Aged 9 I thought if I wished hard enough my cat would talk to me. That he was only hiding his secret self behind his impassive cat face because he could not trust a human. Could never trust a human, not even me. Because the truth was cats were sentient beings, velvet fur-clad Princes in disguise.
“You can trust me”, I urged into his flickering ear.
I whispered. I pleaded with him.
I begged and worshipped, adoring at his side.
But he just smiled that secret cat smile. He stretched and purred, and he said nothing.
I thought that he was hiding his magic from me because I didn’t believe strongly enough.
In my bookish world talking cats, magic carpets and enchanted woods were possible, even probable.
I was a dreamy, highly imaginative child. A bit frail, frequently off school ill with throat-closing tonsillitis or conjunctivitis. I was no good at sports, and had a lazy eye corrected by operations and interventions that still left me as a wearer of glasses.
Much of my time was spent reading and re-reading books I had at home (not enough books I am sad to say – my family were not book-ish people).
Watership Down was read to rags. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. The Puffin Book of Jokes. Herbert Van Thal’s Horror Anthologies. The Sun newspaper … yeh, I know 😦 Everything and anything that was left lying around I would read. Looking back, there were definitely some books around at home that an impressionable child shouldn’t read. But that’s another story for another time.
I believed that magic was out there, waiting for me, and if I just thought about it hard enough, I could break through to the real enchanted world.
I saw everything as a possible gateway to a magical realm. A vast old oak tree – where was the small hidden doorway to Elf Land? An ancient flagstone wall – which stone did I need to tap upon thrice to open the secret portal? An empty room in an abandoned house, an overgrown garden – what magic might be there, hiding from me?
If I could only murmur the right combination of words, make the right gestures, I would be invited to step through into the Real World. The magical world, where I properly belonged.
I picked flowers and leaves in the fields and woods, chanting made-up songs. I wore my jumper inside out and turned it back again, in the vain hope that the fairy folk would come and claim me, and take me home with them. (Grandma had warned me the fairies would steal me if I did this, but it sounded like a brilliant opportunity to me.)
I wanted to be away from this banal, bland place of grey rainy streets, bus tickets, supermarkets and school timetables.
I so obviously did not belong here.
Surely I had enough belief for them to accept me, and let me in?
Aged 11 I laid on the shingle of a beach and called to the mermaids to show themselves to me.
At that time I had read no T.S. Eliot or J. Alfred Prufrock. I just wanted the fantasy to be true so very, very much. I thought I might hear the mermaids singing. I thought I might see a silver tail splash above the waves.
If the mermaids had called me, I would’ve gone.
I was in search of magic everywhere. I would often wander away on family trips or holidays to find a deserted stretch of beach, a quiet woodland glade or empty river’s edge in the hope that the fairies might find me and come for me.
I would wade deep into caves on Cornish beaches, hoping I might be the one to find the last dragon in the world, sleeping inside on a pile of dim treasure.
I would dawdle behind on visits to old castles or ancient stone circles in the hope that something would recognise me, reach out to me. Speak to me.
I would leave out useful things like cotton reels and pins and sweets to help The Borrowers, who must surely live behind our skirting boards.
I just wanted to see that there was something else besides the plainness of this ‘life’.
At one point I thought I must be an alien. That my Earth mum and dad had adopted me, but never told me the truth about how I had come to them.
My real mother was a beautiful, exotic alien being who had left me to brought up on earth (for some never explained reason).
Oh how I wished my Alien Mum would come and get me. To take me back home to my real planet again.
Maybe this was all part of a dissociation I’ve had since childhood, where I couldn’t believe I was really alive. I had died on the operating table aged three, when I was in hospital for my bad eye. Everything I was experiencing was a dream. I was in a coma. My real life would start when I woke up.
Then later, I was just in a film. It was all scripted. Phones would ring on cue. People would say things. Bad stuff happened. Good stuff happened. I wandered through it all, thinking it was all controlled by some mystic level film-makers.
This wasn’t real life. Because there was no magic being written into my script.
But it had to exist. It had to.
Father Christmas was one of my proofs that magic had somehow survived in this harsh and boring world. These days, I am embarrassed to admit that at an age when other girls were talking about their first French kiss, buying lipstick or getting their periods, I still believed in Father Christmas.
The magical man-god in the red and white fur coat who would fly across the world in one night – one night! – to deliver brightly wrapped presents to all the good children.
I knew He was real.
On Christmas Eve night you could strain your ears and hear the distant shiver of silvery bells as the reindeer flew overhead. You could hear the gentle thump of hooves landing on the roof above you. You’d scrunch your eyes, up, tight. Because if you weren’t asleep, he wouldn’t come.
That’s a part of magic. You have to be in an altered state of consciousness for it to happen.
Then in the greyness of early Christmas morning, you’d open your tired, gritty eyes and stretch your toes down the bed and … YES! The exciting crackling sound of wrapped boxes that told you He’s Been.
The Magic had happened once more.
How delicious and wonderful it would be to go back for one night to experience that wonder filled, fairy-lit feeling.
It was my First Year at senior school when Father Christmas died.
I was sitting at a battered old desk, dragging my brain through a dull Double Maths class. The horridly constricting light blue squares of my maths exercise book were in front of me, squashing me in.
(I hate graph paper, lined paper, or anything that squeezes thinking into a tight box or a linear pattern. The horrible horror of imprisoning your bright zippy brain into someone else’s pre-printed pattern. Ugh. They should be banned, along with Xcel sheets.)
It was autumn, my first term at Big School (which I already hated so much it gave me stomach ache). As I scrawled meaningless numerals into the overbearing squares to complete some irrelevant skill like long division, I had a sudden realisation.
There was no magic in this world.
How could magic exist in a dull world of long division, bored teachers, brutal PE lessons and computers?
And if there was no magic, there was no Father Christmas.
Of course there wasn’t a Father Christmas. A magical man-spirit delivering gifts to children all over the world?! What kind of planet did I think I was living on?
I looked up from the mind-strangling squares. The more I explored the thought of no Father Christmas, the more mind-shocked I felt.
I happened to be sitting near a window on the second floor of the school block, and could see a busy traffic light intersection from the stuffy classroom.
The lights turned red. The boring cars stopped. The lights turned green. The boring traffic moved off.
It was all so obvious. How could I have been so stupid? So blind? So utterly THICK?
Magic wasn’t here. It never had been here. I’d never even been close.
I remember trying not to show the enormous tragedy of it on my face in that dull lesson in that dusty classroom.
The sudden and complete realisation that magic, true magical magic, did not exist for me, or for anyone.
The sadness was real and immense.
I had to swallow a lump in my throat and my eyes bubbled, threatening to overflow with tears.
It was the December before my twelfth birthday, and the depression of my realisation overwhelmed me.
Christmas was not magic any more. All the gifts were cheap perfume, bad socks and pointless soap-on-a-rope.
When we went to the beach the next summer I didn’t bother speaking to the waves again.
When we walked in the woods I didn’t stop to talk to the trees.
I realised Father Christmas was my Earth Mum.
And I was all alone with my misery, because no-one else felt like me, or was as stupid as me about belief in magic.
Perhaps you can tell me different. Perhaps you believed in these things too?
Now I am old, I still want to believe in magic.
I do sometimes go and talk to the trees, and whisper to the sea, when I have a chance. But I know they won’t respond. I think I am too old now.
I do still think about that spaceship landing and finally taking me back Home. The woken dragon flying me away to the beautiful realm where my people welcome me. The fairies taking pity on me (at last!) and leading me to the shimmering glades where I belong.
Until then, I wait for my true life to begin.
Magical worlds … Clive Barker’s Weave World is the closest thing I’ve read to putting across what I mean. It makes the idea that you could suddenly enter a magical realm, away from this mundane reality, quite believable.
We see a news story, read something on social media, or talk to a friend. We might think, “I know exactly what you mean!”
But where we might see stunning similarities, others may only perceive glaring differences.
My Cheese Sandwich Moment
It was 1977 and my first year at senior school. I was 12 years old and deeply and hopelessly in love with David in the year above me.
Alas! A second-year senior boy would never seriously consider a first-year as his ‘girlfriend’.
But I lived in hope. I trailed around after him during break time at school. He made me laugh. I thought he might like me, a bit.
I walked home with his crowd of second-year friends, even though it was well out of my way.
David’s best friend Robert was going out with my older sister, so I held on to hope that magically, one day, he might consider us a foursome.
We could go to the cinema. Hold hands. Snog.
I adored his expressive face, his lovely curly hair and large sparkling brown eyes.
He was funny, clever, handsome and he lived in a big house. His father was a doctor. He read real books. His family were educated and worldly in a way mine weren’t.
My heart hurt when I thought of him and the boyfriend potential.
How could I, a lowly, stunted first-year ever make a connection with this handsome, smart boy?
How could I possibly make him see we were Meant To Be?
The answer came one lunchtime. We were in the playground (Ha! Dead giveaway to my senior school naivety. To call the outside tarmacked space a ‘playground’ was the height of uncool.) So, I was hanging around David and Robert as usual. I was on the edge of his vision. Trying to see if he would notice me.
He had packed lunch, same as me. I didn’t often eat mine. Except … today I saw David was eating a cheese sandwich.
A cheese sandwich.
A CHEESE SANDWICH.
A kind of logical klaxon went off in my head.
I ALSO HAD A CHEESE SANDWICH IN MY BAG!
Surely, surely this was The Sign I’d been waiting for?
It was obvious to me.
We both had cheese sandwiches.
If David saw me eating a cheese sandwich alongside him, he might just say ‘Hey, you, you’re alright!’ and we could move a step closer to my romantic dreams.
My heart was beating hard at this sublime and extremely rational plan to make David fall in love with me.
I scrambled around in my school bag and took out the squashed cheese sandwich my mum had made. It was supermarket white bread, a sweaty slab of cheddar cheese, bound in clingfilm like a mummy.
I unwrapped my cheese sandwich hurriedly and took a bite. I wasn’t hungry, and it tasted of rank plastic. But I looked up quickly to make sure David saw that I was sharing the same lunch as him.
That he could see we were together in our Cheese Sandwich Experience.
David did look up. He did see my cheese sandwich. And he said (in words that are toasted into my heart) “Urgh! Yuck. Poor you! Imagine, THAT kind of boring bread with THAT kind of cheese. Urgh. Yuck.”
Then he turned away and bit into his far superior cheese sandwich of fresh, crusty granary bread, flavoursome Red Leicester cheese and crisp green lettuce.
I realised I’d got it wrong.
My Cheese Sandwich was not the same as his Cheese Sandwich at all.
There was an intellectual and social gulf between us.
The bite of sandwich in my mouth turned to vile glue.
David could never love me. I was inferior in every way to him and his mighty cheese sandwich lifestyle.
Completely crustfallen
My crest was well and truly fallen. My heart broken. Robert (the best friend) must’ve seen, because he kindly said, “That wasn’t very nice David.”
But David just continued being himself. Looning about. Having a laugh. He wasn’t even aware of the Cheese Sandwich Moment.
It made me realise that you can’t make a connection with an experience or with someone, just because you want to.
Your Cheese Sandwich is not Their Cheese Sandwich.
The valuable life lessons that cheese sandwich moment taught me:
1. Your own experiences and perceptions in life are never going to be exactly the same as someone else’s. What you might think is OK, another person might hate (and vice-versa).
2. Use a sandwich box.
3. If you get the chance, try new foods.
4. David was a sandwich-snob. And a bit of a tw*t.
There was a zombie woman on my early morning train.
Her face was a skeleton. Smooth tea-coloured skin stretched over dry bones. Milky blank eyes of faint cataract blue. Colourless dry wisps of hair stuck to the dome of her skull.
Her maw was opened. Dark. Like a tunnel. The dry lips strained. Mouthing.
She stared forward. Focusing on nothing. On no-one.
More dead than alive.
And yet, still she moved amongst us!
I looked around the crowded train to see if anyone else had noticed the Death Stare Zombie Woman on the packed commuter carriage to Hell (next stop London Waterloo).
But everyone seemed calm. Dull-witted. Asleep, yet standing.
Swaying. Clutching their phones, their tablets, their e-readers, their morning papers. Someone even had a paperback book. Old Skule style.
No-one had noticed the open-mouthed yawning look of death of the Zombie Woman.
No one was scared she might bite. Might waken into a tearing ravenous rage.
Were they all dead too?
A half-remembered line of T.S. Eliot poetry crawled through my mind.
‘So many… I had not thought Death had undone so many.’
Unreal City,
Under the brown fog of a winter dawn,
A crowd flowed over London Bridge, so many,
I had not thought death had undone so many.
Sighs, short and infrequent, were exhaled,
And each man fixed his eyes before his feet.
From The Waste Land – T.S. Eliot
He knew it already, even then, back in 1922!
He saw it.
This sad, shambling semblance of life.
The mindless swarm, the meaningless repetitions of daily commute, of deadly life.
Going through the zombified living death, day after day.
I stared out of the window as the train slowed on the outskirts of central London.
The smut-stained streets and walls of Victorian houses, old businesses and ageing shuttered warehouses. The closed, dark, dusty past, now being overshadowed by the city’s shining steel and glass newness.
That was when I noticed something. There, poking out of the top of a rusting black drainpipe, clinging sadly to a drab brick wall.
A straggling scribble of life (‘bush’ would be too big a word to describe it).
A struggling buddleia growing – or trying to grow – from an old drainpipe, hanging from a dying building.
No soil. No nurturing.
Just trying its best to live, to survive, in a grim and hostile city environment.
Nobody loves it, I muse.
Yet still it clings to its stupid, meaningless life at the top of an old London roof.
How many years of dirt and disregard has it survived to get there?
And yet, there it is.
A buddleia – a ‘butterfly bush’.
And I thought: life persists.
I hope it was worth it, little bush.
I hope the butterflies will come to you.
What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow
Out of this stony rubbish? Son of man,
You cannot say, or guess, for you know only
A heap of broken images, where the sun beats,
And the dead tree gives no shelter …
… I will show you something different from either
Your shadow at morning striding behind you
Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you;
I will show you fear in a handful of dust.
From The Waste Land – T.S. Eliot
The train dragged itself into the mainline station and the zombies shuffled out onto platforms to go and bite other people, or work in offices or shops or whatever they do for a ‘living’.
I lost sight of the Zombie Woman amongst the murmuring, moaning walking dead.
It left me thinking: how many years have we all survived to get here?
Half-dead, but persistent.
Often disregarded, sometimes un-nurtured, we are all clinging on to our lives.
It’s banal. It’s trite.
But Life goes on.
And so can I.
My London Observations are an occasional series
fuelled by sporadic bouts of freelance copywriting
I’ve been talking to another blogger fourhillsfarm64 about the legacy of being a child who has grown up and lived with the long-term disease and death of a parent (or loved one).
I’ve covered some of my own thoughts and experiences on this in previous posts.
The outside calm and the inside crying
My father was disabled and horribly ill for most of my life, from the age of 10 to 45. I got so hardened to grief, shock, sadness.
I grew an emotional shell so that I could crawl, tortoise-like, through the everyday awfulness.
Yet a line of poetry, a word in a book, a certain song; hearing the echoes of a late evening train going away in the distance.
Then the shell might crack.
Then the stupid tears might soak my face and hair in silent senseless weeping.
Lying in my small box room, overwhelmed with a helpless, hopeless feeling that elsewhere, Life was happening.
That something important had been taken away from me, before I’d even got the chance to know what it was.
Bloody Shell
A shell can offer good hard protection in life. But it also hardened me to the misfortunes of others.
Where others see complete tragedy — a family divorce — a house sale falling through — a lost ring of sentimental value — I quite often think (only to myself, of course) “Meh – why are they so upset? It’s not like anyone’s DYING… … it’s not like anyone’s got an INCURABLE DISEASE or anything…”
Harsh but true of me. Although I don’t like to admit it.
My childhood hero
I thought I was like Spock.
I mustn’t show emotion. Emotion equalled weakness. And weakness meant I’d be unable to carry on.
In my young adulthood it meant I was probably not a very good friend to those who needed my warmth and friendship.
It’s been hard for me to soften up, and to understand what I lost — and the shell I gained.
These days I can be moved to tears when I see or read about human kindness and compassion.
All it takes is friendly word at a sad moment. An unexpected offer of support. And I’m suddenly human after all.
But hey, thanks Spock. You are, and always will be, my friend.
I went to see my daughter perform in The Mikado on Saturday.
It was great to see her on stage. Poised. Confident. Having fun.
Part of a really quite ambitious school production.
She was one of the Japanese maidens, and to see her singing in the chorus was just lovely.
It’s hard to remember now how I once held her in my arms.
Soothed her eczema with various ointments and bath oils 6 times a day. Sat by her cot on long feverish nights.
Stayed with her in hospitals. Sped along roads with her in ambulances (I still can’t talk about those occasions without crying).
I once gave her resuscitation after seizure when she stopped breathing.
Now I see her on the stage. And everything is ahead of her.
And I am so very, very thankful to have her.
A very poignant moment, watching her (to borrow from the Gilbert & Sullivan chorus she was singing) ‘We wonder …oh, we wonder, what on earth the world can be?’.
A lot of people in my business (advertising/marketing) are saying we should embrace the #SayYourAge movement.
I’ve been reluctant to join in. But why?
Why should my age go against me?
I’m still achieving as a creative director and copywriter, probably with much greater insight than in my younger days.
So, is it fear of what my clients may think?
Fear I’ll be seen as an ‘old woman’ in my industry?
Fear that connections on LinkedIn will think that I’m no longer ‘with it’?
I still think I’m ‘with it’.
But that’s the problem with ageing.
The fear that you might be considered more withered than ‘with it’.
I’m running a successful creative business, but this industry has made me so scared of ageism I’m reluctant to hold up my bony old claw and croak my age.
Feel the Fear. Do it anyway.
OK. Here goes. I am 56 and a bit. God that sounds so ancient. But please don’t judge me by age. Look at what I do instead.
I have never been more in demand as a creative or a writer. Maybe clients (unlike most ad agencies and recruiters) appreciate and understand my experience, and all that means for their projects and communications.
It could be that I’m direct and easy to talk to. That I’ve grown in confidence after 35 years in the business. Whatever it is, I will make the most of it for as long as I can.
If I’m honest, I never believed my career in advertising would last much beyond my 39th birthday. So I’ve exceeded my own expectations.
Here I am. I’m still working in the business.
It is possible. It can be done.
Good luck to any fellow oldies reading this, especially my creative colleagues.
P.S. Clients please don’t leave me. I’m still a copy ninja rockstar guru. Honest.
People often ask me, “Hey! How do you get all your creative work?” and “Why are you always in demand for copywriting?” and even, “Can you get me a job?”
The answers are simple, if not overly useful. Ideally, you have to be very good at copywriting. Then, you should be really, really nice work with. These two things together will help you build a trusted reputation that gets you the next job, and the next, and the next.
Or is it? How about some thoughts on getting better work (which equals better feedback, better reputation, more jobs etc, etc) and avoiding copy hell? I have a few to share. They help to keep me (mostly) sane and (relatively) happy as a freelancing/independent copywriter.
Just say ‘No’
I must’ve turned down around 2 out of 5 projects/contracts I’ve been offered over the last year. Yes, the money is always tempting. Yes, I suppose I could always do with another yacht or Lamborghini. But when I look back, I am very glad I didn’t take on certain projects.
Sometimes the time and effort and sheer emotional stress involved isn’t worth any amount of money. How much would you charge for laboriously editing 2,000 pages of Terms & Conditions? In 8-point type. Using a sausage for a pen. While wearing woollen mittens. In the dark.
Whatever you quote, it’s never going to be enough to do the impossible.
It’s this kind of job you should briefly consider (because, hey — it’s WORK, right?) and then reject.
Saying ‘No’ to work can keep you happy. And it can also keep you free, ready to take on the nice jobs that you do like, working with lovely people who pay you promptly.
For your own health and sanity, you have to learn when to say ‘No’.
My Top 4 Copy Klaxons
ENTER THE WAR ZONE
Any creative who has worked at a top ad agency will smirk at me when I say it’s best to avoid conflict. And it’s true that battles over briefs and creative strategies happen because people feel immense passion for The Idea.
Some interpersonal clashes can spark off great creativity. But when you’ve been brought in as an expert adviser — the copywriting voice of reason who will lead a complex campaign story or new brand, conflict can mean a world of pain.
Example: I was invited to meet two top marketing and product execs at a huge multinational company, with a view to helping them create a new suite of communications. This was a serious, corporate giant and I arrived as instructed to be met at their impressively glossy reception.
I underwent iris recognition scan at the front desk.
I had to sign an industrial secrecy document.
It was all very James Bond-esque and exciting. So I assumed this was going to be a very clinical and clear-headed meeting.
I’d been communicating by both email and phone with one of the execs, and now I was going to meet both heads of department, to outline their copy needs for the project. However, as soon as Exec 2 entered the room, it became obvious that these two powerhouses had never spoken to each other about the project, or how it was to be approached.
Ever.
Every point made to me by Exec 1 was openly and violently disagreed with by Exec 2. It was really quite unprofessional and uncomfortable, rather like being in the boardroom section of The Apprentice.
But I had to sit there in the cold, shiny meeting room, listening to their vicious war of words over the glass table. I was very glad when I could finally get out.
Once I was back at my desk I sent a polite email thanking them for the meeting, and then I gracefully suggested I was not the writer they were looking for. This was perhaps a £10k+ job for me, but I knew it would be a world of pain if I tried to work with these people.
MEET THE JELLYFISH
“Hello …we don’t know what we want … but can you please help us? PLEASE? What do we want? To do a website. We want. Oh Help. Oh christ. Please god please help us mend this shitting awful website that we commissioned. We think it was done abroad? Oh god. Oh christ. I’ve been lumbered with it and we haven’t got a clue what to do with it. Malcolm says we can’t update it at the moment (‘Is it abroad? Is it? Can you go in and find out?’) We’ve heard a lot about you and your writing could save us!! Yes. Yes it could. No — don’t leave us … Please! HELP!!! Help! Help us please we’re drowning …”
Example:Two established businesses over the past year have approached me with the above ‘challenge’. Experienced businesses who should know better, who have given away their professionalism to get a website done ‘cheaply’.
After about three months, they’ve realised they’ve gone about creating their online presence in the wrong way, and now they expect a humble (ha!) copywriter to come in and be able to mend it all.
Don’t get me wrong, I have a massive Jesus complex about good copywriting being able to Shine the Light and Show the Way, and save the silly clients from a doom of their own making. But really, you won’t be able to ‘mend’ this for them.
They will go all wibbly with the website content. The copy won’t get updated. The job will drag on. Everyone will grow increasingly unhappy with ‘your’ lack of progress. Then they’ll start to lose faith in you, even if it’s out of your control.
In both the above cases I said I could help them … once they’d put together a full copy brief with internal sign-off (knowing they would never get this done). ESCAPE!
CHAMPAGNE IDEAS … LEMONADE POCKETS
These are familiar to all who freelance. ‘We want a big beautiful idea. But we’ve got thruppence ‘apenny and half a bag of Werthers.’
Example: So a (seemingly) nice guy called me up. He had a new company, nice new products, and he said he had set aside a budget for the launch and marketing. Virtually straight away on the phone he asked me if I could do their website and marketing collateral, and how much I would charge for it all.
As a professional, I was thinking about a piece of string at this point. So I politely asked if he would ever quote over the phone for his expensive bespoke service? Wouldn’t he first meet his client and survey the project before even putting together a quote? He agreed a meeting would be good, and we’d have a proper discussion about everything he wanted and how we’d go about it.
The meeting went really well … although my senses were prickling a bit as he got very excited when we chatted through various creative approaches, as if we were starting work that moment, that day, without first agreeing on the costs.
After the meeting I put together a quote and timescale for all the work he wanted, and sent this over. I was quite shocked when he sent back a blunt and blustering email (‘… I must say I am amazed …! I want it all done for £Xxx!’). It was obvious he had no respect for our profession. No understanding that, like his work, my job had to be assessed seriously if it was to be quoted honestly. Ah well. I was rather glad not to work with him after all.
Along the same lines as this, a headhunter called and wanted me for a freelance contract at an ad agency, but then wanted me to lower my day rate. I refused. I know the extra £ is their commission, but I’m the one going through all the pain for it. The ad agencies who contact me directly are always happy to pay my freelance rate, and never ask me to drop it. That keeps me happy and resentment-free.
The only time I will adjust my fee is if I can work remotely, as it saves me around 4 hours a day of travelling. Other than that, jog on.
START-UP CONFUSION
I love working with start-ups. I love being involved in new tech, new product launches, naming strategies and strapline creation. It’s all very exciting. But if you are approached by someone who has a start-up business but who doesn’t know a thing about marketing, I’d stay well clear.
Example: I was kindly recommended to someone by an existing client. The guy had launched a start up and now needed regular copywriting to fulfil his marketing plans. After listening to his enthusiastic pitch for 30 minutes about his great idea, I began to get a bit worried. He kept admitting he knew nothing about marketing, or what he should be doing. I began to think he didn’t know what he wanted.
I like to help anyone I can, but trying to find out what someone needs, in an area where you are not a specialist, would take weeks of research plus the skills of an entire marketing team including a planner, strategist and account director to back up your humble writer.
Regretfully, I called him back to say thanks, but I wasn’t The One for him.
Remember guys, good copywriting can only get you so far.
It can’t be the answer to an entire marketing programme.
There’s something very sad happening in the creative industry. I’ve hesitated to talk about, because I hate to sound bitter.
But here goes.
It’s about the hiring strategy of ad agencies. And before you assume this is all about me, it isn’t. I am not looking for employment. (Unless it’s really, really good. In which case — call me?)
But. I digress.
I still occasionally freelance in London ad agencies. Yes, I know! Over 45 and they still let me in. Amazing. I put it down to my ability to camouflage my age with my chameleon wit and brilliant bantz. Yeh. Skillz.
I am without doubt the oldest creative (and often, still the only female) in the department. And I’m saddened to see that, slowly but surely, senior creatives are being ‘let go’.
Now, I know it’s a tough life. I’ve been made redundant three times myself. But what saddens me is what happens next.
A junior team will be hired to take their place.
Nothing wrong with juniors, by the way. I was a junior copywriter once. I know I had a lot to prove. I wanted to be better than the best. I wanted to shine and learn, and make my words and ideas work brilliantly for whatever client, whatever brief I was given.
The attitude was, you could win an award with a great trade press ad for glue.
And people often did win prestigious awards for that work.
There was a constant, hard fought battle for creative supremacy. To produce work you were proud of. To be the ones who ‘cracked it’.
But the junior teams I’ve witnessed recently are treated very differently.
They’ve been brought in to simply churn out dull, repetitious work. Cheaper, and hopefully just as fast, as the recently redundant-ed seniors.
They can’t afford to let anything messy or time-consuming (like creativity, or an idea) get in the way. They’re briefed to crank it through on the process conveyor belt and get it out again as quickly as possible.
To make maximum money for the shareholders, I presume.
Even an old idea engineer like me finds it a slog to keep producing the best, shiniest things hour after hour, quickly and efficiently. Or to fix, polish and re-oil the stuff that’s been spannered by account teams and broken by clients.
But because I have years of experience, I can deliver the goods pretty smoothly. I know it’s not going to win me any awards, but I can take pride in it as a professional.
So, what about the junior teams who are thrown onto the factory floor?
From my observations, it’s bloody terrible. And it’s creating terrible work, while the creatives have a terrible time doing it.
You can forget the craft of copywriting for a start. And I’m not just being an old has-been, harping on about mis-spellings and grammatical errors – although I’ve seen plenty of those get past client approval stage, sadly.
There seems to be no care. No love. No passion for communicating with wit or engaging a customer emotionally.
Or maybe there is no time for that any more?
What was once an inspiring, exciting industry has transformed into one that acts and operates like a large, dull factory. (Apologies if you work in a factory and find it stimulating and amusing. Please feel free to add your factory anecdotes below.)
So, all the supposed optimum targeting that digital has given us – being able to deliver the right message at the best time to personally connect or make a sale — actually means nothing.
Because the messages churned out are boring, tired, samey. Easy to disregard.
I don’t blame the junior creatives entirely for this dulldom. They are no doubt doing their best in a commoditized* world where the bean counters took control. They were just the cheap labour solution. And I’m sure the bean counters are now happily rubbing their beans together.
But from what I’ve seen, it’s leaving a massive skills gap. Because no one has time to inspire the love of communication or copywriting.
Creative directors are time pressured and sprint from meeting to meeting. No time to help train up the new junior. They barely have time to properly assess and approve the creative work.
If there is an experienced midweight team still left in the department, they’ll have to account for every billable hour on their timesheets. Spending time overseeing the junior and putting those hours against the associated job numbers would no doubt impact the all-important profits.
So who has time for these young creatives? No one as far as I can see. They are left to their own scant resources.
Some of the writing I’ve seen go out of agency doors is very, very bad. Clients reject copy, and in some cases, even write it themselves. Which is pretty dispiriting.
How did the industry end up like this?
Back when I was on junior placement at BMP, I remember how difficult it was to get creative approval for just one sentence of copy. I must’ve been in to see the senior team four or more times to hear how I could improve the phrase. To create 25 words of pristine perfection.
It was often excruciating. It was definitely time-consuming.
But I was learning. Every word should matter. Every full stop should pull its weight.
Now the creative values that once made our business so fantastic are seen as unprofitable. And I wonder who will eventually account for that.
*Here your amusement (or not):Commoditization is defined as the process by which goods that have economic value and are distinguishable in terms of attributes (uniqueness or brand) end up becoming simple commodities in the eyes of the market or consumers.
In this case, that’s the clients who pay for the agency’s supposed expertise.
the crone 