So what exactly do you do as a copywriter? (Part 3)

Ok, so now that I’ve covered a little bit about copy and a little bit about copywriters in general, let me go into some more detail about ‘what exactly it is that I do as a copywriter’.

When I first started out (and that’s quiet a funny story within itself, which I won’t go into here) my “copywriting” tasks involved coming up with short sentences that described products in an interesting way. The reason I put the word “copywriting” into quotation marks is because at the time, I had no idea that what I was doing was called copywriting. In fact, I didn’t even know a job like that existed. For some reason (and keep in mind that even though I majored in marketing and brand management, my education was by no means one in a creative field) I figured that the graphic designer was the one that did the visual part of the advertisement and then just added some text. It never occurred to me that there was a person who sat there and thought up all the text. I suppose it’s fair to admit that I never really gave it much thought, but I would very soon learn, on my first job, that not only was there a person who thought up the text, but that same person was very much one of the most crucial components of the creative concept.

Getting back to what I was saying about my first job…. So there I was, thinking up these short interesting sentences and the better I was at them, the more products they gave me to work on. Very soon, my job was no longer confined to these tiny sentences; I was attending creative meetings and getting proper written briefs (as opposed to the three sentence verbal ones) and entire paragraphs of text that I had to come up with. I remember that my first copywriting project that extended further than coming up with a paragraph of text, was for the Serbian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. It was my first meeting with a client in person and I listened very carefully and wrote down anything and everything, since it was my first chance to show the agency that I truly was the right person for the job. The people at the ministry explained that they had a problem with getting Serbian people who live outside the country to vote in the presidential elections (because voting isn’t mandatory in Serbia) and that they only had a measly 3000 emails of the 500,000 Serbian people that live outside the borders of Serbia. They wanted to do a guerilla type email campaign, which involved sending out an interesting email (urging people to vote) to the 3000 addresses that they had and hoping that it would be forwarded further, so that Serbians who live abroad would actually go out of their way to vote. My bosses said it was up to me to come up with the whole concept seeing as they were too busy with ‘bigger’ clients. Needless to say that the real reason they gave it to me was because it was an almost impossible task (and the project didn’t pay much money) and anyone who knows a Serbian person will tell you that if they don’t have to do something it’s extremely hard to convince them to do it.

So I sat up that night, thinking about how I could possibly convince someone, especially through an email they might not even open, to go out of their way to vote when even half of the people who actually lived inside the country didn’t bother to do it. I had just come to Serbia after spending thirteen years of my life in Australia, where I can tell you, neither I nor my parents ever went to vote. I had to come up with something that would be interesting and slightly patriotic (considering a lot of Serbs who live abroad do defend their country every chance they get – but they defend it from the comfort of their café stools over coffee, getting up and going to fill out a couple of forms is a whole different story), so I did some research and found out that the majority of the Serbs living outside the borders were in English speaking countries (apart from Germany where there are a hell of a lot of them, but even the Germans know English well enough to understand it, so I was pretty sure I was covered in that sense).

Now before I tell you about what I came up with, let me explain something about the Serbian language so that you will better understand my idea. See, there are many proverbs and catch phrases that only someone who has grown up with the Serbian language around them their whole life can truly understand. These sayings are very popular and common amongst the Serbian people living anywhere in the world, because for some reason they are used frequently in every day speech. Vuk Karadzic, who is more or less solely responsible for both the Serbian alphabet and the Serbian language (“write it as you say it, read it as it is written” – the entire philosophy of the Serbian language) used these sayings more than anybody else and several years ago someone thought it would be funny to translate a whole bunch of these sayings literally into English. They called these translations “English by Wolf” (in Serbian ‘Vuk’ means ‘Wolf). You can find some on this site if you’re interested in having a bit of a laugh: http://forums.morrissey-solo.com/archive/index.php/t-66196.html

So when I came into work the next day, I suggested that we take some of these sayings and tie them into a concept of voting so that only people of Serbian origin would be able to truly appreciate them. Accompanying these sayings with some funny illustrations would definitely make this email interesting enough to at least read, if not forward to your friends. I have to admit that I have no idea how successful the campaign was because my bosses never reported the results or feedback from the ministry back to me, but what I do know is that I received the email from a friend of mine who was living in Australia, saying how funny it was, and I wasn’t the only person whose email was on the forward list. Whether it actually made people get up and go out of their way to vote when the elections did come up, I wouldn’t be able to tell you, but what I do know is that it was successful enough for me to get more responsibility and bigger campaigns to work on (which I will go into more detail about in another blog entry).

The reason that I mentioned this particular project was because I wanted to demonstrate that in this situation, I didn’t even have to do any actual writing of the copy. Proverbs and sayings are so widely used that they cannot be copyrighted. Therefore, this illustrates the point that I made in my previous blog entry, about the fact that copywriting needs to be considered as a job that is so much broader than the writing of copy. On that occasion, I was responsible for the concept of the campaign, not the words. I had to think far outside the box and take into consideration a wide variety of factors. My task wasn’t to come up with some fantastic text that would lure people in when they read it, because chances were they wouldn’t even get around to reading the text. My mission was to understand my target audience well enough to know that there was nothing as interesting that I could come up in terms of the words, as the words that had been used for centuries. So I hope that this gives you aspiring copywriters a clearer idea of how your job isn’t just tied to words and how not to expect that you’ll always have the more interesting thing to say, sometimes you have to listen to the wisdom of the ages  that’s been around for a lot longer than any of us.

So what exactly do you do as a copywriter? (Part 2)

What I want to do in this blog entry is try to explain a little bit more about what it takes to be a copywriter. I think that it’s important to understand that, although almost anyone can write copy (trust me, I’ve been in situations where a friend of mine might come up with some fantastic copy over coffee), not everyone can be a copywriter. As I explained in the previous blog entry, copy is used to persuade people, and when it comes in the form of a five word slogan, in a moment of inspiration, even a young child can blurt out something completely relevant to a certain type of situation. However, as a copywriter, you have to be able to “blurt out something relevant” to every single project or task that you’re dealing with. Unlike many professionals who are fantastic at their jobs because they’ve spent so much time specializing in a certain field, copywriters have to be multi talented people. As a copywriter, it’s not enough to understand the corporate sphere, or be able to communicate to a teenage audience, you have to be someone who has the ability to grasp a diverse range of audiences and identify with them, so that you will know how to get through to them in the most effective way.

Apart from having a knack for understanding exactly what a target audience will react to, as a copywriter, you have to also be able to comprehend and appreciate visual communication. Since a copywriter usually works very close with an art director or a graphic designer, he/she has to have a feel for the visual part of things as well as the written word. As a copywriter, you can’t just come up with some text and expect that your work is done. Although your text might be completely relevant to the brief, it might not match the visual part of the message and that would be an advertising disaster, no matter how good your text is.

Copywriters have to be able to think ‘outside the box’ all the time. Even though there are no rules as to who comes up with an overall creative idea for a campaign, copywriting tends to lead people down the path to creative direction (whereas graphic design is more focused on the path or art direction) and therefore copywriters have to be able to conceptualize things on a very broad level.

In big agencies, the copywriter tends to be more restricted to copy writing, whereas in smaller agencies there is more freedom (and time) to be involved in the actual idea conceptualization. Please note, however, there are absolutely no rules and things really do depend on a variety of factors from agency size, available time, client understanding and individual character to the creativity of a person. Also, it’s important to keep in mind that like anything in life, some projects will be easier for us than others. You might be fantastic at writing copy for print advertisements, but you might not know how to communicate a message well through a radio script. Likewise, you might be able to put together an entire block of well structured text that repeats certain words a substantial number of times so that the website you’re writing for will come up highly ranked on search engines, but you might be completely lost when it comes to inventing a three word slogan for a cake shop.

Personally, I never finished any schools that lead me down the path of copywriting (I have a business management degree and a year and a half of a science undergraduate course), so what I’m about to say might not be considered as appropriate information to those that have actually dedicated their education to this type of career. However, I don’t believe that you have to be schooled in literature to be a copywriter. I believe that writing in general, is something that you’re either good at or you’re not. I also believe that copywriting has the least to do with the actual writing of the copy. Let me explain this before you roll your eyes and consider me an idiot for what I just said. The reason I think that the actual copy writing is the smallest part of the copywriter’s job is because that’s the last part that you do when you’re completing a project. True, it’s the only visible part of your efforts, but in order to get to writing the copy, there are a million other steps you have to complete before hand from reading and understanding the creative brief to research to brainstorming to trial and error and so on. I will go into more detail about this when I tell you how I go about doing my job, but for now, I just wanted to explain to all those aspiring copywriters that writing copy is just one fraction of what you’ll need to do tomorrow when you’ve started your career.

So what exactly do you do as a copywriter? (Part 1)

One of the questions I find most challenging when someone asks me about my job is “what exactly do you do as a copywriter”? I don’t dislike this question because I don’t like sharing information, quite the contrary; I dislike it because in my personal experience, copywriting is so much more that copy writing. So what I’ve decided to do is put aside some time and over my next few blog entries try and describe exactly what it is that I do as a copywriter. Hopefully the next time someone asks me that question I can give them a simple link and send them on their way to discovering the wonders of my job. Furthermore, with any luck, my next few entries will help aspiring copywriters get an idea of what they might be up against, should they choose to pursue this career.

I apologize in advance to those that already know what I’m talking about, because I’m going to have to start at the very basics and work my way from there. Things are always easier when they’re explained in a language even children can understand. So….

Copywriting has nothing to do with the law! I say this because I often get the question “So you copyright for like law firms and stuff, right?”. No! It’s called “copywriting” because what I do is write the copy, and in this case the word “copy” refers to content intended for reading. Generally, copywriters tend to be referred to as those people who write for promotional situations (for example: advertisements for print, radio, television, etc.). People who write copy for magazines or newspapers are more commonly referred to as reporters or writers, although sometimes you will come across the term ‘copywriter’ being used to describe them also.

So to simplify as much as possible: the purpose of copywriting, or writing copy (promotional text), is to influence the reader, listener or viewer to do something (for example: buy a certain product or join a certain organization). On the other hand, copy doesn’t always have to influence someone to do something, it can also be used to discourage people from doing something (for example: littering or smoking).

Basically, copywriting is the use of text across a wide range of marketing or advertising media, in order to communicate a certain message. It is applied to print advertisements, direct mail pieces, television or radio commercial scripts, press releases, out door advertising, sales letters, brochures, taglines and slogans, flyers, jingle lyrics, emails, and online or interactive media. It’s important to note that with the last one, writing for websites is also referred to as copywriting, if the objective is to achieve higher ranking in search engines (this is called SEO copywriting, but that’s almost a science within itself, and too broad for me to cover right now). However, if the objective for copywriting for websites is not of a promotional nature, usually this is referred as content writing.

Okay, so that would be a very short (and hopefully clear) introduction to “copy” and “copywriting”, just so that anyone who reads the rest of the posts will have a better understanding of what I’m talking about.

Methods for Job Interviews – Honesty or Deceit?

I have just come back from my first job interview in months (I’m not counting the call centre thing, that was a group interview in which we all had 30 seconds to speak). Ages ago, I remember knowing straight away, as soon as I walk out of the building, how well I’ve done, but today I am completely emotionless. Maybe it’s just been way too long since the last one (which was some time in July) that I have forgotten how to read the interviewers – and by read I mean with my intuition, because that’s usually how I figure out where I stand.

When I was still in high school, I remember having a lesson in job interview behaviour in year 11. I know that they taught us how to shake hands when you first meet your potential employers (never put you hand on top because that means that you are dominating, or on the bottom because that means that you are submissive), and how to hold your posture upright and how not to use the word “um”. I also remember how they told us to wear collared shirts, pants/skirts and proper shoes (preferably with a little bit of a heal)  and how to keep our hands firmly placed in our laps or by our sides when we’re speaking. The funniest thing I remember them telling us is not to chew gum when we go into an interview….who would be crazy enough to do that, it’s common sense (I have realized since that there are plenty of people who don’t know what ‘common sense’ even means). The reason I mention my year 11 “how to behave in interviews” class is because I attended an IPA Recruitment “how to behave in interviews” three day training session about two weeks ago. They didn’t really tell me anything I didn’t already know (even they mentioned the chewing gum issue), but what they did do is confuse me with all the things that I believe in….

See, my personal theory (and I sand by it because it has proven itself worthy over the years) is that when you go into a job interview, the first thing you need to do is try and relax and the second is to listen. When the employer tells you about the company, which is usually what they do before they ask about you, you can already figure out pretty much what they’re looking for in your answers. Having said this, I by no means claim that I am an expert in job interviews, but the third and final component which I believe works is – honesty! In every single job interview I have ever been to, I have always been as honest as I possibly can. That way I eliminate two dangerous things that could cost me the job: 1) lying about the things I’ve done or the things that I’ good at and then risking being found out anyway when I got the job, and 2) stuttering, stumbling and sounding foolish because instead of talking about myself properly, I’m constantly thinking about whether one lie corresponds to another that I mentioned 5 minutes ago. When I said this to the IPA people, they told me that complete honesty is not a good way to go because you want to draw in the potential employer by telling them what they want to hear. There’s a huge possibility I would agree with this theory if I was being interviewed for a job that I wasn’t particularly interested in, but if I truly want to work for a certain company and I believe that I will benefit from the experience I could gain there, there is no point in telling my interviewer only things that thy want to hear. This is someone who will tomorrow be my boss (and hopefully over time my friend), someone who has obviously seen something that already interests them about me (other wise I wouldn’t be at the interview), so I believe that it is also someone who deserves to get to know me well enough (within that half an hour) to fill in most of the blanks. My belief is that if we are right for each other (as employer and the employee) my interviewer will see right away from my honesty whether I am a suitable candidate.

And finally, what I would like to add (for all those creatives out there who certainly know what I’m talking about) in terms of the dress sense for interviews is: show a little bit of yourself when you dress up for the interview. Again, this advice doesn’t really apply to say, a lawyer, but I’m no talking about interviews in the creative industry. I don’t mean to say that you should go to an agency interview wearing your latest make-shift attempt at fashion design, but have at least one accessory that defines you. Personally, my trade mark would probably have to be my high cut Converse sneakers, because they compliment the honesty that I was talking about earlier – this is me, what you see and hear is what you get (and because I am a little laid back you can also expect to get even more that what you see).

So to conclude…. my theory for job interviews is that honesty truly is the best policy and if you’re happy with yourself and you know exactly who you are, when your interviewer sees that, they will b very likely to appreciate it and if nothing else, have respect for you.

Getting organized….

 

Hey everyone, must say it’s been quite a while since my last blog, but to be honest I’ve had a lot on my plate…. the whole job hunting thing isn’t going as well as I’d hoped, but hey the most important thin is to keep a positive attitude. I just wanted to check in to tell you that I’m in the process of bringing you some new and exciting information and hopefully it’ll prove useful to many of you.

My latest projects have included self promotion kits for my copywriting job search, trial projects for my graphic design job search, creative present making for loved ones for the festive season that’s coming, helping friends move houses, constructive ‘hanging out’ and building up a creative and inspiring base of digital resources (all of which I plan to share when I’ve organized it all into one pile of stuff that makes sense ). Having mentioned all of this, it’s safe to safe that it’s rather obvious that I’m not quiet as organized as I’d like to be. I’ve realized that my biggest problem stems from the fact that I don’t have a well tuned priority filtering system. Combine this with my daily creative thought process and inspiration, and you get someone who has all the right ideas and much potential to achieve great things, but not enough time to do everything the right way. I have decided that in order to get better organized, I’m going to have to take some very important steps, the first of which involves buying a daily planner (the unfortunate thing about doing this right now is that there’s no point in getting a 2009 planner with just a month and a bit of the year left to go). The second thing I’m thinking about doing is starting up a separate blog to this one, which will be solely dedicated to my daily task management…..sure it won’t be very interesting to read, although I think that it might perhaps be valuable to some people (ie. my clients) who will at least be able to track where I’m up to with their particular projects….hmmm….I’ve got to think this one through. And finally, I’m definitely going to have to get myself some post-its and fridge magnets, cos it’s very hard to ignore something when it’s constantly hanging around the house staring you right in the face

Anyway dear people, I’m signing off now, but I’ll be writing to you soon….

Fine Art America….

I opened up my inbox today and was very surprised to see an invitation from Fine Art America in there. I was a little skeptical reading through the email, but finally decided that I might as well join it, I don’t really have anything to lose, because if I just want to showcase my work it doesn’t cost me a penny. Even selling my work through the site isn’t very expensive, there’s a $30 annual fee (the only thing is that right now I don’t even have $10 in my pocket).

Anyway, I didn’t plan on making this post too long, just wanted to let you all know that my work is on there and if you want to have a look go to:

http://branka-injac.fineartamerica.com/

Where exactly to showcase a copywriter’s portfolio?

I spent about eight hours yesterday (yep that’s right, an entire working day) uploading my copywriting portfolio onto various sites….and why (you ask) when you already have a website?

I’ve realized that in order to get yourself  ‘out there’ you have to keep up with the digital advancements and the interactive communities (read my LinkedIn post). So naturally, I Googled (I love how that word has become a verb) all of the ‘in’ sights that you should have your portfolio on and picked the top 3-5 to host my masterpieces…. little did I know that 99.9% of these sights are built for design portfolios. Some of these sites are truly fantastic, they showcase your work in such a way that you as a designer wonder how you never thought about making it look that good, but let me tell you guys, these things are not copywriter folio friendly….not the way I believe they should be anyway. The major focus on every one of these sights is the picture that you upload, which is (like I mentioned) fantastic for any designer, but it sells us writers a little short. Sure, you have the little description box to fill out and explain what the project was about, but it doesn’t do your work any justice when the text is 4×6 pixels in size as compared to the visual part. There was one particular site I must say I was impressed with in terms of the visual:text ratio, but even that didn’t quiet meet all of my expectations. And just so no one gets me wrong here, about the whole ‘dissing the visual exposure of a project’, I want to explain why I have a problem with it…..

When I was searching for my second job, portfolio in my hand and nothing but hope in my wallet, I came across a fantastic agency that I decided I badly wanted to work for. The interview went well, I left my portfolio with them and I was told that they would call me back by the end of the week…. I didn’t hear from them for three weeks. Naturally I thought that I didn’t get the job and that in that time they had already found someone else, so you can imagine how surprised I was when I finally received a call telling me to come in for a second interview so that we could set the date for me to start! So what had actually happened…….. well let me tell you…….. the misinterpretation of visual content! That’s what had happened, because, you see, in order to truly showcase the creativity and conceptualization of my work, I had not included just the copy that I had written but also the complete visual representations of all the mediums that the campaign had been applied through. So naturally (owing to the power of networking) when one of the designers from the new job, saw the work of one of the designers from my old job in MY portfolio, he questioned my ethics and went straight to the creative director with the question “well what kind of person is she when she puts other people’s work in her portfolio?”. Of course, he had forgotten to ask himself whether the text might be the only thing that’s mine, but on it’s own it would look stupid to show in a portfolio, or maybe that I had been the one to give the original designer the complete art direction for the visuals…. no…. the only thing he had noticed was that the design was done by someone other than me, and for him that was enough…. point of my story…. for most people that is enough, they won’t chose to think any further, they’ll label you a plagiarist and good luck breaking into anyone’s good books after that. The only luck that I had with this whole story was that the creative director happen to be an ‘out of the box’ person, so he called up the original designer and did a check on the work, and the guy told him that most of the idea was mine anyway, he just made it look pretty (so thankfully I had an honest ex-colleague and a curious new one).

So…. what I’ve decided I’m going to do is build an online copywriter portfolio website, where copywriters will have the ability to showcase their work, the way they feel it best shows off their talents (no stealing of idea people, or I’ll come after you, I can find out where you live thanks to the power of the internet ). It’s going to take a mammoth effort, but hey, we aren’t nearly as well represented in the industry as the designers, so someone has to look after the underdogs

If you want to have a look at what my portfolio turned out like on several different sights visit:

http://www.coroflot.com/public/individual_set.asp?keywords=branka&c=1&set_id=388537&individual_id=203646

http://bakili.carbonmade.com/

http://www.designrelated.com/portfolio/Bakili

http://issuu.com/bakili/docs/portfolio_-_high_res

The power of LinkedIn

Hello poeple,

I just wanted to take a quick moment to mention how impressed I am with “LinkedIn”. In today’s digital world it’s so hard to figure out exactly what social (interactive) network you should sign up with, because 1) there’s so many of them, and 2) you really do want to be on the one where all the experts are.

Since I moved back to Melbourne, I must admit that I’ve had a little bit of a problem with my job search. This isn’t so much because i lack the experience, but rather (and this only dawned on me about a month ago) the fact that I have absolutely no connections in my professional field. I was contacted by a head hunter who viewed my portfolio and suggested that I should join LinkedIn in order to build up my contacts (thank you Alastair for your wisdom). So I did…. and little did I know how useful it will be. I can’t say that I’ve gotten a job yet because of the site, because low and behold I still have enough time on my hands to be blogging right now, but I have received some priceless advice from people in the network. I posted a comment for discussion about the rates that freelance copywriters should charge and I have to thank all the wonderful people that replyed. Honestly, I was surprised to see some very big names in there, giving little old no name me, advice that I would not have been able to receive anywhere else.

Anyway….that was my 10 minutes of praised for LinkedIn…. if you’re not on it yet people, I have no idea what you’re waiting for

Hello world!

Well HELLO WORD!

I must admit that this is my first blog ever, and honestly, the reason I decided to open up a blog anyway is because I feel that I have a lot to say but I don’t quite know where to direct my thoughts….so I figured this might be the best way to start. I must say that I’m rather impressed with word press, for the pure reason that they’ve thought about almost everything that you could possibly want or need on your blog. In fact, I’m having trouble navigating and figuring out exactly what to use and not use in order to make my blog more user friendly.

As I have a lot more stuff to do around here, I’ll be off now, but you’ll be hearing from me very, very soon, because inspiration is only a blink away

And remember…. Imagine. Believe. Create. Achieve.