As the clients continued to talk, and reinforce what I…
You have a job. And that job is where you work. But, unless you’re a writer, how I work probably doesn’t look like work to you.
