Q - Are there certain courses that are important?
A - I don't think that it's necessary to study advertising in school. I didn't. I've never taken an advertising course. If you're bright and observant, you can pick up anything that you learn in school in six months or the job. In order to be a good copywriter, you have to write well and you have to have a good ear for language. Writing something to be read is not the same thing as writing something to be spoken. When you write in a television commercial, you're not writing something to be read. You have to have a sense of what people are really like out there. You've got to be able to determine what people want out of a product and how they'd talk about it. A part-time job as a waitress or a shoe salesperson can be better training for advertising than any course you could take.
I wish I had had more business courses. I took economics and accounting, but I wish I had taken marketing. I wish I'd had some graphic design courses and more financial knowledge. Business people, no matter what business they are in, no matter what product they have to sell, often talk in financial terms-balance sheets, returns on investments, and so forth. You can pick that up in the business world, but it helps if you've had business courses. Do take photography and creative writing. The business courses may not be very exciting to the creative person, but they will pay off. They're necessary to talk the business language.
Q - Do you have any advice for potential copywriters?
A - Put together a portfolio, even if it's a mock portfolio, even if you create clients in your mind. Do a variety of pieces of work, a press lease, a print advertisement, a radio spot, a TV spot. Include the strategy about why you wrote the spot the way you did, and what audience it appeals to.
You can't go in with compositions, reports, cute letters that you rote during the summer and expect an agency to generalize from that id say, "You can really write advertising, so we'll give you a shot at it." ou need a sample book. Think up some product to advertise; do some is, some commercials; present your writing ability in an advertising context.
When you're looking for a job, you have to be incredibly persistent. You have to make a portfolio, and the way to do that is to start out with something a little sketchy and go around to different people and get advice on how to change it and make it better. Use every connection you have: school friends of your cousins and cousins of your school friends. /hen you're making advertisements for a portfolio, you're not just selling your work; you're selling yourself. There are lots of things you an do in a portfolio that you could never do for a real advertisement.
I would advise someone who wants to get into advertising to catch a lot of television, go to a lot of movies, listen to all the different kinds of music you can, and listen to the kind of advertising that's out there. Assemble two files of advertisements-those you like and those you don't. It will help you clarify what you think good advertising is.
Get into any job that will permit you to be called a professional writer, even if it is for a catalogue. Don't hold out for too terribly long trying to get the perfect job.
Research the job market. In college take a variety of courses, make business courses, get some of your work published, work on any film projects that you can, even if it's as a "go-fer"; you can learn by just standing around and watching. Get experience whether or not it's paid. Go on every interview you can line up and go full speed ahead. Don't just make one phone call a week or a day, spend 8:00 to 5:00 every day making phone calls and going to interviews. Go to some interviews for jobs you don't want, just for the experience of presenting yourself and jelling those people on the idea that they want you. Listen to the people who interview you. Be aggressive about presenting yourself, but accept their authority and their experience regarding salary, starting positions, and starting responsibilities. Get your foot in the door. Make a lot out of the job once you've got it. Write crazy memos and show your sense of humor, offer to work late so that you'll have the opportunity to go on a photo session or a shoot. Keep selling your employer on yourself. You've got to do your own public relations work; no one else is going to do it for you.
Make up a product and do an advertising campaign for it. Put it all together and work out all the details. One person I know made up weird products, like an embalming fluid that you drink before you are dead. It got him a job.
You are only as good as your last advertisement. I personally feel fairly secure, because I feel good about the job I'm doing. But the there are times when I'm really racked by insecurity and I think tin everybody is as good as me. You have to have a pretty strong ego to be in advertising. You've got to think that you're smarter than the average bear.
