Elevate Your Portfolio With Common Sense

Back in August I met with a couple of the creative directors at the agency I had just finished interning with, Muller Bressler Brown. The purpose of it as far as they knew was to review my portfolio, give me some pointers, and send me on my way, but it was also a way of me being like ‘hey, if you like my work and you like me, please please please hire me and if you aren’t hiring then tell all of your cool, hip Creative Director friends in the area to hire me. Please.’

Well they didn’t hire me. But they did like my work.  They told me I had some really good ideas, I had executed them well, and that I did a great job of showing the way I think. They told me that my book was more than good enough to get me in the door somewhere and that I should focus more on getting interviews with people rather than updating my book for the time being.

I was excited to hear that. Then sad. Then lost. Then eventually frustrated.

Working on projects for my book was all I knew. It was what I did in my free time to make myself feel like I actually had a job, even if I was in my pajamas a lot. As far as I knew up to that point, the reason I wasn’t getting any calls back was because my work wasn’t good enough so I spent a lot of time working on new, better campaigns to replace the old, weaker ones.

Now I was in a position where, sure, I could still work on new stuff, but it would feel like a complete waste of time. I was just told my work wasn’t the problem, after all. My other option, though, was I could not work on stuff and slowly go insane waiting to get emails back from all the people I contacted trying to get a meeting with.

For a while I did the latter and Netflix was my friend, but eventually I had to do something while I waited. Whether it was waiting to hear back from someone the first time, waiting to get back to them when their schedule cleared, waiting for the appointment we finally set, or just waiting for my Hot Pockets to finish, I was sick of waiting.

So I did some research. I didn’t research agencies or CDs I would be meeting with or anything like that, but I researched my own portfolio. I looked inside myself, ya know, maaaaaan? While I could write this out as if it was some big epiphany I had while watching my aforementioned Hot Pockets spin round and round chasing themselves, I know that it would read like bullshit, it would sound like bullshit; it would be bullshit.

So I’ll be honest and say I have no idea when the thought occurred to me and that even when I thought of it, it didn’t seem like a big deal. But somewhere along the line I remembered some advice one of my copywriting buddies had given me awhile back. What he had said was to know my own work as well as I knew the agency’s I was interviewing for. This seemed like common sense and frankly, unnecessary. I mean, I made all my work. Of course I knew it and could talk about it. Nonetheless, I wasn’t working on any new projects, I had finished all of Veep, and I was running out of things to do.

What I did next was maybe just as important as any of the work I had actually put into my book. I went through all of my pieces and flushed out each of their stories. After all that’s what advertising is: selling by storytelling. I should be able to apply that same principle to my work, no?

I wrote down what inspired each campaign, what the strategy was, how many rough drafts I went through, where I struggled most, and why the final product was the best possible option. I practiced talking about each one so when the time came I would be able to sell my work, sell myself, and most importantly sound somewhat smart.

It paid dividends, too, a couple of weeks later when I went to an AAF Career Day. There were creatives from local agencies doing portfolio reviews and I found that my ability to talk about my work in a non-robotic way did wonders as far as engaging the people I spoke with. It lead to ‘What ifs’ and ‘Didja think about thats’ and eventually real conversation outside of advertising itself. It was great. I get misty eyed thinking about it.

If you think about it, it just makes sense. If someone asks you why you did a certain piece the way you did you should be able to give a genuine response. ‘Because it looked cool’ isn’t going to cut it. You can make yourself sound a lot smarter just by talking about how you did the project. Should be easy too, unless you plagiarized all of your stuff. In which case, shame on you.

A couple of warnings, however. Make sure you ask the person looking at your work how they want you to proceed. Do they even want to hear your story behind the work? Do they simply want you to walk them through piece by piece, reading it to them? Or do they want you to sit there and shut the Hell up while they do their thing? I’ve experienced folks who prefer each of these and it can be awkward if you don’t realize which it is. It’s perfectly appropriate to ask, too. Save yourself the embarrassment.

Also, don’t apologize for anything in your book. If it’s in there, it better be up to your standards and if it isn’t, take it out. And if you find yourself in a position where you do have something in your book you aren’t particularly proud of and the person looking at your book comes across it, just shut the Hell up. Don’t say anything. It’ll be hard, but don’t do it. It took me multiple offenses before I finally got this through my thick skull. Don’t be dumb like me.

-Brian

Advice to Aspiring Creatives

Make ads.

Seems pretty obvious, right? You want to create ads with an agency so you need to show that you can do just that. What better way to do that than to…well, do it.

I know this isn’t completely ground breaking advice and could be a complete waste of time for some, but there’s a reason I say it. I’ve had meetings over the last couple of months with numerous creative directors to review my portfolio and beg general advice from. Almost every single time they’ve told me that what they like most about my book, in one way or another, is that I’ve actually made ads.

It used to absolutely dumbfound me. Of course I have ads in my book; it’s what I want to do. I mean what were people showing these guys before, pictures of their cat?

Turns out that what they’d been seeing a lot of were school projects done by graphic designers. Things like t-shirt, website, and poster designs. Maybe a ‘campaign’ with a logo put on multiple mediums. Not actual ads that sell anything.

My first thought, because I’m a selfish monster, was about how good I must look in comparison to my anonymous adversaries and that these creative directors should hire me immediately. But I empathized with my faceless, nameless opponents because at the end of the day they were trying to do the same thing I am, which is break into an extremely competitive industry. Plus I have friends who are graphic designers who might fall into the same trap so I gotta do my best to help them out. It’s a lot more likely that they’re reading than my local competition.

My first bit of advice is to know what position you want and know which one you’re applying for. If you want to be a graphic designer as opposed to an art director, then school projects and stuff like that may be okay to show. But only bigger agencies tend to hire strictly graphic designers and they aren’t typically part of the creative process. They’re told the vision of the idea and then they go make it happen.

Art Directors are typically paired with a copywriter and work to dream up the big ideas. They design them, too, but there’s an element of problem solving and strategy involved that isn’t there with graphic designers.

Note that I’m being extremely broad here. I’m not saying graphic designers are incapable of having ideas and thinking strategically or that they’ll never contribute to a brainstorm. I’m just saying that, in general, they won’t be called on to do so.

So, if you want to be a graphic designer then school work can be good to show as long as it thoroughly demonstrates your grasp of a multitude of design programs. Still wouldn’t kill you to throw in some spec ads too, but I’d say it’s not quite as important as for Art Directors.

If you want to be an Art Director then you have to do some speculative work. You’re going to be asked to flex your creative muscles with brands every day in an agency so you might as well start practicing now. Pick an obscure brand and make it interesting. Write a strategy and then create a campaign that falls in line with it. Since you’re an Art Director really focus on the imagery and design aspects. Make ads that look like this and this. Let the images do all the heavy lifting. Or, better yet, team up with a copywriter and do some work. You’ll both be the better for it.

If you’re a copywriter do the opposite. Still do strategy and speculative work, but focus more on the words. Do campaigns that are copy driven like this and this. Play to your strengths and hammer home the skills you’re trying to sell. Or, better yet, team up with an art director. You’ll both be the better for it.

But seriously, team up with someone if you can.

It can be intimidating to start making ads. It’s hard stuff. You can literally pick any company, any product, any benefit to promote, and any strategic execution. But this is the only time in your life that this will be the case. Take advantage of it and do some cool, fun stuff.

To narrow it down, look at your own life. What products do you use and why do you use them? You might find that there’s something there. Chances are many other people use that product for the exact same reason and are just begging to know that they aren’t the only ones.

Just don’t show school work. At least not exclusively. If making ads is what you want to do for a living then it shouldn’t be hard to find the energy to start now. And if it’s hard to find the energy, then it might not be what you actually want to do for a living which would be better to find out now rather than 15 years into your career. It’s a win win.

-Brian

A Basic Mistake Advertisers Make

Where I went to school there was only one advertising class and it was a theory class. The lessons were extremely simple, the teacher was very laid back, and it took place on a Thursday. My buddies and I would spend most classes debating where to go get a beer that night since most of us didn’t have class on Friday.

Despite the fact that I spent more time thinking about beer than advertising in that class, there was one factoid we learned early on that’s stuck with me. According to numerous studies done by people far smarter than myself, brands are recalled more and are more accurately linked with their ads when the brand name or logo is mentioned or shown within the first 5 seconds of a commercial as opposed to the very end.

This made sense, but nonetheless I noted it. I wanted to be a copywriter so I figured that if I was ever fortunate enough to write commercials for a client, it’d be a good thing to know. I wouldn’t want to make a boneheaded mistake as simple as that my first time out, now would I?

Then I realized that most copywriters are boneheads. Or at least it seems that way.

I found that not just a couple, but most commercials use the late reveal approach. And I found that it absolutely does affect recall rate because I would be trying to guess what brand a commercial that I’d seen a dozen times before was for until they revealed it again at the end. It’s just lazily tacked on at the end as if an afterthought. A lot of the time it’s the case where literally any brand could have tagged their name to it and it would have worked just as well. It’s possible I just have a terrible memory, but I don’t think that’s the case.

I’d be with friends and anytime they’d casually mention that they like a commercial that used a late reveal I’d ask them if they knew what brand it was for. They’d usually say something like ‘Yeah, it’s for that uh…uh…uh…’ while snapping their fingers and looking up. Then the commercial would reveal and they’d go ‘Yeah those guys. Obviously.’ Yeah, obviously.

Side Note: I found myself being uninvited to viewing parties so I stopped doing this

So it seems that revealing a brand at the end of a commercial certainly does affect recall rates, so why do brands do it? Surely they’re aware of this information. I mean, I learned this in Ad Theory 101.

There are a few reasons I could think of. It’s possible that the writers do incorporate the brand into the ad early on and, for some reason or another, the client doesn’t like it and makes them change it. I suppose that it’s also possible that brands feel like a big build up will create interest in the viewer and draw them in, making the reveal more impactful. Maybe recall rates weren’t the statistic that they were interested in or they just forgot to test it while doing focus groups, because I guarantee if it’s on national TV, it did well in a focus group somewhere.

For what it’s worth the biggest culprits I’ve noticed seem to be automakers, telephone service providers, and most recently GE. The ones that I’ve seen do it well are Apple, showing their device being used in numerous ways throughout the ad, Bud Light, the ‘Up For Whatever’ spots that incorporate and show Bud Light the whole time, and A1 steak sauce, the ‘for almost anything’ Facebook break up spot that personifies their brand. In general alcohol and food tend to do a pretty good job of incorporating the brand from the get go.

So what does it all mean? If nothing else I think it means advertisers in general can do better. I’m not the one making these decisions and am not in the war room when these decisions get made so I don’t know what the strategy is behind doing a late reveal. I can’t imagine the strategy is to be forgotten, though. Advertisers need to be careful that their spots aren’t just beautiful, but also perform their most basic function. Otherwise they run the risk of accidentally giving their competitors free advertising.

-Brian

I’m Unemployed; Let’s Talk About It

*Sigh*

Sorry, that’s how I’m used to most of my conversations about my current job situation beginning. It’s usually followed by some rhythmic head bobbing and some shrugs as I say something like ‘Yeah, still looking. Yep copywriting. Hardy har har I did see that McDonald’s is hiring.’

Eventually the questions stop and I go back to being unemployed in peace but I can tell that my interrogator isn’t quite satisfied. It’s as if they don’t believe that I’m actually looking for a job all that hard.

This makes me want to explain to them just how difficult it is to get into an agency as a creative. I want to tell them how I’m applying for positions every single day, making calls to people I’ve never met to make appointments, sending countless emails begging people to look at my portfolio, constantly fine tuning my work, and reading. Oh God how I do so much reading.

It isn’t just the occasional relative, either. I’m getting messages from friends online telling me to go get a job. Even people that I barely even know and honestly don’t even remember are telling me to go get a job. Holy shit you guys, thanks for the great advice. I’ll go pluck one off of a tree somewhere. (Sorry, I’m not mad at you, I swear. I’m just mad at your words.)

Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad you’re taking time out of your busy days to look after me, but please stop telling me to get a job. Trust that I’m doing everything I can to get out there. It’s not like I’m trying to be some sign twirling gorilla at the corner of a busy intersection. What I’m trying to pull off is tough. (No offense to any sign twirling gorillas out there.)

Let me try to explain because unless you’ve been through it, you really can’t fully understand. I’m trying to be a copywriter at an ad agency. I went to a school that offered no advertising major and only one advertising class. Everything I know about copywriting I learned from books I read in my free time and through trial and error. I haven’t attended portfolio school (which has almost become a must in this field) and I’m doing everything without the help of a graphic designer/art director. This is listed in the index of any copywriting book as ‘suicide.’

Getting into this I literally knew nobody in advertising. I had no connections or mentors or any of that. I had to build my network by sending blind emails and making random phone calls, banking on the kindness of humanity to get me started.

That’s like trying to make an NFL team as an undrafted Division 3 athlete with a broken ankle.  Okay maybe not quite; I don’t want to over glorify what I do. But it’s hard.

I’ve come a long way, too. An unbelievably long way. I’ve had two different internships at two different agencies. I have a mentor and a pretty vast network of people I can call on for help. Recently I had two different creative directors tell me that my portfolio is good enough to get me in the door somewhere and that I just need to start applying.

I’m not trying to toot my own horn (how could I; I have no job). I’m just trying to defend myself. I’m proud of my friends that are doing what they love and am happy for them, but unless you’ve tried to make it in a creative field that involves some degree of subjectivity, please don’t tell me to ‘stop being a bum.’

Also, please don’t suggest I try doing something else. Copywriting, for better or worse, is what I love and it’s what I want to do. Clever headlines and perfect sentences get me excited, I just can’t help it. I would never encourage anyone else to do anything other than what they love so I’m asking for the same in return.

To sum this self-involved blog post up, thank you for thinking about me, please stop telling me to get a job, please don’t encourage me to work at McDonald’s, and know that I’m doing everything in my power to find work. I’m in a better position now than I’ve ever been and I may just be the hardest working guy out there without a job. I’ll be okay.

-Brian

How Good Ads Go Bad

Everyone has a commercial that they hate. Not even just hate, but absolutely despise with every fiber of their existence. Within one second of it beginning you recognize it, maybe because of a memorable first image or an obnoxious opening note to yet another annoyingly catchy jingle. Sometimes you might even sense it’s coming on before it actually hits your TV screen because of a sudden urge you get to kick a kitten.

You try to avoid watching/listening to the commercial at all costs but sometimes it’s just not possible. Maybe the remote’s missing, or maybe you can see the remote but it’s just out of reach and you’ve got a heaping plate of nachos on your lap with your feet up and you don’t want to risk spilling them by over extending your arm. Or worse yet, what if you can see the remote, it’s just out of reach, you’ve got a heaping plate of nachos on your lap, your feet are up, you don’t want to risk spilling by over extending your arm, but you hate the commercial so much that you go for it anyway and then you do spill your nachos and you have to watch the commercial. Just another reason to hate it, I suppose.

Now, I could start listing commercial after commercial that may make someone feel this particular degree of rage (Don’t you judge my food choices Wendy’s!) but chances are you’re already grinding your teeth thinking about a particular ad now.

But what is it that makes these commercials so intolerable? Some are just flat out bad, such as any spot for a local car dealership, and others seem to be trying too hard (almost anything following Old Spice’s ‘The Man Your Man Could Smell Like’), but what I find the problem to be in most cases is too much repetition.

Look, I get it: brands need to show their ads a lot to make sure as many people see it as possible and then so their name is at the top of the consumers mind when they got to make a decision. There’s probably even some guy in a white lab coat somewhere who’s crunched the numbers all his life and has found that X number of airings equates to Y number of recalls and Z number of sales, but sometimes the intangible measurements are just as important as the tangible ones. Sure, you might be remembered with all these reps, but what are you being remembered for? The benefit you’re trying to promote in the ad, or the pushy, desperate, annoying persona your brand takes on by airing your spot so many times?

I understand that some ads are just seriously bad straight out the gate, too. But recently I noticed myself starting to dislike an ad that I had actually really enjoyed when it first came out and that’s Volkswagen’s ‘The Force.’ I know it’s won almost every award imaginable and it’s still completely adorable in its own charming way, but I’ve just seen the damn thing too many times. I’m not a cynic, I promise.

I venture over to Ad Week from time to time and enjoy checking out their ‘Ad of the Day’ articles they post regularly, which is where I saw ‘The Force’ for the first time. I absolutely loved it. I thought it was funny, cute, smart, but once it got to TV I didn’t like it as much. I knew what was going to happen before it happened and each subsequent viewing it felt like the ‘plot’ took longer and longer to develop. Then I saw it more and more and soon it seemed as if every network was playing the thing at the same time during each commercial break. An ad I had found completely brilliant had become, to me, just as mind numbing as anything Geico has ever done.

*I should clarify that I’ll never truly despise this commercial like I do some (I’m looking at you Sprint).

On the flip side, one of my favorite ads of all time is Miller High Life’s 2009 Super Bowl commercial which literally ran for one second. I’ve only seen this ad one time in my entire life prior to writing this piece and yet it stuck with me for five years. Sure, being only one second long it can’t really promote any specific benefits or anything and I still don’t drink High Life, but it accomplished what I think Miller wanted to do. It showed that they’re a brand willing to take chances, is bold, and maybe even a little whacky, all in a single second. And they did so without being completely in-your-face annoying about it, which might be part of the reason why I found it to be so effective.

I know it’s a fine line. Brands don’t want to come off as pushy and annoying but on the other hand they do want the ad they spent so much money producing to be seen. So what’s the right balance? I admit that I don’t know the answer to that and that I only have my own personal experience to base any of this off of, but it seems to me that less absolutely can be more. It just has to be done the right way.

Key Take Aways

• When advertising, less can be more
• Too many repetitions of the same ad can come off as pushy and desperate
• I have nothing but my own personal experiences to base anything I’ve said off of.

 

-Brian

Why Bombing My First Pitch Was Better For Me Than Nailing It

My Slow Rise Up the Presenting Confidence Ladder…

Giving speeches and presentations has been a roller coaster experience for me throughout my short life.

I recall 6^th grade when each student had to memorize a poem and recite it in front of the entire class the 1^st Friday of each month. One time in particular I was reciting my poem and my best friend was making faces at me, trying to get me to laugh. It worked and I’m sure I came off as an absolutely crazy person to anyone who didn’t realize what was going on. It was embarrassing.

The first meaningful presentation of my life came in 8^th grade. Every year the 8^th grade class picked a topic about the civil war and did a presentation in front of the entire 7^th and 8^th grade class. I was still relatively new to the school and at an age where I’d rather have my fingernails plucked out than not be liked, so I was a bit nervous.

I recall a conversation I had with one of my friends, Nick, just before we went to present. The previous day at football practice Nick’s voice had cracked while hiking the ball and we were talking about how much it would suck if his voice were to crack during his presentation. Suck it would, Nick. Suck it would.

Fast-forward an hour and it is my voice that’s cracking while presenting, not Nicks. I still remember looking out at the smirks of people I didn’t know, their faces glowing from the PowerPoint projector, and being absolutely humiliated. I hadn’t had any signs of my voice cracking before I went up there and within a few lines it was completely shattered and made the Liberty Bell look brand spankin new.

I actually received an A on that presentation but it didn’t make up for the torture I received following that. Kids are mean.

Right before I went into high school my family moved again and I found out that I was required to take a speech class at my new school. I had a bad track record of giving speeches up to that point and couldn’t stand the idea of humiliating myself in front of another group of people I didn’t know, so I pushed the freshmen laden class all the way to my senior year.

When I finally took the course one of our first assignments was to give a speech teaching the class how to do something. Most kids picked something like crocheting, playing tennis, or how to bake a cake. I thought that every speech I had seen was dreadfully boring so I decided to do something a little outside the box and did a speech on ‘how to be awesome.’ While your eye rolls hurt, I completely understand.

I didn’t do any research and I didn’t practice. I was a senior about to graduate and I was in a class with a bunch of freshman whose opinions and feelings frankly didn’t mean a thing to me. I went up there and I winged it.

My feelings toward speeches and public speaking in general changed from that point forward. I went up to present on how to be awesome and had this little spiel in my head that was essentially a ‘be yourself; do what you do’ monologue. But that isn’t what I ended up doing. What my ‘speech’ ended up being was more of a conversation.

I don’t mean that the audience had a dialogue and literally spoke back to me, but I found myself speaking like a human being to another human being. I told stories and I was genuine. I addressed how ridiculous it was that me, some guy they didn’t know, was going to teach them ‘how to be awesome.’ I used universal scenarios and fears that face most high schoolers as examples to help me make my points and it worked.

I sat down afterward feeling like it was good enough for an A rather than just a B+ but apparently I’d done better than I realized. After class I had people coming up telling me how inspiring I had been. They were freshman and their opinions had meant nothing when I’d first gone up, but I have to say that it felt good to hear. My teacher even encouraged me to go out for the debate team but I had no interest in that at the time. I was just happy that I’d passed.

Going into college I had no problem giving speeches or presentations. I actually enjoyed it because I knew I was better at it than most. What helped me, I think, was that I always looked at it from the point of view of the audience, which wasn’t too hard since for 34/35 of presentations given in class I was the audience. I made sure to avoid saying things that I thought would make them cringe and did what I could to hold the attention on myself rather than the carved letters in their desktops. For the most part I think I did a pretty good job and if nothing else I was confident anytime I’d go up to speak, which went a long way.

..And My Quick Fall Back Down

But recently something changed; I graduated and entered the ‘real world.’

Last week my internship with an ad agency for the summer came to a close. The other interns and I had worked hard all summer developing a campaign for our client and were ready to wrap the summer up by pitching it. Unfortunately, that pitch didn’t go, uh, exactly as I had planned.

There were a few things about this presentation that had me worried that I never had to face before.

First of all, this pitch I was giving wasn’t in front of high school freshmen or uninterested college colleagues. It was in front of a group of people whom I respected and whose opinions meant a lot to me. It wasn’t for some letter to be digitally stamped next to my name. It was to pass along an insightful idea that we really believed could help this business grow. These realities set in with me weeks in advance and the nerves grew more and more as the day approached.

There were a couple of other red flags that were bothering me as the date approached. I’d been given the opening segment of our presentation which would include the reveal of our big idea and was to be done before the slideshow actually began. I wouldn’t have any bullets or slides to work with. Since I had the big idea reveal, I also wanted to have a good build up to it right out of the gate so it could have as strong an impact as possible. I was putting a lot of unnecessary pressure on myself to set the tone for our group and do well since I was starting us off.

No worries, though. I just decided that I was going to practice for this presentation more than any before it to minimize my chances of messing up. The more I’d practice, the more comfortable I’d feel, and the more comfortable I’d feel, the better I would be able to perform.

So practice I did. I started by rambling about what I wanted to say out loud to myself and taking notes of the parts I liked most. I read through what I had a few times, cut out some repetitions, and took out parts that didn’t add anything. Then I began to practice reciting it, nailing the exact wording I wanted for key parts, and working on sounding natural and conversational.

I probably recited this bad boy thirty times to myself before I went up to do the real deal. I was finishing it within a five second span every time I went through it and wasn’t missing a beat.

Yet, for some reason I still didn’t feel that confident when I went up to give it. The nerves that I usually shake loose once I start speaking were clinging to me and weren’t going anywhere. No big problem, though. I actually started it off strong and as far as I was concerned that was all I needed to carry me through.

But then something…well something happened. It’s hard to pinpoint but somewhere along the line I missed a key point that I had wanted to make and when I realized I had missed it, it was all I could think about. My mouth kept going and the words kept coming until I came to a point where I was supposed to transition, but my mind was still elsewhere. I didn’t know what I was supposed to say next.

It’s impossible to describe the feeling that struck me in the moment that I realized I didn’t know my next talking point but I think it was comparable to drowning. I was extremely aware of the silence surrounding me and before I knew it I was past the point of playing this off as a natural pause. I was going through my brain a million miles a second thinking as quickly as I could, grabbing for anything, anything to start talking about to stop the maddening silence, but I came back with nothing but air every single time.

I decided to address that I’d lost my place to help relieve some of the building uncomfortableness and asked for a quick second to re-gather my thoughts. Only my thoughts wouldn’t re-gather. My allotted second came and went and I still had nothing. Why on Earth couldn’t I remember where I was or what came next?

Eventually one of my teammates stepped in for me and began talking to help stop what felt like oceans of water flooding into our ship of a presentation. I can’t thank her enough for it. The second she began talking I remembered where I was at and once she finished I resumed where I had left off. I finished the rest of the presentation strong but the whole time I couldn’t stop thinking about what had happened.

What Went Wrong

When we had finished our presentation upper management of the agency and the client we had pitched to gave us some comments and critiques on how we’d done. Understandably my loss for words that I had hoped we could somehow pretend never happened was a focal point.

Everyone commended me on how I had handled the situation, saying that I seemed to remain calm (HA, if only they knew) and bounced back from it well. But there was a consensus that I had piled too much on my plate and that I shouldn’t have made my part at the beginning so long. They also suggested that I should have done a different part, maybe something I knew more about so this wouldn’t have happened.

While I completely respect what they had to say and agree that I may have piled too much on myself at the beginning, I don’t think those were the problems. I knew the content as well as anybody. I had been at every single one of our group’s meetings and had been a key contributor to our campaigns overall theme. Knowledge wasn’t the problem.

Now having had a week to reflect on it I’m almost certain that the problem was that I completely disregarded what had made my first good speech back in high school so strong, and that was conversation.

I had practiced my presentation so much, was so concerned with making specific points in a specific order that I had really restricted myself. Rather than constructing my presentation in a circle so that if a piece were to fall out the rest was still connected, I had built it in a straight line. If one piece came out, the rest was completely severed off and I had nowhere to go.

Sure, I had made the presentation feel natural with how I spoke and the fluctuations in my voice I used, but truthfully there was nothing organic about it at all which is important to any conversation. I over practiced, over analyzed, and over thought it as a whole.

I should have kept the points of my section in my head limited to 4 or 5 rather than 13 or 14 in order to keep it broad and malleable. I also should have forced myself to do the presentation differently each time I practiced it rather than the exact same. No two conversations are ever alike and neither should two presentations.

In the end I had known the campaign inside and out and I had known what I wanted to say to the client. I should have just gone up and said it rather than reciting it.

While the wound’s still fresh and the embarrassment is unparalleled by any other in my life to this point (except for maybe peeing my pants during P.E. in kindergarten, but that’s for a different time) I can only be thankful it happened now, during an internship, rather than somewhere down the line when pitching for a multi-million dollar account.

This mistake now may have saved my career somewhere down the road. I was confident as a presenter, which is good, but I had forgotten what makes a good presentation. I didn’t put any thought into how I was preparing and it cost me.

I may have learned more while floundering during that pitch than I did doing maybe anything else at the agency, and believe me when I say I learned a lot during my time there. I know how I need to approach these things in the future and am more confident now, having completely bombed, than I ever was beforehand.

Key Take Away

Know what makes your presentations great and make sure that element is added each time you present. For me, it’s making it feel less like a presentation and more like a conversation.

 

-Brian

My Creative Process as a Work Day

Below is my creative process if it were condensed into an 8 hour day. I’m totally sort of kidding. Totally sort of.

 

9:00 – Contemplate waking up and beginning to work

9:04 – Fall back asleep while deciding whether or not to get up to work

11:00 – Wake up feeling slightly regretful but mostly satisfied

11:01 – 11:19 Shower, Shave, Brush Teeth

11:20 – Self doubt

11:21 – Make coffee, boot up laptop, put on SportsCenter

11:25 – Check social media for “research” as coffee cools a little

11:45 – Begin to write…

11:46 – Stare at daunting, blank page

11:47 – 11:51 – Do some cool pen flips and twirls

11:52 – Get ‘serious’ and begin to mind dump ideas

11:55 – Eyes accidentally wander to the top of the list. Begin elimination process

11:56 – Self Doubt

11:57 – Get really excited about an idea which leads to a brief burst of productiveness and more focused; centralized mind dumping

12:03 – Run out of ways to expand on the exciting idea and try to start fresh

12:05 – Really try to start fresh but can’t stop thinking about the exciting idea

12:11 – Wish for final product to be finished and amazing on its own

12:12 – Self Doubt

12:13 – Accidentally drop pen on floor while doing cool pen twirls and flips. Decide it’s time for a lunch break

12:15 – 12:30 – Make lunch

12:31 – 12:45 – Eat Lunch

12:46 – Realize I’m watching a re-run of the SportsCenter I just watched. Leave it on anyway

12:47 – Do more ‘research’ on social media

12:55 – Blame friends for not being more inspiring

1:01 – Get ‘serious’ again and revisit a fresh, blank page

1:13 – Think of a new, equally exciting idea to go alongside original exciting idea

1:14 – Expand on new idea, explore its depth

2:11 – Compare new idea to original idea

2:12 – Decide original idea was better from the beginning but is still lacking ‘something’

2:13 – Self Doubt

2:14 – 2:30 – Attempt to figure out how to solidify idea

2:31 – Think about how, if I had started watching a Lord of the Rings movie when I started working, it’d be just about over by now

2:32 – Bathroom break

2:33 – Pep Talk to self in mirror

2:45 – Brainstorm while walking around the room, thinking that might spark something

2:53 – Notice blinds are open and neighbors could have seen me talking to myself and walking around room. Redirect any conversation with self toward other room they can’t see in hopes they’ll think I’m talking to another human being

3:00 – Sit down; legs tired.

3:01 – Wish someone would text me to give me a distraction from my work

3:02 – Step away from project to recharge the batteries

3:03 – Lay on floor and watch fan blades spin in circles

3:11 – Self Doubt

3:12 – 4:33 – Accidentally nap

4:33 – 4:34 – Wake up. Refuse to look at clock. Go back to laptop in denial that I ever slept. Notice a new rerun of the same episode of SportsCenter playing on TV

4:35 – Think about how people with real jobs are at work right now, but tell myself that it’s okay I’m not at work because I’m a writer and writers make their own schedules

4:36 – Think about how I’m not making any money for my writing but push that to the back of my head

4:37 – Calculate how much money I could make a year working minimum wage. Convince myself that I’d have to be awfully needy to think I need any more money than that

4:38 – Revisit idea. Tell myself it’s stronger than I originally thought so it must actually be good

4:39 – 4:50 – Find new executions for idea while considering strategy, novelty, and relevance

4:51 – Re-read notes. Convince myself this is my best work yet

4:52 – Mentally laugh at myself for being so worried earlier that morning

4:53 – Clock out early because I’ve ‘earned it’

 

-Brian

 

My Portfolio Review with a Creative Director

A couple of weeks ago I scheduled a portfolio review with Muller Bressler Brown’s Creative Director, Shan Neely. I won’t bore you with the comments he made on my specific pieces, but I do want to share a few points he made that can be applied to anybody working on their book.

A real quick background on Shan: He’s from Oklahoma and will let you know it, never being seen with his OU Sooners hat. He even purchased a piece of the Sooners football field and had it put into his own backyard, so he claims. He’s an incredibly smart, fun guy and has an impressive number of wacky knick knacks in his office.

Alright, enough sucking up just in case he sees this. Onto the goods.

Don’t force a campaign into different mediums

Shan made this pretty simple: If you have a rockin print campaign but the idea won’t transfer to other mediums while maintaining its strength, just don’t do it. Let it stand on its own. Sure, you want to have a few ideas in your book that have a lot of depth and can be stretched over multiple channels, but not every idea has to be that.

Just because a recruiter says you need Portfolio School, doesn’t mean you do

This is something I think about a lot and always try to get an opinion on when I meet with someone in the biz. Coming up I would do interviews with recruiters and CDs over the phone and on more than one occasion they would skip the critique portion of the critique and sum the call up with ‘you need to go to portfolio school.’

Shan’s thoughts on the matter were a bit mixed. Portfolio school is great, sure. He even started his career at one. But he also assured me that plenty of writers and designers make it into the industry without having to front the hefty bill a portfolio school can pose.

Shan also said that a lot of times recruiters or CDs will say that portfolio school’s your only option as a sort of cop out. Sometimes they just don’t have the time to dissect your book piece by piece and it’s the easiest thing to suggest. Other times it could be the case that your book simply isn’t that good. Rather than tell you that you need to work it a little harder, they’ll assume that what you’ve presented is the the peak of your capabilities and send your helpless ass to the ‘professional’ creative blacksmiths at a portfolio school. Your level of inability is simply too hot for them to handle. To be fair, you shouldn’t be presenting anything but your best work to be reviewed so it’s a safe assumption on their part. But I believe that anybody can improve with diligent practice and coffee.

In the end, Shan did push pretty hard in favor of portfolio school. He said that within weeks of being there your ability will skyrocket and that you’ll probably be making $30,000 a year to start your career than you would without it. But you will be sacrificing two years you could be working in an agency and of course the cash to go. You have to weigh the pros and cons yourself and make the choice.

Be able to pitch your idea to the client

This seems like a super obvious no brainer on paper. Okay, maybe even without paper it’s obvious, but it was something that I overlooked and never explicitly thought of when I worked on projects.

One of the campaigns I did was for Boulevard Beer, a local craft brew here in Kansas City. Shan asked me why I liked Boulevard so much and I answered. I told him that it’s my dad’s favorite beer, that they’re brewery tour blew me away, and that I would drink it when I lived in Iowa as a subtle flaunting of the pride I have for my city. ‘Okay,’ he said, ‘then show that with the work.’

What I had presented to him was a campaign that centralized around an app. He really liked the app, but the tag I had for my prints and billboards was ‘Lead the Way.’ ‘How does ‘Lead the Way’ invoke any of the things you just told me?’ Shan asked me. I didn’t have an answer. I admitted to him that I had thought of the app and then built the rest of the campaign around it. He said it was obvious.

‘Say you go to Boulevard and you say to them ‘We’re going to run a campaign with the tagline ‘Lead the Way’’ and then they ask you ‘Why?’ What are you going to tell them?’ Again, I had nothing. It was easy to feel like he was bullying me, but I knew he was just proving an incredibly important point. He was right; the tagline wasn’t invoking the feeling I wanted the campaign to radiate.

He reiterated to always put yourself in the position of pitching the idea to the client when you’re done with a piece for your book. It’ll be a really good way to make sure that every piece is working toward the same overarching goal and will help you to be able to walk future CDs through your book with confidence.

Headline Exercise

At the end of our meeting Shan gave me an exercise to help sharpen my writing skills. He gave me a photography book and told me to go through it and just start writing headlines for the pictures I see. Find a wacky one, find a subdued one; just start writing heads.

This is something anybody can do at home. Just get on Google, look through some photographs, and write headlines. Who knows, you might even get the idea for a campaign out of it.

Key Take Away: Don’t force pieces in your book to span different mediums if it’s strongest on its own, just because a recruiter tells you that you need to go to portfolio school doesn’t make it true, and be sure that you could pitch all of your pieces to the respective clients they represent without floundering like I did.

-Brian

The Importance of ‘The Box’

Imagine there’s this client who’s just absolutely dreamy. It has whatever qualities that just tickle your fancy. Perhaps it’s a great product or service with a well-established following and a budget large enough to let you and your co-workers retire to Cancun effective immediately. Now imagine you’ve won the business of this client. Oh, happy day! You can’t wait to get to the first meeting to talk strategy, how to build off of their current marketing, show them some handy dandy spreadsheets, and discuss the January weather in Cancun.

Only problem is they aren’t interested in any of that. In fact, they don’t know what they’re interested in, but it isn’t that. They show up to your first meeting empty handed, sit at the table with their hands clasped with a smile on their face, and simply tell you to ‘go wild.’ They have no emotional ties to their current marketing, they don’t care what mediums or strategies you use, what benefits of their product you emphasize, or even how much money you spend. No budget.

To someone not in the advertising world this may seem like a dream. For those who are in advertising, well, please get off the floor and stop sucking your thumb; I’m being hypothetical. But for us in the industry, this is far from a dream. In fact, it’s sort of a worst case scenario.

‘Non-creatives,’ or people who don’t flex the creative muscle we’re all born with, tend to think that us ‘creative types’ hate rules and regulations. They imagine that we grumble anytime an account manager comes along with a strategy, viewing it as an itty bitty cage that contains our creative mojo when all our mojo wants to do is frolic across empty canvases.

Not the case. In fact, we creatives like the box a strategy puts our thinking into. I’d go as far as to say we need the box. If you’re having trouble believing it, let me help you to see.

Imagine the entire world is made out of hay and somebody says to you ‘find the longest piece of hay.’ That’s one tall task, and it’s comparable to a client telling you to ‘go wild’ with their account. The creative spectrum is infinite. It’s as limitless as our imaginations. A lot of ideas are good, but a lot of ‘em look alike and there’s always going to be that one that’s ‘the best.’ It’s hard to tell what that is, especially when you have no idea what the client is trying to achieve other than an increase in their bottom line.

Now imagine that someone takes a cardboard box, fills it with hay, and then tells you to find the longest piece. The task becomes a whole lot easier. Still not easy, but incredibly easier.

The idea of ‘The Box’ was introduced to me at the Gas Can Creative Conference in Kansas City by a fellow named Stefan Mumaw who’s a Creative Director for Callahan Creek. While this idea isn’t necessarily revolutionary to the world, it was to me.

Being a recent grad that hasn’t landed at an agency yet, I spend a whole lot of time working on my book. When I do projects for my book it’s essentially as if I’m put into the ‘go wild’ scenario for every client I choose to sweat over. Ever since learning about ‘The Box’ I’ve found that creating a strategy for the products before I start generating ideas leads to a much more efficient brainstorm session.

This idea was reinforced for me last week when I met with my Creative Director, Shan Neely of Muller Bressler Brown. He said ‘People think that’s what we want. They think we don’t want any limitations on our thinking and that we’d just love it if a client would turn us loose like that, but that’s just not the case.’ He went on to say that our creativity really shines through the brightest when we’re given the barriers of a strategy to work around.

So now I create strategies before starting new work. Don’t worry if you aren’t good at strategies either. To get started, simply write down what you want your campaign to do and how you’re going to do it.

For example, say you’re doing a campaign for a brand of beer. Your strategy could be something like ‘inspire good times with friends by emphasizing how well our beer goes with long summer days’ (I am not a strategist, please don’t judge me). With this strategy in place, you can focus your ideas on togetherness and summer rather than everything and anything in between.

Doing spec pieces over and over again can get pretty bland and can even become daunting. Spice it up a bit and start to really think about what message you want to send with your campaign and make sure all of your pieces support that one idea. If ‘The Box’ helps you as much as it did me, you’ll come out the other side with much stronger work to show.

Key Take Away:  When working on spec pieces for your book, create a strategy for the company you’re producing work for prior to brainstorming. It will keep your ideas from straying away from what you’re trying to say with your campaign.

-Brian

An Incredibly Brief History of Brian

What’s good?

I’m Brian and I’m slowly creeping into the digital age, though I’m still kickin it with a flip phone. This blog is just another baby step toward completely digitizing myself and giving the government another way to keep tabs on me. You’re welcome, guys.

Here at Struggling Copywriter I hope to tell some stories of my experiences trying to pry my way into the ad industry that will hopefully offer some helpful insight to those who find themselves in a comparable position. If not, well I’ll try to be entertaining at the very least.

I recently graduated from the University of Iowa and guess what? They don’t have an ad major. In fact, they offer one class on advertising and that’s a theory course. But hey, you learn something the best when you teach it to yourself, right?

Thankfully I wasn’t the only one at Iowa that had an interest in advertising. I stumbled upon a club called Students in Advertising early in my college career and stuck with it all the way to the end, eventually helping start our own rinky dink soon-to-be powerhouse agency with a ton of help from some amazing people. They’re still doin work over there. Check out all they’ve done at http://www.behance.com/finaldraft

By the grace of the universe, among a flurry of rejection letters I received a phone call to interview with an agency here in my hometown of Kansas City back in April. I interviewed, apparently didn’t say anything too stupid, and got a position at Muller Bressler Brown as an intern on their Fast Track program which runs all through the summer. What’s at the end of that? I’m not sure, but at least I’ll have the football season back to comfort me regardless.

I’ll be posting soon and often so check back in later. If you want to see some of my stuff or want to chat check out my info below. I respond!

-Brian

@bockles
brianbcklman@gmail.com
http://www.behance.net/brianbockelman