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Freelance nightmares: the tale of a freelance copywriting project that haunts me to this day

By Andrew Boulton

October 3, 2013 | 4 min read

My biggest weakness in life is smoked halloumi cheese. For any poor soul who has never tasted it, I can only describe the experience as like being elbow-dropped by Jesus in the tongue and genitals. Sadly, as well as being spectacularly delicious, it’s also damned expensive.

To fund my habit I’ve often turned to what is professionally known as ‘a bit of cheeky freelance’. Most assignments have been an absolute breeze, even a pleasure to work on. A few, quite simply, have not.

One of the first freelance copywriting projects I took on many years ago haunts me to this day. It was such a dark moment that for a time I questioned whether a steady supply of Cypriot cheese was worth all this. Obviously it was, anything was. But it was still my one true moment of copywriting horror.

The project in question was some name suggestions for a mate of a mate called Wayne who was hoping to start his own ‘domestic outdoor reimagination business’. Wayne mowed lawns. And not especially well it turns out.

‘I want something inspiring,’ he told me as we conducted our ever-so professional briefing session where I stood, with notepad and pencil, by a ‘Days of Thunder’ fruit machine while he pumped pound coins into it like he was feeding a massive, brightly illuminated bear.

‘I want it to really capture my brand essence’ he said. ‘Fair enough’ says I, ‘what exactly is your brand essence?’

‘Mowing lawns, yeah?’ At this point I simply tipped the fruit machine over and Wayne was crushed to death, his brand essence oozing out of his ears as the nudge button dug painfully into his shattered ribcage.

Obviously I didn’t. I did what all freelance copywriters do. I inwardly sighed, dragged a cheerful smile onto my face and asked him to elaborate.

‘Here’s the thing though, I don’t mow lawns in straight lines. I mow shapes into them. Circles, zig zags, I’m even thinking of doing faces.’

At this, detecting the look of suspicion and/or derision on my face, he produced photographic evidence of the prototype he had inflicted upon his Nan’s back lawn.

The ‘face’ was the stuff of nightmares. A cavernous, dead-eyed grimace, howling a desperate warning to the neighbours that here stands a house of diabolical evil.

‘Very good’ I lied. I shuffled away to start work on the names. Inspiration was hard to come by. For entirely justifiable reasons I couldn’t get the headline ‘Lunatic Lawns’ out of my mind. ‘Grotesque Grass’ quickly joined the list followed, depressingly, by ‘Weird Wayne’s Terrifying Terra Firma Transformations’.

In the end I managed to scribble down some fairly bland offerings, which Wayne took rather despondently. I suspect he felt I’d failed to really capture the drama and creative spirit of carving the contorted expression of utter dread into a twelve by twelve lawn. To be honest, I couldn’t help but agree with him.

But that’s the freelance way, for copywriters and designers. In agencies we’re mostly shielded from the truly madcap projects, the ones that make us question whether the work we create is going to, at some point, end up as evidence in a trial for a series of grisly murders. ‘He lured his victims in through this shabbily constructed advert, M’lud. And there’s a typo in the body copy.’

So, even though the rewards of a freelance project may be smoky, delicious and squeaky, one has to remember that we’re always one phone call away from karate lessons for cats, soup made from the tears of mistreated donkeys and, heaven forbid, faces in lawns.

Follow Andrew on Twitter @Boultini

Andrew Boulton is a copywriter at the Together Agency. His cat is terrible at karate.

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