A Day In The Life

In 2001 a junior at Drake University reached out with a questionnaire as part of a class project. Below were my answers. Obviously times have changed and my answers would be different today, but I post it now as a snapshot in time of both life in an ad agency and in my career.

Job Title:

Senior Copywriter

Place of employment:

Martin/Williams Advertising

How long have you been a copywriter?

Since 1985.

What does your typical day consist of?

Show up 15 minutes late. Start computer. Get a cup of coffee. Listen to voicemails, usually from worried account executives. Answer e-mail. Then the meetings start. Meetings with account executives to get briefed on a new job, discuss production issues, or research findings. Meetings with production people, (i.e. music production houses, film directors, photographers, illustrators, etc.) Work through lunch. Then more meetings. Meetings with clients to show new work or hear reactions to concepts proposed earlier. Meetings with creative directors to discuss new concepts. Then go home an hour or two late.

Oh, and then there’s a little bit of writing and ideating mixed in there.

But that’s the nice thing about advertising. There are no typical days. One day you may be in meetings all day, another on a film set in LA trying to get a monkey to hold the client’s product label toward camera.

What do you find most rewarding about your career?

Solving problems, I supppse. Imagine it: a client comes to you with a serious problem and a serious budget, then it’s up to you and your art director partner to solve it without using more money than’s on the table. The pressure is delicious. Either you solve it and you’re a hero. Or you don't and everybody looks at their shoes when you walk by. There are three times during the creative process that being an advertising copywriter is fun, at least for me. When you come up with the big idea. When that idea is finally realized, produced and finished. And when you see it out in the real world.

What do you think is your greatest career accomplishment?

Doing good work while still being a decent husband and father.

What is your ultimate goal in advertising?

To work with fun people on projects that interest me and make enough money to send my kids to college.

How would you best describe your workplace environment?

27th floor of a Minneapolis skyscraper, facing west, overlooking the Mississippi River. An Apple iMac, boom box CD player, phone and two lamps on desk/counter built into wall, (along with the usual office detritus: CDs, papers, stopwatch, dirty coffee cups, pens, etc.) A small couch, a coffee table laden with magazines yet to read, old campaigns and left-over Girl Scout cookies. A large wooden flat file containing reprints opposite two small bookcases filled with reference materials, music and voice-talent reels and awards annuals. And a cushioned wall for pinning things up.

What is the company you work for like?

Martin/Williams has about 300 employees and 330 million in client billings. We handle clients like L.L. Bean, Rubbermaid, Steelcase, Lincoln Financial Group, Marvin Windows, Polaris and 3M. We’re known among clients for building brands and being easy to work with, and among the advertising community for doing consistently good work and being relatively family friendly. (Make no mistake. There are other agencies doing better work, but the cost is usually severe for your personal life.) The overall atmosphere here is hip, casual and frenetic at the same time. For example, you can pierce you nose and wear jeans with holes in them, but when a deadline looms you better deliver the goods.

What inspired you to get into advertising?

Bad advertising. Somebody had to do something.

Where did you earn your degree(s)?

BA in Communication from Washington State University with minors in English and Fine Arts.

Do you work in a team setting?

Absolutely. Each account has a team that has to work together to get stuff done. Account execs, producers, project managers, media and strategy folks… Beyond that, I’m teamed with an art director. The advantage is that there’s somebody to help shoulder the work load and with the difficult decisions that often have to be made in a hurry. (And the old two-heads-are-better-than-one theory.) The disadvantage is that any two person team is like a marriage, and as we all know, some marriages are good and some not so much. There are strong personalities in this business and sometimes that can be a real pain to deal with.

What do you like least about your job?

Fear. The thing about advertising is that everybody’s job is always on the line. Mine. My boss’s. The client’s. The only difference is, we know we can always find another job. Client’s don’t tend to be so glib. So, if they haven’t seen an idea before, they usually don’t want to be the first to try it. Which makes my job exceedingly difficult because, after all, I’m trying to get them to break new ground and do great things for their brand.

How are projects assigned to you?

I’m the main writer on several accounts, so when a project comes up for those clients it automatically comes to me. I also handle various one-off jobs that are assigned from the respective creative directors managing other accounts.

What is the average time you have to work on a project?

That depends. I’ve worked on ads that had to be done in 15 minutes and TV spots that took over two years. Usually I have two to three weeks to figure something out in real time, but because I’m cooking on several projects at once, that tends to boil down to about a week of actual work time.

How long is your average work day? Week?

Officially, we’re open 8:30 to 5:30. When it’s busy it’s not unusual to work considerably more. I probably average a 45-hour work week with the occasional 70 hour crunches.

What is your favorite project to date? Your most difficult?

The most difficult assignment was to write the assembly instructions for a deck kit. You know, like a 12’ X 20’ back-of-the-house deck. The idea was to make the whole thing so simple that any yahoo, given all the lumber and hardware, could slap it together in half a day. What they gave me to work from, however, were the original architect’s drawings. It was miserable.

On the other hand, there have been plenty of fun projects. I just finished a radio campaign for a new website that was a total blast. I love doing radio.

What was your first job? Where? Did you like it?

John Brown & Partners in Seattle. And no, I didn’t like it. My boss, the owner of the place, was a screamer—the kind of guy who would crinkle up copy and throw it in my face, (he literally did that), yelling to the gods in heaven about what miserable dreck I had just tried to pass off on him. I’m thankful he gave me my start though, and the Senior Writer took me under his wing so it wasn’t all bad.

What do you do when you hit a creative roadblock?

Switch to another project. Go get a cup of coffee. Flip through an awards annual. Go work someplace else. Take a break. Just do something different.

If you could do it all over again, would you have chosen advertising?

Even after all these years, and all the creative frustration, I still can’t think of anything that seems more fun.

For those getting started, what advice can you give them?

Be patient. Be persistent. And get to know the work of the agency. Agencies jobs are hard to come by and very competitive when they open. But here’s a tip, they want to know how you think, regardless of what position you’re applying for. And that you’ll be fun to have around. For creatives, your portfolio is the only thing that matters when looking for work. Put together a good book and you can go anywhere. But don’t feel bad if it takes you a few years to put that book together. It’s an iterative process. Create some samples. Show them around. Collect feedback. Repeat. That’s about it. Good luck with your project.