Dear Dimitri II - Going Digital

Had all sorts of plans – called web gurus, headhunters, online buddies, etc.  Alas.  Left to my own devices, here are some things print/broadcast/traditional media writers can do to help themselves in the world of Electronica.

If you’ve already done these, Mazel tov!  If you haven’t, what are you waiting for?  It’s only getting bigger, going faster.  The possibilities are endlessly creative, exciting.  There’s no turning back.

Advantage:  Ad Writers

We are strategic.  We are creative, conceptual.  Partnered with a web savvy shop, we can concept integrated campaigns with Objective Based strategies.  We know our way around ClientLand, can present, listen and tweak accordingly.  So why aren’t we going straight from Traditional Media to Digital?  Make an honest assessment of your portfolio – and your skills – with these points in mind:

Eat Long Copy for Breakfast

Not two-three paragraphs.  Two-three pages.  Reflecting prospect, client, brand, voice, product and that little thing called Concept.  Yes, I’m talking spec.  Good spec.  For you, not some maybe client hoping to get something for zip. 

The best sites are thankfully more creative than the typical editorial “content” of early web days, but Long Copy is still essential.  Don’t be boring. Make it engaging. Don’t skimp on details.  Stay true to the facts/brand.  Showcase your wordsmithing, strategic bent, sensitivity to brand/product/prospect. Arrange it like a website. Concept a smart call to action – whether it’s click, register, call or something of your own, make the line as compelling, motivating as your headlines.

If you haven’t mastered it, a few Kamikaze Copywriting Long Copy Tricks:  Long copy should read like short copy.    Keep it active, polish flow and segues.  Edit for Kamikaze Copy Sins.  Short sentences/fragments read faster than long ones.  If your sentence is a paragraph, turn it into five-six short lines.  If your paragraphs exceed five-six lines, you have several paragraphs.

Break up the copy/inspire the flow with quick/compelling/creative subheads. Trick the reader into thinking they’re reading several short pieces on the same subject.  Think innovative sites. Push what they did until it’s not just your own – it’s new, exciting, something you haven’t seen before.

Pay attention to logical order of information, as reflected in smart website design. Research SEO (Search Engine Optimization). Exhibit an understanding of key words, etc., but never be a slave to them.  Concept, Prospect, still rule.  Don’t repeat; be judicious with how many times you use the client/product name, etc.  Be persuasive, conceptual, strategic.  It shouldn’t be content – naked data, facts, information.  It should be copy – motivating, creative within brand and prospect realities.

Make nice with the Call to Action.  It’s where you end, sure.  But give the reader a response option every step of the way.  Not some horsey “Read enough? Click Now!”  Be smart, smooth, motivational.  Sure, you want folks to read the entire piece.  You also want them to respond at every turn.  The web’s a highly interactive direct response medium.  Show off your conceptual ability to get people to click.

Show us your Visual Concepts 

Two big problems in banner/web ads:  Most assume the prospect will wait for them to finish.  They let visual movement carry the load.   Don't think ads, think Visual Concepts.  One conceptual visual with a single, well-crafted line completing the thought.  When I say completing the thought, I mean a strong call to action and punch line. Not an explanation of the visual. 

Move Online

Post your own website.  Make it a showcase for your e-bilities.  Include as many tricks as you can – videos, banners (selling you, of course), spec and produced portfolios.  Beg, borrow or trade copy for website design. 

Blog on subjects reflecting who you are, what you do, want to do, how great your writing is.  Update your blog regularly (mea culpa, mea culpa).  Promote it as best you can – think Social Networking, personal contacts, old school chums, relatives.  Use your prospect knowledge to build a following, even if it’s Mom’s poker group.  (Online, numbers rule.) Link to as many related (business) sites as you can.  Link to other bloggers, ask them to do the same.  When it’s up and running, put your blog on your own site.  Until then, there are lots of good places to park.  (How about next to me?)

Be Popular with Social Networking

You should already be on linkedin, Facebook, Twitter.  But are you showcasing how you think Online Community?  Study cutting-edge pages, apps, tweets.  Clean up the personal stuff or better yet, have two separate accounts. One personal, with limited access. One professional, with wide open access (just block those pesky sex kittens). Post your own videos, tweet pithy professional observations, blog posts, freelance gigs.  Follow those you want to reach – devise smart new ways to motivate them to return the favor.  If it’s good enough, creative enough, compelling enough, you just may impress your way into a job or project.

Recruiters search these sites all the time.  Show the same sensible creative approach to recruiter keywords in your Social Networking as you do on your website.  Upgrade your linkedin membership, you can find out exactly who stopped by.  Reach out, even if it’s just “thanks for checking me out.”  Give them something to consider.  Answer linkedin questions.  Get as many recommendations as you can.  Join professional interest groups, be an active member.

Get Up Close and Personable 

Beg, flatter, persist your way into mentor relationships with writers, designers, art directors, CDs who have already made it online.  Compliment their work, ask questions about how they concepted it.  Get permission to send them work for critique.  Ditto friends, classmates, instructors.  If they see progress, ability, smart web thinking and strong, smart creative, they may recommend you to someone else or better, hire you themselves.

Something too many creatives neglect – make nice with techies.  These are really, really smart, creative people.  You don’t have to know how an app does what it does.  Just how to use it.   Hear about some cool new app one day – use it in a smart, innovative way the next.

Keep it up.  If you don’t understand what your tech friends are talking about, ask.  Get them to translate terms for you, take notes.  Repeat it back to them until you get it right.  You don’t want to be a technocat – you want to think like one, know how to communicate with them and most importantly, show them the appreciation and respect they deserve.

Bathe yourself in All Things Web

Read the digital trades – not just advertising, creative reviews, award books, etc.  You may not understand it all, but check pubs, blogs, websites discussing more technical aspects of online breakthroughs. Come up with innovative ways to take advantage of new technology.  Showcase your enthusiasm for technology trends.  Put it in your blog.  Show it in your spec portfolio.  Discuss them intelligently, creatively.  Whatever you do, don’t try to fake it.  

Read general business press. Look for client trends, expectations, what they’re approving and putting to use.  See a fab web campaign?  Don’t just call to compliment the agency creatives, drop a line to the clients who approved it, the web shop who built it.  You never know who they’ll be talking to at what agency/web shop; what project they’re freelancing.

Can you say Reality Check?

Talk to headhunters, agency recruiters, CDs, ACDs, etc.  If you’re a Senior Traditional Ad Writer interviewing/showing a portfolio laced with spec new media work, be prepared to take a salary/title hit.  You may not have to – but if it’s the only way in, it still beats being unemployed with that albatross called “Yesterday’s News” around your neck. 

If you freelance web work, understand it often comes with a different (possibly lower) day rate.  I know several highly paid traditional media writers doing web work for close to nothing, just for the experience.

Look objectively at your strengths and weaknesses.  Make a list.  Decide (with help, if needed) which translate best to new media and twist them so they’re smart, fresh, insightfully integrated.  Polish them in that spec portfolio.  Where you have more universal experience, extend it to digital.  Talk to as many people who have made the leap as you can.  Find out what they did, what they recommend.  (Can you say mentor?)

Use freelance projects as an entrée’.  Smile when you make those cold calls.  Lead with your strengths.  Make up for your weaknesses. 

I’m not saying doing all this will get you hired.  You have to do that yourself. I am saying it’ll increase your skills, increase your awareness and put you where the people you want to work with play.   You still have to do the hard stuff – the calls, the learning, the posting, the networking, the creative. 

It’s not easy – as you’ve already found out, agencies want specific experience, especially in transitional periods and economic downturns.  You can’t lie about your experience (you can, but it won’t take long before you’re found out), but you can somewhat mitigate what you don’t have with talent and attitude.  Tip their risk in your favor. 

Final thought.  If you get shot down, don’t just take your lumps and forget it.  Stay in touch.  Especially if it’s a shop you want to work for.  That stellar attitude and can-do spirit, combined with solid produced and spec work, can keep you on their radar when they’re better able to handle their perceived risk of inexperienced experienced creative. 

Do you know Jannie?

You should.  Jannie Mattheson Gerds was my student at PC and when she has time, teaches copy at The Circus.   She’s one of the savviest, smartest people I know.  When I asked her if I missed anything, she took time from her own shop (Mattheson Gerds/Atlanta, partnered with husband/Creatives' AE, Rob) and a joint venture with an LA shop to add this:

      1. Digital isn’t linear like an ad is. It’s multi-dimensional. Everything can link to everything in a website, so your thinking has to take that into account.
       2. Traditional writers have an advantage: we know how to sell. More and more, companies are demanding ROI from their online expenditures and we’re just the people to provide it.
       3. Don’t be arrogant towards digital people. There’s already a gulf of mistrust between us. Digital people think traditional advertising is a dinosaur and traditional people think digital is just another medium. Which is it, albeit a powerful and exciting one. Some digital people are threatened by what we know. Smart ones are embracing it. Traditional talent used to eschew digital, now the bright ones are realizing that’s where clients are spending money. The most interesting part of this guarded dance is considering our history. Whereas traditional agencies used to buy digital firms to round out their offerings, now digital firms are buying ad agencies. What does that signal?
       4. Digital firms aren’t used to paying for creative writing talent. They’re used to paying technical writers’ rates (because frankly, that’s what they’ve hired until recently.) Many firms have focused more on the whiz-bang technology than the messaging. We know the messaging is the sticky part of a site. When you demonstrate how improving the message results in more sales, you can command higher rates. In the meantime, try to get project rates so they don’t freak over your hourly.

Missing Links?

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I started this in response to questions I get, since I'm not teaching right now.  It's my way of paying back.  If it's useful, inspirational, let me know.  If it's not, why?  Anything I can do better?  This former teacher has always been a lifelong student.  And there's no one I enjoy more than someone who's smarter than me, more knowledgeable than me -  we can explore What's Next together.

ATTENTION ALL COPYWRITERS, ART DIRECTORS, DESIGNERS, CREATIVE DIRECTORS, AEs and CLIENTS!

This blog is being interrupted by the horrid resurgence of one very old, very you-should-all-know-better Copy Sin.


I had planned on following “Dear Dimitri” with a piece on how traditional media copywriters can make the switch to digital. Then I drove to Atlanta and – on a lark – tuned in local FM radio on the Interstate, kept with it around town.


I got so sick of hearing it, on the way home I reset the radio dial to NPR. Cranked the CD player too darn loud and tried to get over it. When 300 miles of head bangers, classic C&W and intelligent discourse couldn’t erase it from my hard drive, I knew going digital would have to wait.


In today’s economy, I suppose I shouldn’t be so critical. But really, In today’s economy went out with the 1980’s.


Yet there it is. In a good half of all the radio spots three days of driving put into my ears. It’s all over print, too. I’ve even heard it on TV.


If it’s so popular, how could it be so wrong? The fact that it’s so popular is a big hint.


For those who’ve never taken one of my copywriting classes, let me explain the Kamikaze Copy Sins. They represent all that is overused, trite, boring, lazy, formatted and out-of-style. Everything that’s hackneyed, amateurish, stupid, illogical, forgettable or just plain awful. They are advertising’s worst written habits.


Copy Sins clutter, lengthen, steal time, reduce type size, stop readers cold and are so familiar, prospects don’t even hear/read them. Which means (do I hear Account Review?) they’re not paying attention to your client’s message.


In today’s economy, you can’t afford a big financial mistake, In today’s economy no one needs a big repair bill, In today’s economy $200 is too much to pay for a haircut, yadda yadda yadda. Because it’s a qualifier, In today’s economy implies at any other time, those things would be fine. Kinda like but, it negates everything that comes before it.


Then there’s the disconnect in logic. I don’t know about you, but in my book $200 is always too much for a haircut. A big financial mistake is never good, no matter when it happens. Ditto big repair bills. I personally don’t know anyone who doesn’t know the economy sucks. Why keep insulting me with stuff I already know?


Not only does In this economy. have a logic problem, it’s redundant. It says something we already know. And not in a way so original, it becomes new. It’s redundant now. It’s redundant again again again again and again.


What’s wrong with You can’t afford a big financial mistake? No one needs a big repair bill? $200 is too much to pay for a haircut? They work for me – faster, more immediate. Without extra letters/words to take up time/space.


I'm a Creative. My husband will tell you I’m not the most logical person in the world. Nor am I above repeating myself. In life, conversation, it never gets to a form I can re-read, edit and purge. Ad copy is something else.


Somehow, this awful, hackneyed, illogical, redundant line was approved. By the writer who wrote it. By the partner who didn’t give the writer a reality check. By the ACD, CD, ECD who let it get to the client. By the AE who did the same. By the Client who should expect – no, demand – better work for their money.


Is In this economy the only Kamikaze Copy Sin? Or even the worst? No, there are lots of them. Using so, and, therefore, etc. in place of a proper segue. Overused/ad words that just lay there like (does the car have something “like” seatbelts and airbags, or does it have seatbelts and airbags?), provide (if your client provides something, they just make it available. Big whoop.), convenient (for who/to what? If it’s convenient for me in Charlotte, is it convenient for Mitch in Austin?), designed to (is the product merely designed to do something – or does it do it?) are just the tip of the iceberg. As are clichés, illogical order, bad headline breaks, run-on sentences, ending a paragraph (or ad) with That’s why (or so) in front of a repeated headline. Heck, using That’s why period.


In fifteen years teaching copywriting, I’ve had one student (Merry Carole, take your bow) who never committed a Copy Sin in class. As handouts go, my list of Kamikaze Copy Sins is my most requested.


Just the other day I heard from the ECD of a Dallas agency telling me he still purges “that” from his copy. (Why is that a Copy Sin? Rarely, if ever, do you need it. I dare you – write something, find something written. Put your finger over that wasted word every time it appears. If the line doesn’t read just as well – if not better – without it, you have a structure problem to solve. Something no single, lazy word can solve. Don’t believe me? I wrote a few into this piece. Find them, cover them. Did you miss them? If you did, how was the structure of the line before it, after it, with it?)


With all those – and the rest of the list – to complain about, why am I so annoyed by In this economy? Why not At (company name here) we (do whatever)?* Frankly, because In this economy, it’s the one I hear the most/can’t get away from. Copywriters, ADs, ACDs, CDs, ECDs, AEs, Clients - you should know better. If you don’t, do not show your book to my former students/current ACDs, CDs and ECDs.  They do.






*At (insert company name here) we (insert statement of caring/strength/leadership here)”
Var: “A t_______ we don’t ________”


First of all, a company is never a place – so how can you be at it? Logic problem here. Then there’s the curse of the so-oft-repeated-its-no-longer-credible ad theme. What’s wrong with The people behind Microsoft, for example? Shorter, stronger, not hackneyed to the point of insincerity. I get annoyed when I read/hear at __ we __. Want to cry when I read it on the wall of an agency I’m showing my book to. Hit the wall when I find it one of my former student’s books.  But then, I have never said I love to write mediocre copy, either.

Dear Dimitri:

Mercury going Retrograde, I reconnected with Dimitri – a hot, cool, talented student from my PC Director of Copy Days. And dear Dimitri gave me my first topic, How come I can’t get a job?



“… I don't know if it's me or this economy, but I can't get hired to save my life. Please take a look at my book and tell me what the problem is (other than I have no digital/web work).”


 Dear Dimitri:


I’m fine. Thanks for asking. The fact your concerns for yourself trump any casual, getting back together chit chat says you’re desperate. You’re not alone.


I know you want to work. Crave that paycheck, those awards, concept highs and meeting lows like the ad addicts we all become. But Dimitri, how hungry are you?


Hungry enough to purge all but the best from your portfolio? To learn digital, put that learning into a showcase for the work you’ve done – and the work you can do? Not that been there/clicked that canned stuff everyone uses. The kind of comprehensive site that becomes your own digital book.


Are you hungry enough to do smart new spec showing how you’ve made the leap from Junior to Senior, filling holes in your samples? To extend the best of your traditional work into digital, ambient, yadda yadda?


Have you dug deep into social networking? Do you tweet every freelance job and quirky business strategy you find? Take advantage of college/PC alumnae, friends and family, linkedin and advertising/social networking groups?


What are you blogging about? Personal/political/fictional musings? Or to showcase your creative, strategic abilities filtered through timely experience? Do you link it to every ad blog you possibly can, ask them to return the favor?


I know Atlanta’s great, you may have family to consider (maybe not – you didn’t mention anyone but yourself). Remember Robert? He’s commuting between home in one city, work in another. He always was a go-getter (but so were you, I recall) and crazy about his wife and kids. How willing are you to go and get for yours?


Carol Vick Bynum, who knows more about getting a job than anyone I know, wrote some great stuff about turning your site into an easy, interactive slide show she can stop – and start – with a single keystroke. Maxine Paetro’s putting out a new, updated edition of How to Put Your Book Together and Get a Job in Advertising. (It will include my CMYK article on negotiating salary + update, How to Negotiate Up in a Down Market.) For a digital experience with another view, check out Dave Holloway’s DVD. You may think they’re for beginners, but both have info even I’ve forgotten.


Who have you mentored lately? As hungry as today’s students and juniors are to learn what we know, they were born knowing plenty we don’t. Especially if it’s digital. Hanging with the kids not only teaches new technology – it reignites the fire in your creative belly, the passion in your pitch.


And the work. Dimitri, even the best Blow Pop stuff blew back in your PC days. If your produced work doesn’t wow, find a good out-of-work-too AD and post new, current spec that shows what you’ve become.


Wish I could say Call this person, that Him, Him and Her has an opening. But this market is terrible at creating new jobs. They exist. But agencies have a very limited number of positions/very specific skill set/resume requirements. Have them or don’t make the cut – no matter how brilliantly you’ve performed elsewhere.


This economy is, however, great for finding something else. The network you’ve forgotten, spec work and risk taking creative that died in a thousand meetings, new skills you’ve never had time to learn and new ways to deliver old business, the time is Now.


As agencies scramble to reinvent themselves, it’s great for direct to client business. It won’t feed clients’ paying-agency-overhead-paranoia, you get to draw on all your experience, they pay full rate, usually on time. For employee certainty, think about going corporate. The recession can’t last forever.


Dimitri, are you ready to respond to the market instead of reacting to bills due? Not to be glib, cast dispersions on your talent, desire or thousands of calls already made/hundreds of resumes already sent. But this is a business of reinvention and we must all be re-inventors. Of what we do, sure. But mostly, of ourselves.


I prescribe two reads of the above and if we’re still talking, call me in the morning. Be forewarned – I’ll ask the same question I asked in class: Where’s your Creative Work Plan? Remember how well they work for ads? They’re even better for solving the bigger creative problem of Self.