A few weeks ago, while researching career stats for a client project, I stumbled across an article at The Balance titled “Think Twice Before Becoming a Copywriter.” The article subhead: “For a copywriter, it can be all work and very little reward.”
All right, Balance Careers. You’d had my curiosity, but now you’d got my attention.
The article began:
“If you’re contemplating a career change or just starting out, and have your heart set on being a copywriter, you need to be prepared for what lies ahead. Despite the creative title, a copywriter’s job is not always that glamorous or creative. Not to dissuade you, but consider the following before you take the plunge.”
Hold up a minute. What was this? An article that didn’t hype being a creative as some sort of high-flying, jet-setting party life awash in caviar, champagne, and round-the-clock depravations with the opposite sex?
(Wait, can I still say that about the “opposite sex”? Oh, never mind. If you are an aspiring copywriter, go ahead and try to have sex with whomever you like. In the entire history of the profession, I seriously doubt that being a copywriter has ever gotten anyone laid.)
This was a true anomaly. I’ve been a copywriter for *doing the math in my head* — 30 years — holy shit! — and I’ve never seen a write-up of the job that reflects reality.
Sensing that some of my strongest and longest-held beliefs (you know, the ones that usually get me in trouble) were about to be validated, I eagerly read on.
Getting started as a copywriter
The first section, titled “Getting Your Foot in the Door,” explained how difficult it can be for aspiring copywriters to land their first job in the field.
It’s the old Catch-22: You can’t get a job without experience (and a portfolio of good work), and you can’t get experience without a job.
I myself got around this problem (at the tender age of 21) by writing spec ads. Short for speculative advertisements, these are mock ads created specifically to win an account, with little to no chance of being paid by the client.
Related reading: 54 percent of copywriters feel lack of respect: UK survey
If you’re an aspiring copywriter with little experience and no portfolio, then spec ads are a great way to show a prospective client or employer that you are ambitious and up to the task.
Interestingly, The Balance suggests freelancing as a way to get into copywriting:
“A lot of copywriters start out by freelancing — doing multiple, smaller gigs for different clients. Once you’ve developed a solid base of experience, it could lead to something more permanent.”
Ehh. I’m not sure that’s a viable path anymore. Freelancing may have been a valid way to start a copywriting career back in ancient times (meaning before 2010), but now, it seems to me that aspiring copywriters need a great deal of technical knowledge and experience working in digital platforms. Gone are the days when a copywriter could get away with knowing only Microsoft Word. Now, we copywriters frequently work with tools such as WordPress, Google Docs, Google Ads, Facebook Ad Manager, all of the social media platforms, etc.
In other words, it’s not enough anymore just to know how to write. If you don’t also have a firm grasp of the many tech platforms and tools in use today, you’ll need to learn those, too.
Copywriters do tons of research
One of the most non-glamorous aspects of life as a copywriter is research. As The Balance explains:
“In a traditional copywriter/art director team, the burden is on the writer to research the product or service. You need to be highly detail-oriented to hold this position. There is a good reason for this — when it comes to writing about the product or company, the copywriter needs to know everything possible — right down to the very last detail.”
Amen to that. In my experience, the copywriter needs to become intimately familiar not only with the product or service to be sold, but also with the company, its competitors, and the industry at large. That means there’s usually no such thing as a “simple” job.
This research takes time. If I had to break it down, I’d say about 80 percent of a copywriter’s time is spent doing research, and only 20 percent actually writing.
Meanwhile, the rest of the creative team gets to be, you know, creative:
“It’s the art director’s job to know enough to help conceptualize and ensure the layouts, video spots and other visual elements are perfect. Consequently, you will spend many late nights and early mornings reading and researching while the designers and art directors are involved in the fun, creative process.”
Most copywriting work isn’t glamorous
The Balance is right on when it says:
“Most copywriters dream of writing great ads or slogans. But that’s not all the job is cracked up to be. There are other tasks you may be assigned that may not seem as glamorous such as writing speeches, press releases, sales letters and direct marketing pieces.”
In fact, these “other tasks” account for far and away the vast majority of most copywriters’ work. I’m talking about days filled with writing Google text ads, those three- to five-line blurbs that show up at the tops and bottoms of Google search results pages in all their 30- and 90-character glory. And blog posts, often written on dry topics with one of the writer’s arms tied behind her back by search engine optimization (SEO) rules that frequently dictate the form and structure of a blog post — the writer’s creativity be damned.
And case studies, and whitepapers, and the aforementioned press releases and sales letters.
But do you know what? That’s great, because it’s this variety of form and function that challenges copywriters, stretching their capabilities and driving them to excel at their craft.
Writing for direct response advertising — sales letters, emails, radio, billboards, infomercials — is especially valuable. In contrast to image advertising, which seeks to create a positive image about a product or company in the hope that you will remember it later (think gauzy perfume ads), direct response advertising aims to persuade prospects to buy now.
Many agency copywriters look down their noses at direct response copywriting, but I wholeheartedly agree with David Ogilvy, who said:
“Nobody should be allowed to create general advertising until he has served his apprenticeship in direct response. That experience will keep his feet on the ground for the rest of his life.
“You know the trouble with many copywriters and general agencies is that they don’t really think in terms of selling. They’ve never written direct response. They’ve never tasted blood.”
Direct response copywriting may not be glamorous, but copywriters who master this discipline possess a powerful understanding of psychology and salesmanship that is all but guaranteed to generate sales and profit — for their employers, and for themselves.
Aspiring copywriters, ignore direct response at your peril.
Copywriter salaries and perks
The Balance goes on to discuss copywriter salaries and perks, such as travel to interesting or exotic locations for video shoots and the like.
Unfortunately for copywriters, they usually don’t get to go along on these excursions. The client, sure. The art director, designer, and members of the account team, absolutely. But copywriters? Not so much.
As The Balance says:
“This may be hard to swallow if you come up with the big idea and wrote the script. Unfortunately, it’s expensive for everyone to tag along, and that money could go to other things like craft food services or flight upgrades.
“Your role will be to stay put at the agency writing something or generating the next big idea. In a sense, copywriters are like Cinderella — they never get to go to the ball or bask in Belize with the art director.”
As for salary, copywriters can make a decent living. According to PayScale.com, the average salary for a copywriter is $53,792 as of December 2021. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics paints a brighter picture, citing a median average salary of $67,120 for writers and authors as of May 2020.
In my experience, these figures are probably in the ballpark for “average” copywriters. If you are better than average, you can earn considerably more — especially if you work for a brand or agency that competes for top writing talent.
“Your opinion may not be valued”
Oh boy, did I get a laugh out of this next section. Yes, that is the actual subhead from the article. The author writes:
“Once you’ve created an incredible campaign idea and written scripts and headlines that will result in the product selling out on Amazon, don’t be surprised if the client completely rewrites your carefully-crafted copy. The client can’t come up with the copy from scratch, but they have the right to edit it with a vengeance, so don’t get wedded to the words or to your creative visual ideas. The art director, producer and director may change up your visual ideas as well.”
Ouch!
(Incidentally, destructive client feedback was precisely the impetus for this early Cranky Creative blog post, “No, the client is not always right.“)
And the hits keep coming. The very next section, subtitled “Prepare to Be Edited,” delivers even more pain:
“There’s a reason the phrase ‘everyone’s a copywriter’ is so popular in the agency world. From a junior client to a junior account executive, your words are very easy to change. It’s just a case of deleting the ones you spent hours sweating over and replacing them with ‘better words’ people come up with while chatting at the water cooler.
As if that wasn’t bad enough, get a load of this next part:
“You need to be prepared that your words may change. Your job is to accept that and not argue the point, or you risk being labeled difficult or a diva.”
Been there, done that!
But let me tell you something. I think it was around the 18-year mark of my career when I finally decided that if a client or newbie account manager wanted to rewrite my copy, I was damn well going to have something to say about it, no matter what terrible names they called me.
As David Ogilvy once said, “If the client changes the copy, I get angry — because I took a lot of trouble writing it, and what I wrote I wrote on purpose.”
Related reading: We are copywriters, not typists or order takers
I’m no David Ogilvy, but I put a lot of thought and care into my writing. Of course, I’m always happy to listen to feedback, and I’m thrilled to make changes that improve the copy. But in any sane working environment, my work has always withstood the misguided tampering of armchair copywriters who hadn’t invested nearly as much time into their choosing their words as I had.
Hey copywriter, you didn’t build that
The final section of the article, “You’re Not the Architect of Your Work,” laments how a copywriter — usually the first person to touch a project — almost never gets to see his ideas through to completion. Much of the time, copy goes to a graphic designer, into a layout, and on to countless stakeholders for review. Often, a copywriter may not even recognize the work by the time it reaches the consumer.
“This is the life of a copywriter: A lot of hard work, very little glory. If this doesn’t appeal to you — and you have any kind of artistic skill — consider becoming an art director instead. You can still come up with awesome ideas, but the satisfying perks (like Belize) will be there.”
Yeah, if only it were that easy. In my experience, copywriters and graphic designers are very different types of people, with very different skills, worldviews, and ways of thinking. The roles really aren’t interchangeable.
Copywriting is not art, but it can be artful
If you are an aspiring copywriter who wants to be artsy, then please, go into another field. Write novels or screenplays or stand-up comedy routines instead. Just stay the hell away from advertising. If you ask me, one of the biggest reasons so much advertising sucks today is because way too many copywriters are preoccupied with “being creative” to give a good goddamn about selling.
And that’s the key. If you want to be a copywriter, you can’t be afraid to sell. If selling feels dirty or smarmy to you, like posing as a slick car or old-time vacuum salesman, then 1) you’re doing it wrong; and 2) this work is not for you.
Because selling is not about hawking shit. It’s about helping people.
Connecting people with solutions to their problems is a noble pursuit.
Done right, it can be an art form all its own.
Thanks to Paul Sugget at The Balance for writing a kick-ass blog post about copywriting.
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