What makes a Kamikaze Copywriter (or any other kind of Kamikaze Creative)? Insights acquired? Talent and drive you found in the womb? Can you study the requirements in school? Figure it out watching others? Is it the same for Copywriters, Screen Writers, Novelists, Poets and Performance Artists? Art Directors, Fine Artists, Interior Decorators and Designers?
I can only share what my years as Copywriter, Creative Director, Life Observationist and Instructor of all things Ad Creative have taught me.
Besides wardrobe, what do Kamikaze Copywriters, Art Directors and Designers have in common?
What you’d expect – and a good bit more. I have a handout describing the Creative Personality. (If you want a copy, email a request.) It includes imaginary friends, an offbeat sense of humor, innate sense of people, trends and events, good vocabulary, independent thinking, lack of inhibitions, comfort with disarray, yadda yadda. It’s quite a list and while all ad creatives don’t have every single trait, they have enough of them to understand each other.
Copywriters are as visual as ADs, GDs and WDs
Even if you can’t draw, you’re drawn to a nice label, original layout, unusual use of space, color. You may “see” your thoughts rather than “hear” them. You instinctively understand great art (paintings, sculpture, literature, music, fine crafts, dance, etc.). Graphic balance, color values, how a line should look in a layout seem obvious. Your innate ability to see things your AD missed, misplaced or made too big make you both loved and hated by those you work with, depending upon how you include them in your process. All these things should come naturally, even if you aren’t aware of it until you start working in creative teams.
If verbal/visual talent alone doesn’t qualify you, what does?
It’s one thing to know how to write well or draw. Quite another to have an instinct for how words, design and visuals reach and motivate people and events. You also need the ego/confidence to believe other people see what you want them to, they way you want them to, when you want them to. If you don’t, your work will never get approved, produced, win the awards you deserve.
You can be shy, just don’t Present like it
I had a client who let my students present copy as if they worked for him. Everyone learned how it was done; how to discuss/defend their copy, do While You Wait revisions, etc., with a real live client.
One student was so shy, he talked to the floor, his voice cracked, faded and mumbled. His work was good, but I thought he’d never make it in advertising because he’d never be able to present his work like he believed in it.
His turn with this client was painful to watch. The client took him to task over a few lines, a word here and there. Stuttering, stammering, sweating bullets, the guy somehow managed to defend his work and make back-and-forth revisions.
When it was over, he stood up, put out his wet, clammy hand, thanked the client and beamed ear to ear. “Boy that was fun!” he enthused, “when can I do it again?”
He never stammered through, flubbed or sweated a presentation again. He enjoyed it so much, he became one of the best presenters in the class, went to a good agency and was often the go-to creative in new business pitches.
Shyness doesn’t exclude you. Not being able to present does.
Kamikaze Creatives risk it all with every assignment
As misguided (and dead) as Japanese Kamikaze pilots were, Kamikaze Copywriters and other ad creatives must be willing do what they did. Put their professional lives on the line to get their best ideas produced.
Going out on that limb can dangerous enough when it’s your idea. But if that solution’s not good enough to ask the client to put his/her job is on the line too, you need a better one.
That’s the concept behind Kamikaze Creative. Being willing to risk your job on an idea good enough to ask the client to risk her/his job, too. Every time you present, the unexpected smartness and originality of everything you show must put you both out on that limb.
I once asked a former student (SF Art Director of the Year, One Show regular, you name it he won it; Principal/Founding Partner of an agency everyone in the country wanted to work for) how he got even his most difficult clients to buy work that scared them. “Every time they send it back,” he said, “we come up with something better. If good is all they get, sooner or later they have to buy it.”
If you don’t have the courage of his convictions, you’ll never be a Kamikaze Creative.
You believe deadlines are a challenge, not a death sentence
If the sound of the clock tick, ticking away the time you have to create, produce and deliver scares you, go back to Bard or Hampshire College. Life is full of difficult deadlines. Advertising deadlines make life’s due dates look easy.
We don’t have just one deadline any more than we do one assignment at a time.Miss one, the dominoes may flatten your boss’ enthusiasm for keeping you employed. Why? It’s not just your deadline.
Whenever it's due, you must do the same quality work. If you don’t, Domino! The date the AE promised the client, the date the media closes, the broadcast schedule starts, the printer needs final approved files, the site goes live, the event happens. Miss your deadline once, maybe they’ll forgive you. But if you can’t learn to consistently deliver, no matter how short the time frame, how heavy your workload, how much sleep you don’t get, you won’t last.
I’ve known creatives who developed love/hate relationships with deadlines, others who saw them as the exciting finale to a very fast race. Love them, hate them, part of the fun is pulling all nighters when deadlines are cut short, you’re buried, your creative partner is sick.
It’s part of the drill. It’s part of the excitement. If it’s not part of who you are, there’s always an MBA.
Who cares about Ethics?
Advertising is a team sport. Cheat, steal, slack off. Lie, make false claims. This isn’t politics, it’s Advertising. Burn your AD, they’ll work with someone else. Burn your client, be prepared to be known as the writer who lost the XYZ account and was never seen again. Burn your Creative Director, hope your portfolio’s in order. If the people you work with can’t trust you, if the client feels the same way, you won’t last. No matter how good you are, sooner or later you’re the one those dominoes flatten.
I had a student with considerable talent who was a snake in the grass. Adept at presenting someone else’s ideas so you thought they were his, he’d also outright steal. He was rude and hurtful. Arrogant is not a strong enough word. The school wanted him gone. I was more than willing to send him packing.
He had a good book, not all of it his. It took two months for one of the best creative shops around to figure out half the work he showed couldn’t be his. Two short months before clients, AEs, ADs wanted him off their accounts. He bounced from agency to agency, never lasting long. With each move, his salary got bigger, sure. But the number of shops who hadn’t heard about him got smaller. Eventually, no one wanted his work badly enough to want him.
To his credit, he did calm down with age, and eventually became palatable enough to get hired again. But he never reached the heights, never got the respect he could have, should have, if only he wasn’t such a lying, cheating SOB.
If I have such a great job, how can I still be so hungry?
An idea is never good enough, big enough. Your work can always be better. Really good creatives feel that way, no matter how many Gold Pencils clutter their desk. It’s a hunger to create more, create better. A feeling the work is never good enough, the editing never done. If you aren’t driven to perfection, even though you know it’s an imperfect world, an imperfect business, you’ll never be as good as you can be.
Great ad creatives don’t slow down after their first trip to Cannes, they work harder. Great copywriters don’t lock into a style once it wins a big award. If you aren’t constantly pushing, striving for better, more original, more unexpected, you may become an AD or a copywriter. But you’ll never be a Kamikaze Creative.
The choice is up to you, but everything I’m going to share with you, all the technical tips and secrets, insights and techniques to come, is predicated upon that hunger.
All that aside, what’s the most important quality for Kamikaze Copywriters?
Good, creative, correct writing isn’t the first thing I look for. My classes were full of natural, even genetic, talent. That didn’t always make them Kamikaze Copywriter material.
Except for agency titles, my business cards have always read “Writer/Thinker” or “Writer by Trade/Problem Solver by Inclination”. That’s what separates Kamikaze Copywriters from those best left to technical writing, journalism, PR or academic Creative Writing programs. Ad writers are good at solving problems. We think, therefore we write.
Innate problem solvers grok Kamikaze Creative Strategy on a molecular level. Solving problems is fun and easy. We don’t stop at the first solution - there are always so many more to come. We give the uncommon answer. Creative, original ideas grounded in an instinctive grasp of people, trends and how to fill any creative vacuum.
Creative Strategy gives form and structure to doing what comes naturally. The Kamikaze Creative Work Plan makes sense to us – whether we see it or not, innate problem solvers already use that process.
No matter how talented a writer you are, if you don’t have natural ability, drive and desire to creatively problem solve, you’re not going to be conceptual enough to be Kamikaze.
What about verbal proficiency and natural born talent? Here’s what I look for:
1. A writer who doesn’t need modifiers, complex, sophisticated structure or repetition to make a point.
2. A writer who can flush the extraneous and keep me interested as s/he cuts to the chase.
3. A writer who thinks in poetry and doesn’t need it to rhyme. Someone adept at haiku has the kind of poetic talent that makes for great copy.
4. Writers who recognize how subject matter relates to the idea’s recipient (concept to prospect) – and gets them to see it as plainly as we do.
5. Writers who love to write without running at the mouth. Who love editing as much – or more – than the initial rush of words.
6. Writers with a love of people and an uncanny knack for “knowing” how they’ll react, to what, how, when.
7. Writers who always seem to know the next trend six months before it hits.
I once had a student so in love with words, so enamored of flowery structure, I couldn’t teach her a thing. She thought writing was romantic. Believed whole-heartedly that what can be said in one word must be said in twelve. I pegged her as a mid-term drop out, but I was wrong. Since she was past the date of tuition adjustment, she finished the term, then was never heard from again.
A Copywriter I worked with in Houston won the hugely prestigious The Nation’s annual poetry prize. She could do more with a word than anyone else I’ve known. Her poetry was spare, visual and visceral. Did not depend upon nuance or dulling virtuosity. I thought she could rule the copy world, but she saved her brilliance for poetry. While her copy could be clever, it never transcended. She had everything but the drive to advertising.
Another student started school writing like a sixth grader. His structure could confuse the heck out of you, no matter how simple his words. Naively, wildly original, he took creative risks he never knew he took. Found elegant, simple solutions to tricky problems. Other instructors tried to tame him, make his words and ideas conform to prevailing standards. I pushed him to mix it up, see his words as partner to his very original creative solutions. The guy could laugh in haiku. He went on to win every award you want.
That said, how do I know if I have what it takes?
For one thing, you never take “no” for an answer. For another, you risk a shot because nothing can discourage or dissuade your hunger and ambition.
If you don’t fit into any of these general Kamikaze Creative or Copywriting niches, don’t give up yet. Quitting before you give it your best shot, then a better shot, then an one that’s even better, isn’t something Kamikaze Creatives understand.
More truth about Kamikaze Creatives:
1) Art Directors, Copywriters, Graphic and Web Designers have more in common than they are different.
2) Copywriting is as visual as any of the graphic arts.
3) Being a good writer or artist doesn’t mean you were born for Advertising.
4) If you don’t like selling, speaking in front of groups and have never laughed when caught in a studied yet spontaneous exaggeration, you may not like it here.
5) If you’re not a risk taker, if you can’t get your client to become one too, you can be an ad creative. But you’ll probably never fly to Cannes at someone else’s expense.
6) If you can’t create under deadlines, often many at the same time, forget about the ad biz and stick to art for art’s sake.
7) Writing (or doing anything else) in Advertising does not eliminate the need for strong principles and rock solid ethics.
8) If you’re not hungry – for ideas, for experience, for fun, fame and even fortune, you may be able to do it. But you’ll never rise to the top.
Now we have all that out of the way, next post we’ll start learning HOW.
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