Working with a copywriter: an interview

One of the misconceptions many new designers have when they start out in an ad agency is that they will work alone in a plush office taking client supplied copy and photos and designing the next great ad. In reality, you’ll be working as a team with a copywriter tossing ideas back & forth about the text for the ad, as well as the overall design. That’s because any great ad has to speak to a viewer with words and pictures, at least most do. Some ads are pure text and can be quite successful and creative. Others offer only a word or two with a stunning visual to get the message across, such as Apple’s “Think Different” campaign. At first it can be difficult learning to “share” the design process for someone used to freelancing or working for a firm with an in-house design shop. Working with a copywriter doesn’t mean you won’t have to write copy, it also doesn’t mean you’ll have 100% control over the design. In order to shed some light on the subject, I asked former R&R Partners Senior Copywriter, Steve Yamamori, for some brief but helpful insight. Steve has worked with clients such as Cox Communications, YMCA, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Arizona, National Bank of Arizona, Anti-Tobacco, Las Vegas Convention & Visitors Authority, Valley Metro and several non-profit clients. He’s also an Emmy and Addy Award-winning copywriter, so he knows his stuff! CG: Steve, tell us how you got into the ad business?

Steve: I had worked in account management for over five years when I got a unique opportunity to work in the creative department. It’s been about four years and I’ve been writing ever since. Having worked on the account side previously has given me some fantastic insight into how my account reps and the client are thinking. I feel it’s important to “get into their head” before I begin writing, and knowing how and what to ask the client has helped a great deal.

CG. What is your role in the creative process?

Steve: In a creative department, regardless if it’s in a traditional agency or client side, sooner or later you’ll come face-to-face with a real life copywriter. My suggestion is not to make eye contact and hastily make it for the door. Actually, a copywriter can come in really handy. Having a creative-minded partner working with you on a project can help you bounce ideas off one another and come up with better ideas that are simple and smart. Two heads are almost always better than one. As for the process, the team (the art director/designer and the copywriter) usually meets with the client and/or the account team. A creative brief is then written and the team gets to work. There are a lot of ways teams concept together, some stay together the entire time, while others will separate, think on their own and then come together and hash out their concepts. Either way, ideas are shared, split, dissected, killed, dreamed-up, etc. It’s not always the copywriter with the headline and the art guy with the visual. It’s a partnership and anything can spark the next great idea. Even the worst shit makes excellent fertilizer. So ideas are dreamed up and the best get presented to the client. What happens next is heaven or hell depending on luck, or which way the wind blows.

CG: That’s a bit one-sided, don’t you think? Is working with a copywriter that important?

Steve: James J. Jordan Jr. a famous ad man described his concept of “Power Copy” this way, “The heart and power of advertising is copy…A very few words so skillfully targeted, so clear in their positioning, so vivid in their articulation and so memorable in their identification with a given brand, that they, all by themselves, become not only what people remember about the brand, but also the most important part of the brand’s identity and people’s principle reason for buying the brand.” I offer you the following: Think Different, Just Do It, Have a Coke and a Smile, True, Where’s the Beef?, Like a Rock, The Choice of the New Generation, What Happens in Vegas, Stays in Vegas – all ad slogans that really need no visual to get their message across. They’re embedded in consumers’ mind and have lasting appeal. Of course we add a visual to these famous slogans and it only serves to strengthen their position and meaning. None of those award-winning slogans were written by a copywriter or an art director, they were written by great creative teams of writers and art directors, and it’s important to not only understand that, but to embrace it and use it for all it’s worth!

CG: Any other profound statements for the readers, Steve?

Steve: That’s it, simpleton, we are good, and you, in the black with the goatee, are bad.

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