A copywriter’s life

I’ve been writing for as long as I can remember and now, I ask myself: where is the shining career that saw me as a recluse author in the Scottish Highlands sipping tea, typing away my stories? As years have gone by, I’ve realized how writing is much more than a teenage fantasy, the act itself is at the basis of our everyday communication. The advert on your bus you eye during your daily commute, the banner in the underground station that makes you smile or fills you with rage, the posts on your social media feed. Everything is written, analysed, re-written, tested and – finally – allowed to reach you. Today’s audience’s diet is based on live stories, tweets, Facebook status, and much more. Copywriting is not what it used to be. Authors and journalist may look down at those dipping in the muddy waters of copywriting but – once you get a closer look at the responsibilities the job entails and the skills it requires – you might see how much a copywriter has to juggle. As we have moved away from the WEB 2.0 articles stuffed with keywords in bold, copywriters have adapted to new ways of selling products. In short and snappy copies, these contemporary masters of flash fiction need to condense a message, a call to action, entice their readers, and please their employers. Talking about being stuck between a rock and a hard place. A journalist with a flair for marketing, a salesperson with a penchant for words, a writer with a strong Twitter profile: copywriters today are specialised on one topic but have a diversified set of skills. These professionals’ CVs are filled with acronyms: SEO, SEM, they need to be fluent in English, know how to use video editing software, and let’s not forget Photoshop and Illustrator. From the idea’s inception to the nice wrapping at the end of the project, copywriters need to know it all. At the beginning of the new millennium, Italian author Alessandro Baricco identified the new barbarians as surfers who skimmed the surface of knowledge and, a dozen years or so later, we can see how users embody such attitude having become jacks of all trades. On the other hand, though, we find an army of professionals who delve into the heart of things to provide news and material always up-to-date. Unlike their readers, they’re specialist.