Stuff I never got to do as a copywriter

I never had my Don Draper moment

My copywriting experience has been distinctly removed from how Mad Men portray the life. Having a crafty pint at lunch, getting a bit giddy and approaching a newsletter for a cheese manufacturer as if it were a Hemingway novel was about as ‘Draper’ as my writing career has got.

I’ve never had that moment where I slam my fist on the table and declare that we’ll be doing things my way or people are likely to find a moderately priced brogue whistling towards their neck. I’ve never flipped over a presentation board to reveal the perfectly crafted headline and see clients melt into a fawning puddle of professional, personal (and even mildly homoerotic) admiration. But I did once manage to type an ad with just my elbows, which is kind of the same thing.

I never got the ‘out there’ stuff signed off

If I were to encapsulate the ideology of my own writing it would be lizards, crisps and whimsy. This, as you can imagine, is not always entirely conducive to commercially viable marketing copy. But even so, I would have liked to think that just once in 8 years of copywriting I could have sneaked one past the reality police.

The credit card that I tried to name ‘Squid Card’. The energy drink advert in which a bear is playing Swingball with a massive tea bag . The rebranding of a town in which the destination is described as smelling like ‘golf balls and quality meat’.

Perhaps some of these may have gone too far (the frozen pizza named ‘Cheese Grenade’) but it is a tiny bit depressing to recognise that many decision makers in the industry are more comfortable with the safe option (to, and beyond, the point of drabness) rather than something that possibly pushes them out of their corporate comfort zone. Ah well.

I still haven’t figured out how to be a copywriter

While the infinite typewriting monkeys may be capable of extraordinary feats, this particular typewriting monkey is walking away from copywriting with a massive amount still to learn.

I’m not talking about my appalling sense of grammar (a pal of mine who is an English teacher has often threatened to beat me to death with a bag of semi-colons). I’m more concerned with the vast amount of knowledge, creative application and technique I’ve not come close to mastering.

But then again the more I think about this, the more I think it’s actually quite a wonderful state of affairs. I’ve always been in awe of the excellence in our particular field, and while that can be daunting for any copywriter I find it quite inspirational that there are such great heights to strive towards.

Creative marketing is in robust health and I, albeit with unapologetic bias, can’t help but attribute this to copywriters leading the creative response to a new marketing landscape and redefining the conversation in this incredibly fluid new world. With or without correct apostrophes.

And so that’s the end. No more copywriting (for now). No more columns for my good buddies at The Drum (for now). So, with 8 years of expertise and experience to draw upon, all that is left is to craft my eloquent and poignant goodbye, here we go.

I’ve got nothing.

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Andrew Boulton was a copywriter at Together Agency. Join him for a Cheese Grenade.