THE DIFFERING CAREER PATHS OF ART DIRECTORS AND COPYWRITERS
HOW TO BE A GOOD COPYWRITER
In keeping with the rest of the book, this section is not about how to write copy. Instead, it’s about the skills and attributes that a good copywriter needs, above and beyond being able to write good copy.
In fact, it’s debatable whether the ability to write copy is still necessary at all. The demand for copywriting has shrunk massively in the last few years, as print advertising has become increasingly visually driven.
There are still examples of great copywriting around, on websites, on packaging, even in-store. But most creatives nowadays come from an art school or graphic design background rather than any kind of writing-related field, and often aren’t confident writing copy.
Some creative directors don’t mind this, and they keep one or two gray-haired copywriters around specifically to write the department’s copy.
But other CDs are hugely frustrated by the shift. And that’s why I do think that, if you’re not a natural copywriter, it’s a good skill to learn. For although the status of copywriting has dropped dramatically within the industry, and there aren’t many chances to shine by writing great copy, there is plenty to lose if you write bad copy.
Principally, there’s a risk you may displease your creative director. He may be one of the many CDs who places a disproportionate importance on copywriting. This may be because he’s an ex-copywriter himself (more copywriters than art directors become CDs; something in the genes?). Or it may be because he’s a fair bit older than you—perhaps even of a different generation, in advertising terms, and the older generation seem to place an importance on “proper style,” and correct grammar and spelling.
So you may irritate him if you do it badly, and take up his valuable time to help you fix it. If you’re never going to be a great writer, at least make sure you can get your copy done quickly and cleanly.
In these days of spell-check and grammar-check, there’s no reason to present copy with spelling or grammar mistakes. Even if those things don’t matter to you, they may matter to someone else who sees it. Make sure it’s right.
TALKING AND LISTENING
As I’ve mentioned before, the copywriter will often be the “talker” of the team. One stereotype of the copywriter is that he is a smart-ass, always ready with a quip. Certainly, if you want to be original in your work, it helps to be a person who looks at the world skewiff.
Alexandre Gama quotes Kierkegaard, who said: “Any contemporary attempt of getting serious consideration must be expressed through irony.” “Irony is the basic tool of the copywriter’s tone-of-voice toolbox,” reckons Gama. “The best copywriters are masters of irony. Irony is having fun with the long face of reality.”
So if you are a sardonic gagmeister, don’t worry. It’s common.
Use it to your advantage when you present work. If you are the team’s front-man, whether you are the copywriter or not, you need to get good at presenting. Don’t be embarrassed to ask for training.
The front-man needs to be good at listening as well as talking. It’s much easier to persuade people if you genuinely listen to their point of view, and address it. It will be important to be able to read people too, understand their body language, and “handle” them.
There is normally one person within the team—often but not always the copywriter—who manages the team’s career. That means when to ask for a pay rise, when to ask for a promotion, when to move jobs. If it seems like those areas of responsibility are heading your way, learn how to do them well.
INVOLVEMENT IN THE ADVERTISING PROCESS
In terms of the actual job, the copywriter is often more involved at the beginning of the advertising process than the art director is. It seems that copywriters enjoy sparring with planners more than art directors do; in a typical briefing, the copywriter will be asking questions, while the art director doodles on his pad. Either approach is valid, of course—those doodles may turn out to be great ideas. But one of you has to be interrogating the brief, requesting the further information you may need from the account team, and generally being the strategic warhead of the partnership. It doesn’t have to be the copywriter; it just often seems to be.
Copywriters are usually more strategically minded than art directors, and there’s a high chance that the copywriter will have a greater responsibility for determining what the team’s approach to the brief is going to be.
Conversely, the art director is more involved at the end of the advertising process. Once an idea has been approved, the art director will spend endless hours choosing photographers and getting layouts ready. What should the copywriter be doing in that time? Starting the next project.
What happens in the middle is less clear-cut. Some creatives believe that a copywriter should be having more ideas—the art director has less time, since the actual production of an ad is so time-consuming. That’s certainly true for print. On the other hand, radio tends to fall mostly to the copywriter. And in making a TV commercial, the roles of the art director and copywriter are similar. For some reason, copywriters often seem to be a lot more interested in the editing process than art directors are. And art directors are usually more interested in the “grade” (everything to do with the final look of the ad—like how contrasty or color-saturated the film is). Being a copywriter, it took me three or four years before I even knew what the grade was. And I still fall asleep in there.
I’ve occasionally heard the theory that art directors have fewer ideas, but the ones they do have are better than the ones that copywriters have.
There is no way to test that theory. What goes on behind closed doors is impossible to know.
Certainly, the number-one complaint that copywriters make about their art directors is “not enough ideas.”
Copywriters are often rational, logical thinkers, who have a natural facility for coming up with large quantities of ideas, and they can’t understand why their art director just sits there like an immovable object, saying nothing except “no.”
Nevertheless, it’s the only combination that seems to work.
I remember years ago, complaining about my art director to a senior creative. “Just when we seem to be getting somewhere on a brief,” I said, “he throws me off track.”
“Ah,” came the reply. “But that’s his job.” At the time, I didn’t understand. But a few months later I realized what he meant—that without an art director, a copywriter may produce many workable solutions to a brief. But he’ll rarely make magic.
The great art directors can turn an average idea into a good ad, and a good idea into a great ad.
But what skills does an art director need, above and beyond being able to art direct?
First of all, just as there are many copywriters nowadays who can’t write copy, there are plenty of art directors who can’t draw or use a Mac.
This may enrage traditionalists, and cause them to sweep an array of color-coded marker pens off their desk. But it’s a reality.
The fact is that since Bill Bernbach first teamed “art men” with copywriters in the 1950s, their role has evolved steadily away from craft skills and more toward concept creation.
THINKING NOT DRAWING
In simple terms, the art director has become a thinker not a drawer. And that’s a good thing. Because thinking is more interesting work than drawing, and someone who can think gets paid more than someone who draws.
Of course, someone has to draw up the “scamps” for a press campaign—a scamp being a rough drawing whose only purpose is to get the idea across as simply as possible. But some art directors don’t even do that. If the team’s copywriter happens to be better at drawing than the art director, then it may be the copywriter who draws up.
In my partnership, I often do. Not because I’m any good at drawing, but because he’s too good. I’m happy to draw up a rough in 30 seconds even if it looks dreadful, because I know I can’t draw and I don’t care. Whereas his professional pride means he likes to spend at least five minutes on each drawing, and sometimes we don’t have that five minutes.
An art director’s main job these days is idea generation—exactly the same as the copywriter’s job. Of course, being a visually skilled person, he may approach the task with more visual flair. There’s also a theory (completely unverifiable) that the art director comes with a more emotional and instinctive approach, whereas the copywriter deploys more logic. But I don’t believe you can look at a team’s output and determine which of their ads were originally the art director’s idea and which the copywriter’s, because there are plenty of copywriters who are great at visual thinking, especially nowadays, and adept at emotional as well as rationally based selling. Nevertheless, most art directors are people who have a natural facility for creative use of imagery.
ROLES WITHIN THE STUDIO
The art director’s role is especially important on a print campaign, where he will choose the photographer or illustrator, and work with a typographer to determine how the type, logo, image, and pack-shot will be put together in the final design of the ad. (There is more information on how to get the best out of photographers and designers in Chapter 6.)
The larger the agency, the more people will be working in their studio—designers, retouchers, perhaps even in-house illustrators. The agency may have further resources such as art buyers, whose job it is to recommend photographers and illustrators to the art director, and picture researchers, who will find you the right stock shot for a print concept. At smaller agencies, and also in certain countries, the art director may carry out some or all of these roles himself.
Many agencies employ a head of art, who acts as a coach and mentor to the junior art directors, and may also have final say over the choice of photographer or illustrator for a project. If your agency has a good head of art, be sure to spend a lot of time with him. The world of visual communication evolves rapidly, but a good head of art will have a lot of wisdom about how to approach that world and get the best out of it, and it’s the kind of wisdom you may be able to winkle out if you get to know him well.
THE STEREOTYPE OF AN ART DIRECTOR
In general, art directors are often people who like to do more than they like to talk. The cliché of the art director is that he is “arty,” colorful, better dressed than the copywriter, a perfectionist when it comes to work, and a party person outside it, much happier on a shoot than sitting in an office talking to a planner about a brief.
By no means all art directors are like that. Just as by no means all copywriters fit the unforgivable string of generalizations I trotted out about them earlier. But it’s useful to be aware of the stereotypes, simply so you are aware of whether you’re the kind of art director (or copywriter) who fulfills or contradicts people’s expectations of the role.
Most art directors are image junkies. They will constantly flick through magazines, be looking at strange things on the internet, go to art galleries in their spare time, and put interesting and beautiful postcards up on their wall.
Fewer art directors seem to go on to become creative directors than copywriters do. Perhaps slightly more go on to become photographers and directors. It’s that bias toward doing rather than talking again.
