Setting foot in the world of copywriting promises a glamorous profession surrounded by creatives and working on adverts or content that you can hang your hat on. But an average day doesn't involve meeting Zuckerburg at a trendy cocktail bar, brainstorming in bohemian offices and launch parties at swanky hotels... In fact, that's not even an average career...
The morning
A day is never as clean-cut or structured enough to start your day with a brand new brief, but for the benefit of this blog post, that's where I'm starting.
Once you've necked a chai latte, caught up with colleagues about last night's Poldark and your computer's stop whirring into life, you delete all the IT emails to find an email from product or marketing manager.
"Content brief for new product launch" the subject title says. You're jittery with excitement. Depending on where you are in your career, you'll either be engulfed in panic - as it means your boss thinks you're capable of working on something this high-profile; you shrug as it's just another day or you are the boss, so you hunt down the sender to ask them to elucidate and/or you conceptualise the brief.
If you're one of the unlucky ones to get a brief that leaves you scratching your head (this happens 99.9% of the time), you spend most of the morning trying to figure out what's needed. Once you've figured that out, what the objective is and (if you're lucky) what other channels are doing, you're ready to crack on... Except now, it's...
Lunchtime
The toughest decision of the day is what to have for lunch. A standard Pret sandwich, go budget by popping into the canteen or all out with a Benito's Hat burrito...
Of course, while you're aimlessly wandering around; passing people of all tribes, classes, religions and cultures, taking in shop signs, breathing in that fresh diesel drenched air - you're constantly trying to think of that killer headline. That one theme you need to run through your piece. That neat opener and summary. Oh will this torture never end...
I know, let's see what competitors are doing. Browse the pages of the internet, pretending you're seeking inspiration when really you're shopping for a hand-held vacuum cleaner or seeing if flights to the Caribbean have miraculously dropped in price. Then feel you should do something real and worthy, so you look at BBC News... Quickly regretting it as you trawl through the WTFuckery. Then inspiration hits.
The afternoon
You've frantically written your piece. It's well-researched and thought out. The title is killer. The journey has been worked out and you've jotted down a few pertinent questions that will have your stakeholders/clients singing your praises. Maybe even nominate you for an OBE. You start on your next brief; quietly triumphant.
Then you get an email, or worse, the stakeholder comes to your desk. They're asking you why you've written all this stuff explaining what the product is and all this description about how it might be used in the real world. They tell you that you should be writing about product information and how to buy it. And why oh why haven't you said what the product name is until the first paragraph, you should open with it, even though it's in the hero title and metadata.
You explain that it's a new product, so people don't know what it is. Their lack of awareness means you need to educate them and pull out the pain solution from SEO. They blink hard and look blankly at you.
Then you get told to revert back to the copy supplied developers, as that explained the product better. It won't be until further down the line when they realise they're not selling. And, in fact, the bounce rate is huge, so they come back asking for your advice.
The copy deck you archived gets dusted off and sees the light of day. Of course, no one will remember that this was your steer in the first place.
The end of the day
You might go for a drink with friends and colleagues, chat animatedly about how product/marketing managers are like Donald Trump. Just like he thought being a reality TV star qualified him to be POTUS - how different could it be, right?
I can't think of another profession that gets questioned and undermined quite so much. No one would dare tell the legal team they got it wrong, depute a bit of code with a developer or tell a product owner they don't know, yet they feel empowered to tell a copywriter how to write because they've known how to write since they were toddlers.
I have a lovely, bohemian home that I decorate myself. I'm always complimented on it. This doesn't make me a designer. I have an Amazon, eBay and Spotify account, doesn't make me a UX expert. Yet, all the cogs in the customer experience wheel are constantly having to prove their knowledge, skills and decisions.
And that's why it's not all red carpets and martini cocktails. We're underpaid, underrated, underappreciated and misunderstood.
