54 percent of copywriters feel lack of respect: UK survey

The United Kingdom’s Direct Marketing Association surveyed 433 British copywriters and found . . . a lot of cranky creatives. See why they’re so unhappy.

The 2014 survey—the first and only of its kind—asked copywriters how they viewed their jobs and the industry.

So dispirited were the responses that the DMA titled the report, “Why your copywriter looks sad.”

Presented in a (very cool) interactive flip-book format, the online report contains eye-opening statistics and quotes from the copywriters themselves.

Negative numbers

When copywriters were asked to name the biggest barrier to doing good work:

• • 68% said poor creative briefs
  • 54% said lack of respect for the value of copywriting
  • 50% said unrealistic deadlines

In addition, 35% cited insufficient insight into the customer and 33% blamed a “factory-like” agency process. A whopping 72 percent of copywriters felt that much of the copy that goes live does not represent their best work:

• • 29% said about half of the work does
  • 23% said perhaps 1 in 3 pieces
  • 20% said about 1 in 10

As for who is to blame, the copywriters did not mince words. “It’s often the client who ruins it.”

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Related reading: No, the client is not always right

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Killer quotes

Beyond the expected charts and graphs, the report also contains a number of fascinating quotes from the copywriters who took the survey. Here are several that stood out to me:

“Content has never been more important, but copywriters have never been less appreciated.”

“Copywriting is bland, uninspiring and sucked dry of creativity by clients who get too involved and search engines that don’t understand smart or subtle.”

“We have moved on from the golden age to a time of transition, the time and dedication that the craft once had has in the most part been removed. Replaced by pseudo copywriters given three minutes to create a headline, for which a copy and paste is seen as a viable solution.”

“If you love writing, don’t become a copywriter. I regularly describe myself as a ‘Track changes accepter.’”

“Copywriting is suffering from the ignorance and illiteracy of marketing people. Many of them can’t even write a sentence, spell simple words or compose a coherent email, yet they have the power of life or death over copy written by someone who knows how to write and think.”

This last one in particular resonates with me. It’s practically word for word what I said about a full-time job I had in 2010—the year I first put up my own freelance copywriting website and started looking for a better way.

Is job type a factor?

I suspect at least some of the negativity has to do with the type of copywriters who responded:

• • 56 percent of respondents were agency copywriters
  • 12 percent were “brand” or “supplier” (in-house) copywriters
  • 27 percent identified as freelance copywriters

In my experience, agencies can be difficult places to work, blighted as many are by a proliferation of politics, power struggles, and outsize egos. In-house or client-side marketing departments often have similar problems, with the potential for added chaos resulting from their inexperience in working with creatives and an unfamiliarity with marketing production processes.

In this survey, agency and in-house copywriters together account for 68 percent of respondents.

Freelance copywriters—who work for themselves and generally have the freedom to choose their clients—account for just 27 percent.

Industry expresses surprise

Some in the industry expressed surprise at the study’s findings, perhaps revealing a disconnect between themselves and the conditions experienced by many copywriters on the ground.

Obviously, big industry names don’t take orders from incompetent managers. They aren’t required to bite their tongues as feckless clients change the brief three times without giving a second thought to their time. They’ll never have their copy re-written by a fresh-faced young intern who feels supremely confident that she knows better.

But these are everyday occurrences for many copywriters today.

I’ve seen plenty of it myself, and I hear all the time from copywriters and graphic designers who lament the soul-sucking bosses and jobs that won’t allow them to do the good work of which they’re capable.

Hats off to the DMA

This survey was part of the DMA’s Campaign for Great British Creative (formerly Great British Copywriting). According to the original charter:

“The DMA is here to champion copywriting, listen to copywriters, create the conditions in which they can do what they do best, highlight the value of copy to growing businesses and rally our community behind them as they rewrite the future of one-to-one-to-millions communications.”

I think we should thank the DMA for conducting this survey and for championing Britain’s creatives. When it comes to standing up for our professions and educating others on the value of our work, we creatives can use all the help we can get.

What copywriters want

According to the survey, copywriters want three things:

• • 70%—better clarity in creative briefs
  • 61%—more insight
  • 51%—more time to produce good work

No surprises there. These would be my answers too, after what I consider to be the most important job factor of all: having a great boss.

When you work for a smart, fair-minded manager who knows what they’re doing, a lot of these things just naturally fall into place.

Too bad, then, that good leaders are surprisingly scarce.

I’ve sat, baffled, across the table from marketing managers who resisted—defiantly—my polite suggestions that our department use any kind of creative brief or even simply proofread its work before release. (“We don’t have time” and “we don’t want to” were the replies in a nutshell.)

Again, it’s not a world some industry higher-ups might recognize, but it does exist.

That’s why I say if you are a creative who’s stuck working for a poor boss or a company where the culture has little respect for creatives, you have two choices:

1. Get out.
2. Go freelance.

That’s it.

If you feel overworked and undervalued like the copywriters in this survey, then you need to go and start fresh in a place where you will be respected, your skills valued, and you will be empowered to do good work that makes you happy.

Fortunately, those places still exist, too.

See the DMA report here.

Go back to blog home page.

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What’s your take on the state of copywriting today? Have speed and technology taken precedence over craft? Has the rise of the Internet fed the fallacy that “everyone’s a writer”? Where is it all headed? Sound off in the comments below.