First the type director. Then the dye sub retoucher, the stat camera operator and the mechanical artist.
Can advertising wordsmiths be the next victim of the business’ transfiguration?

Here’s an interesting thought from a LinkedIn discussion group I belong to:

Jack Neary, Executive Vice President/Executive Creative Director, BBDO Worldwide, says in part:

“Few creative directors want [great copywriters] any more. Verbal virtuosity is dramatically less in demand by creative directors today than in the days when David Abbott, Ed McCabe, Bob Levenson, Phil Dusenberry and many more occupied the pantheon of heroes influencing the next generation of copywriter. The wordsmith’s craft is seldom celebrated, rarely taught, and, therefore, almost never practised. Also, the increasingly fragmented media landscape has shortened consumers’ attention spans putting more of the communication burden on images, which usually connect faster than words.… “There is another culprit still. The heightened, often mindless lust for Cannes Lions has led to more visual, less verbal work because pictures generally do better than words with a cosmopolitan jury.’ I wholeheartedly disagree. As a professional with many years of experience, I find that copywriting is in more and more demand in the digital space (although often devalued and referred to derisively as ‘content’).”

Interesting. Personally, I still believe people recognize good writing (even if it’s purely a great headline); and more importantly, they respond to it. So reports of copywriting’s demise are premature. It is simply evolving in response primarily to digital media.
What do you think?

“According to most studies, people’s number one fear is public speaking. Number two is death. Death is number two. Does that sound right? This means to the average person, if you go to a funeral, you’re better off in the casket than doing the eulogy.”  – Jerry Seinfeld
via Think Exist

Perhaps only one thing strikes more fear into a Creative’s heart than not coming up with the big idea. That one thing? Actually presenting that big idea. And let’s face it; rarely does an idea sell itself.  So for 99% of the time, presentation skills are necessary. But the reality is most Creatives, from the obscure to the Boguskys, view these presentations with a mixture of fear and trepidation. We’re human after all.  And like others of our kind we’re prone to developing the dreaded “butterflies”.

How to overcome that fluttering feeling in ones tummy may be as simple as recognizing and remembering a few things:

Rehearse

Spend as much time preparing to present the work as you did putting the work together. Rehearse in front of your partner, your coworkers and the family dog. Jot down your key points. Again and again from memory. Do it until you know your material like the back of your hand.

Be yourself

Don’t stand in front of a room pontificating and throwing around $10 words. Present the work in a conversational and passionate way. If clients feel you’re BSing them, they’re less inclined to accept your solutions. It also sounds like you don’t know what the heck you’re talking about. One of my favorite people in the business always warms up his audience with a relevant, funny story told with a Catskill Comedian-like delivery before launching into his spiel.

Know thy client

Ernie Schenck, of Hill Holiday, describes it this way:

“I try to bulletproof the work in my mind as much as possible. I can do that because other than new business, I know the clients I’m dealing with. And I go through a lot of trouble to do deep surveillance on each and every one of them. The quirky stuff they like or don’t like. That kind of thing.  Know who you’re presenting to and you know what to avoid, what to say, what not to say, where not to go, how far you can take things.”
via The Ranch Blog

Make it about them

Try to keep yourself out of it. Two words you should never utter when presenting creative to clients is “I” or “we.”  You should make it about them.  Remember you’re not selling your brilliance; you’re solving a business problem.  So your presentation should be all about the business problem, and how the ideas you’ve developed might help that problem. By keeping yourself out of the equation, you make the conversation less personal, and you end up looking like more of an expert in the process.

Finally

Clients don’t want to be sold; they want you to be sold. You’re the expert, so present work you believe in.  Have an opinion. Have a recommendation. Tell the client what they should do. After all, that’s what they’re paying us for. And, believe it or not, most clients want to like what you’re presenting and most of all, they want to like you.

Got any presenting tips of your own?  Would love to hear them.

Advertising, in all its forms, has been around for a long, long time.

And if you look hard enough, you’ll always find remnants of old ideas in today’s new concepts. The trick is to avoid using a library of knowledge to shoot down good ideas. And it doesn’t take long to find someone in an agency, usually a grizzled ACD or CD (wait, before you can say anything, guilty as charged. But only on occasion), who uses their memory to make you feel, well, like a schmuck. You don’t want to become one of those insufferable ad people who looks at every concept and says something like, “so-and-so did that at DDB in 1986. It’s in the 15th edition of CA!”

There’s an inherent danger in recalling the past too much. Your brain begins to resemble a file cabinet where large chunks of memories and history are stored, gathering dust and cobwebs, gradually leaving less and less room for new ideas and thoughts.

Yeah, advertising is a young person’s industry, and we live in a short-term memory society as it is.

But history should serve as lessons for us. Not to discourage experimentation and innovation, but as a building block to always consider the possibilities and prepare for contingencies.

Ultimately, we can use the past to avoid costly mistakes—and sell better work to our clients who can then sell more of their own products and services. So it’s a good idea to know a bit about the past. But even once you know it, you have to focus on living in the present and creating ideas for the future. And now, with the rapid expansion of new media and all its various and at times maddening acronyms, you have to concede that, “okay, I know a lot, but I don’t know everything.”

One needs to step back, take a deep breath and recognize that you can learn an awful lot from co-workers who have no clue, nor care, about how we did it back in the day.

Because if you’re not forward-thinking, your career in advertising will soon be history.