From my blog

Tinker, tailor, soldier, copywriter

People do some funny things before they turn to copywriting. Here’s what a few copywriters revealed on Twitter recently:

  • Ben Afia (@benafia) was once an auto electrician and a delivery man for dentists’ equipment.
  • Maddie York (@MadsYork) operated the ham slicer in a delicatessen and worked in a West End theatre box office.
  • Titania James (@titaniajames) was a rag and bone man (lady?), typesetter and lamplighter (!).
  • Peter Baruffati (@peterbaruffati) initially claimed to have been a pimp, before admitting to a career in banking and a spell as a shelf-filler in a Moscow supermarket. Ever the wag, he added that ‘I was also a human cannonball but I got fired.’
  • John Band (@johnb78) worked as a ‘sticky paint salesman’ (which, in the absence of a hyphen, we must assume means that he sold sticky paint, rather than getting sticky in the course of his work as a paint salesman).
    • You write tastier copy when you've sampled a slice of life
  • Andy Nattan (@Mr603) inspected damaged post for the Royal Mail Customer Services Department. ‘Best one was just after the anthrax scare,’ he says. ‘Building was evacuated due to a powder leaking out of a parcel. Herbal medicine.’
  • Leif Kendall (@leifkendall) has been an accounts technician, a logistics coordinator, a purchasing assistant, ‘tree surgeon’s chief fire starter’ and a cleaner.
  • Paul Mallaghan (@scribblemill) has been a waiter, factory box shifter, ‘irresponsible office bod’, charity mugger and has also done ‘various jobs based around the series Robot Wars’.
  • Sarah Turner (@turnerink) sold encyclopedias door to door in Brisbane. ‘I hated it, but learnt a lot,’ she says.
  • Alasdair Murray (@alconcalcia) has been a civil servant and a labourer.
  • Sally Ormond (@sallyormond) worked in banking and as a charity fundraiser – an interest she sustains by working as a volunteer for Make a Wish.
  • Ben Locker (@benlocker) has been a road sweeper, a sheep’s fleece baler, a petrol station attendant, a forester, a care assistant and a ‘professional idiot’ (any openings for an apprentice?).
  • Jill Tomlinson (@shelovestowrite) was an usherette at The Palace Theatre in Manchester, but says her best non-advertising job was working as a volunteer for Saneline, the mental health charity: ‘alarming, exhausting, very rewarding’.
  • Larner Caleb (@LarnerC) has held jobs including include market stall seller, cartographer, Royal Navy engineer, pizza deliverer and ‘constantly electrocuted service engineer’.

What I learned

I can’t speak for them, but I bet all that experience gives those copywriters a unique perspective on their copywriting work.

I can speak for myself, though, and here’s my take on what my own vocational travels have given me:

  • I was the voice of Norfolk County Council’s childcare helpline, which taught me about dealing with real customers with real problems, some of them quite angry. It gave me phone confidence too.
  • I worked as a waiter in Pizzaland (now defunct), which taught me about the value of good service and the difference between a bin for rubbish and one used for storing frozen garlic bread. (I emptied my dustpan into the garlic-bread bin by mistake, and, for my sins, kept quiet about it once I realised.)
  • I was a data entry clerk before being dismissed for working too slowly, which taught me about concentration and the mind-numbing tedium of the days before OCR was invented.
  • I was a milkman (well, milkboy really, since I was in sixth form), which taught me that walking to work at 5am is a lot easier when you’ve got some Feargal Sharkey, Duran and World Party on your Walkman. (Ask your parents.)
  • I typeset display ads at the Birmingham Post and Mail, where I saw first-hand what UK newspapers were like before the unions were broken (rolled-up sleeves, incessant smoking, heated arguments at 1am, ridiculously narrow job specs). I was sorely tempted to abandon my degree and stay in this job – probably just as well I didn’t, since the Mail later set up its own employment agency, fired all its staff and took them on again as temps for half their salary.
  • Before becoming a copywriter, I worked in publishing. I wrote almost nothing (authors did that for us), but I learnt a huge amount about accuracy, print and prepress technology, how to handle graphic designers (be nice) and mounting SyQuest drives (start early and allow several hours).

Beyond the ivory tower

Sometimes, I feel insecure about not being a ‘real’ copywriter. You’ll search my cv in vain for household consumer brands, national campaigns or big London agencies. And I’ll never be that kind of writer now – it’s simply too late in the day.

So I’ll never put together the creative that becomes the crowning glory of a majestic brand strategy, or is used in every aspect of a multi-million-pound through-the-line campaign.

In fact, although it’s still called ‘copywriting’, what I do is completely different from that kind of work.

When I take a brief, it’s rarely from a creative director, an account handler or a campaign planner. It’s from a business owner – someone who not only owns their brand, but built it themselves, from nothing. There’s no great difficulty about determining the brand’s tone of voice – it’s right there in front of me.

When I research my copy, I don’t browse data compiled by MORI or the findings of a focus group. I phone up their customers or even meet them face to face, asking them about the product or service and listening to what they say. Often, the things they tell me go straight into my copy.

At the coal face

For this sort of copywriting, it pays to have experience at the coal face of business. At one level, business owners like to deal with someone who runs a business themselves. That’s why a freelance copywriter immediately scores over one of their own employees, or indeed an employee of their PR or creative agency.

But other experience counts too. If you’ve dealt with customers, sold stuff or just witnessed the way a real business works, you’ve got something that a lifelong media professional just can’t offer, for all their marketing expertise or laser-targeted creativity: empathy, based in real first-hand knowledge of real work. And, for a certain type of client, that’s gold.

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Comments (19)

  1. To be honest, I think writing for small businesses is a great job. Ok, it’s not very Don Draper, but as you said, you get to deal with people on a level playing field.

    And it’s far better than explaining to an old woman why her handwritten “fragile” label doesn’t make her china tea set invulnerable.

  2. Very good piece that resonates greatly. I’m starting a copywriting business in March, after four years in journalism, and a year as a copywriter in a big agency. I’m so looking forward to dealing with smaller businesses and one-man bands – I’ve enjoyed the corporate experience, but smaller businesses have more narrative.

  4. I also trained as a teacher – being a sort of stand-in lion tamer to a bunch of Year 9 pupils on a Friday afternoon gives you a whole battery of persuasive techniques. Very handy when you become a copywriter.

    Mind you, I’ve long thought there’s a book in using sales techniques to improve classroom management. Hm. Maybe there’s a blog post in it?

  5. The biggest problem in working for small businesses is not getting paid. Make sure you get some money up front. Watch out for fast talking clients who namedrop. The cheap price they demand in exchange for introducing you to their rich industry friends won’t pay the bills. Rather pay a finders fee on work invoiced and paid for, not discounts on future introductions.

  6. I touched upon the more unlikely jobs I’ve had. Indeed I went from being a labourer to working in the civil service for 4 years. I then discovered via my brother that working in advertising sales paid double so I joined the Daily Telegraph and was there for 7 years. That gave me an interest in writing. I started out writing ads on the fly over the phone for clients during my time there. I then snapped up voluntary redundancy and went and worked for a regional newspaper in a similar capacity and again, composing advertising copy was part of the role. Then I saw an ad for a copywriter working at an advertising agency.I applied and got a job, not THE job. They said because of my background I’d be better off working as a ‘suit’ or advertising account handler, so that’s what I did for a few years. Along the way I worked on some of the biggest accounts in the business, including the BBC, which got me into TOTP more than a few times. I still have videos of me and my good lady slow dancing to Kenny Thomas and stuff! Also saw Bowie’s first live appearance on the show for 23 years, sadly with Tin Machine. I digress.

    Whilst working at ad agencies I often used my aforementioned writing skills gained working at newspapers to bail out colleagues on deadline or indeed to write my own ads from the brief I had myself taken from the client. It became second nature, so, when I got fed up with corporate life back in 2001 and redundancies were being talked about, I didn’t bother waiting for a ‘consultation period’ I agreed terms for my departure and set up working from home as a copywriter – something I realised I should have been years earlier. I just didn’t know it back then when I was mixing cement or paper shuffling at the Department of Transport. Oh and I also became a part-time house husband and have been lucky enough to see my two sons nearly every day from the day they were born. Changing nappies midstream when trying to crack a particularly difficult piece of copy isn’t the easiest thing in the world, but I wouldn’t have it any other way. Less money, far more personal reward (no sensible offers refused though, I hasten to add!). It took me years to find my niche. My dad was quite high up in PR at an international company but he died when I was 13 so I never really what he did at the time. Clearly writing was in my blood. Still I wouldn’t change much. Rambling now! Those are my jobs!

  7. I started out as an office designer. Then I was interior/furniture designer then a journalist and then a copywriter.

  9. I’ve washed dishes in a hotel, gone near brain dead working in a keish factory and served pints to jazz fans. But I think the job that really pushed me into wanting to be a self employed copywriter was the years spent in the corporate world. Never looked back since.

  10. In my various incarnations, I’ve been a law firm receptionist, a department store sales clerk, an insurance claims adjuster, a motorcycles parts person, an automotive parts driver and shipper/receiver, a temp, a government communications coordinator, an actor, a movie extra (yes, I did a Walt Disney Sci-Fi no one’s ever heard of called Earth Star Voyager; Duncan Regehr was the lead), a piano and harp player, a singer, a comedienne, a transcriptionist, a project manager, and, oh, I was even a second string cheerleader for the BC Lions eons ago. I also once held the title of Hyack Princess (runner up for Miss New Westminster), and played to rave reviews as Trish in a Vancouver semi-professional production of the panto Puss “N Boots.

    What fun, Tom!

  11. I like your apology for not having big agency experience. But who cares? Think of it as a badge of pride. We’re sharper writers for having done time in shops, restaurants, and building sites. The more variety, the better – that’s where we get a feel for the everyday joys and frustrations of the people we write for.

  12. I worked for a photographer, a city cemetery, an elementary school, and a synagogue (just to name a few). Not only did those experiences contribute to my success as a writer, but they are how I actually got here. Excellent post.

  13. Having been a barman, hotel nightporter, office drone, factory worker, teacher, shop assistant, dish washer and other jobs before I got the chance to write fulltime, I can’t help but think that the more life experience you have, the better. Even bad experiences. This is why writing from students in creative writing courses is dreadfully jejune, and why successful people dry up. Life at the sharp end is the best teacher there is.

  15. Nice post – pity I missed the tweet asking about life before copywriting.

    I always wanted to be a writer but in those days, pre-internet, I didn’t have a clue about how to get started.

    So, despite failing my Maths O Level, I qualified as an accountant. Computers sucked me into that – I could make finance systems work for people and soon enough that led me into consultancy.

    Since then I’ve set up a small conference centre from scratch, been treasurer to a charity, an invigilator for school exams and a polling clerk in the 2010 general election. The latter jobs supplemented my meagre income from my early days of copywriting.

    Now I’m writing full-time. Love it. Wouldn’t go back. But my 20 years in finance and IT has given me a great foundation for working with small businesses.

  16. Spent a year on an agency drawing board in the ’80s before they realised my headlines were better than my visuals. Never looked back. Oh, and I did Pizzaland too. I couldn’t call it waiting, it was more talking-with-trays.

  18. I was a supermarket checkout chick. That came in handy for learning how to bite your lip and smile politely when someone’s being a complete arse to you – most clients are very nice but there’s the odd one. And since they got ratty if your till didn’t balance, attention to detail. (Pay attention to the 20c and 50c pieces.)

  19. Very inspiring post. I sometimes ask myself “am I really qualified as a copywriter or am I just kidding myself.”

    I was a nurse, a volunteer working with children caught between civil war, an English teacher, a telemarketer (never again), a PA, a country manager, a check-out girl and finally, a marketing manager for 10 years before I started my copywriting business.

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