Episode #23: How to Become a Better Writer with Special Guest Allison Philips
In this episode, we interview advertising copywriter Allison Philips. Allison talks about her experiences in four different ad markets – New York, San Francisco, Miami, and Washington, D.C. She outlines what skills make for a good writer in advertising, and provides her favorite writing hacks, tools, and tips to become a better writer.
How to Become a Better Writer with Special Guest Allison Philips Episode Recap
In this episode, Kelly interviews Allison Phillips, a seasoned advertising and marketing copywriter with over two decades of experience. We will delve into Allison’s unique journey in the advertising world and discover what led her to pursue writing as her career. From New York to San Francisco, Miami, and finally Arlington. Allison’s story is an inspiring testament to the resilience and passion required to succeed in the ever-evolving world of advertising.
From a young age, Allison had an innate fascination with advertising and marketing. She recalls putting together scrapbooks of magazine tear-outs and analyzing TV advertisements and supermarket promotions. She was captivated by the art of emotional persuasion and understanding how to engage and sell to people effectively. This early inclination towards writing and marketing laid the foundation for her future career.
Allison began her copywriting journey as a junior writer at Better Homes and Gardens in New York. Working on book club divisions with a focus on home and garden crafting, she honed her skills in creating emotional connections and engaging her audience. This experience in New York served as a springboard for her career, prompting her to move to San Francisco after a few years. In San Francisco, Allison joined an advertising agency as a proofreader, starting from the ground up to learn the nuances of ad agency work. This invaluable experience taught her how to collaborate with different teams and provided her with an opportunity to work on major accounts such as AT&T during the rise of the digital age.
After spending some years in San Francisco, Allison sought a change of scenery and moved to the vibrant advertising market in Miami. There, she immersed herself in the digital landscape, learning the ins and outs of writing for different audiences and platforms. The experience in Miami provided her with a unique perspective on advertising and exposed her to a diverse range of projects.
The Art of Writing for Advertising and Marketing:
Writing for advertising and marketing requires a specific set of skills and characteristics. Allison shares some valuable insights for aspiring writers in the field:
- Simplicity: In today’s digital age, keeping messages simple and concise is crucial to capturing the attention of busy audiences. Avoid overwhelming them with lengthy texts and embrace the power of storytelling.
- Understanding Your Audience: Tailor your writing to different audiences and platforms, whether it’s a social media post, a blog, or an email campaign. Knowing your audience’s preferences and behavior is essential for effective communication.
- Embrace Tools and Hacks: Allison’s favorite writing hacks include using the thesaurus for inspiration and leveraging tools like Word Tune to improve writing efficiency.
- Take Breaks: Writing can be mentally taxing, so don’t be afraid to take short breaks to refresh your mind. Allison recommends writing in half-hour increments and stepping away for a few minutes to let your ideas marinate.
- Writing Headlines: Writing impactful headlines can be a rewarding challenge. It involves condensing the essence of a message into a few words, making the reader curious and engaged.
Allison Phillips’ remarkable journey in the advertising and marketing world showcases the power of passion and persistence. Writing for advertising and marketing requires creativity, adaptability, and a deep understanding of the audience. By embracing simplicity, storytelling, and leveraging helpful writing tools, aspiring writers can find success in this exciting and ever-evolving industry. If you have a love for writing and marketing, this may be the perfect path for you to unleash the power of words and captivate audiences in the digital age.
Episode Transcript:
Kelly
Today’s episode is called How to become a better writer with special guest Allison Philips.
Welcome, Allison.
Allison
Thank you, Kelly. It’s just such a pleasure to be on with you.
Kelly
I’m happy to have you here. Allison Phillips has over two decades of experience as an advertising and marketing copywriter. Her work has appeared in campaigns for clients such as AARP, Audi, Bloomberg, Blue Shield, Burger King, Citibank, Marriott, and Oracle. So, let’s dig right in Allison. We’ve known each other for over 25 years, and we have had both very unique journeys and advertising. You’ve worked in four different markets if I’m right, San Francisco, DC, Miami, New York. Yes. And you’ve worked on both the client and agency side and you’ve also experienced the firsthand volatility of the agency world. But you’ve been extremely resilient. Can you tell us a little bit about your personal journey and what led you to writing as a career?
Allison
Of course, I fortunate in that I always wanted to be a writer. And I always sort of leaned into the marketing side before I even knew what it was. When I was like eight years old, I was putting together scrapbooks of tear outs from magazines. I, you know, because of course, we didn’t have digital back then. And looking at advertisement on TV and looking at promotions in the supermarkets, and really sort of realizing, oh, this stuff is great. You know, how do you reach out to people? How do you sell them things? How do you move them emotionally? And so, I was fortunate that I knew that early on that I wanted to be a writer and that kind of writer. And I started my copywriting career as a sort of very junior copywriter, at Better Homes and Gardens. At the time, they had a division that was book clubs. I’m sorry, what city, this is a New York, okay. And I don’t know how many people remember the old Time Warner Book of the Month Club. But these book clubs were fashioned after that. And we their focus was home and garden crafting that sort of thing. They were a little bit of a precursor to what Martha Stewart does now. And so, I got my feet wet in the door, learning how to write about different products, learning how to make that emotional connection with your audience, and encourage them to do what you wanted them to do in the best way possible. And you know, put things in front of them that maybe they hadn’t seen before, in a very engaging way. So that was in New York. And then I used to go to San Francisco on vacation all the time, and decided eventually to move there after working at the Better Homes Book Clubs for about seven years. So, I made the transition from East Coast to West, which is you know, is just a completely different thing. And, and I was lucky enough to get my feet wet and advertising got into an advertising agency as a proofreader, because I had no experience as an ad agency copywriter, so I had to learn from the ground up. And I started off proofreading, which was great. It gave me a great grounding in learning, like everything about the ad business, first, and learning how to collaborate with people from the account people to the graphic design people. And then I was reading everything. So, I was understanding how to write to different audiences about different products and services. One of the biggest accounts I worked on at the time was AT&T, when they were just coming out with mobile phones. And so, we were literally doing like 200 mobile phone apps every day, which was like insanity. But it’s such a great learning experience to just be thrown into that and must see and deal with everything at the same time. And so, I spent about six years in San Francisco. After that I worked for a couple of other ad agencies and started to write and then wanted to move and just get that change of scenery. I like different stimulations. I don’t like doing the same thing over and over and over. That’s not my personality. And so, I decided to move somewhere tropical so I moved to Miami, which is very tropical You get lizards in your bathroom day and night.
It’s supremely tropical. But it was it was so much fun. It was just a completely different change of pace. Miamians can be a lot of fun. And there’s a ton of advertising there, as well. It’s sort of an, you know, underestimated ad market, I think is there’s some interesting ad agencies and, you know, sort of presentation, presentations, excuse me going on there. And so, I worked, I ended up working for like a major digital ad agency. And once again, this was great, because I really started to focus in on everything that was happening in digital all the time, much like the agency was out in San Francisco, where I started learning all about advertising. Now I was on digital, which was really starting to explode. This was a little over 10 years ago. And you know, everything digital was starting to come up like YouTube was becoming a thing. You were starting to see all the different channels open up, banner ads were popping up everywhere. And so, I had to learn to write those. So luckily, once again, I found myself in a position where I was able to just learn, dive right in and learn everything about digital, which was very helpful at the time. And so, I lived in Miami for about five years. And then a little over 10 years ago, I came up the coast, stayed on the East Coast, came up the coast. And now I live in Arlington. And I again, I’ve been just fortunate in my career, you do have to be persistent persistence is really the key to the whole thing. But Britain, we just been fortunate to work for just a variety of ad agencies, and then work on the client side as well and in house groups, and just learn how to collaborate with not just creative team members. But again, you know, the executive side, the C suite, and you know, just determine like the best messaging for whatever it is we’re trying to do.
Kelly
So, you worked at four markets, I’ve worked in three markets, San Francisco, DC, and LA, how would you compare the different markets? Are certain markets your favorite? How do you how do you feel about for a new person starting out what you know, which market would you recommend? And what is the differences between the various markets?
Allison
Oh, that’s a good question. I would say, San Francisco is my favorite market. Because for the first time, I was able to really delve all the way into advertising in a way that I hadn’t before. Like, of course, I knew what it was, I’d spent time studying and, and so on. But it’s different when you’re dealing with every day, interacting with people in the industry, working with your team members, you know, dealing with your clients good and bad. And that really, really was a great Launchpad for me. Who knows I might have stayed a proof reader? You know, for years and years, if I hadn’t had that, it really was a great Launchpad for me to realize, you know, that I could get my head around all these different elements in these different teams, and these multifaceted campaigns, and figure out how to work them from a writing perspective, in terms of recommending the best market for young people right now, it’s tricky, because you must factor in sort of the post pandemic landscape. We’re getting there. It’s slow before getting there. And you know, as I’m sure you’ve seen, there’s been so much turmoil in the advertising, from the global groups all the way down to the smaller groups over the last year and a half. And that’s probably going to continue for a while. I will say that. So, you got to keep that in mind. If you’re starting out. I think at this point, I would recommend going for a smaller market. The big cities. Yes, they might have more opportunity, but they’ll also have more people looking for those opportunities. You might be better off as a junior person or somebody with no experience reaching out to let’s say owners of smaller ad agencies are looking to see what roles the smaller added, ad agencies and marketing groups are looking to fill. And starting from there. In terms of which one was my favorite market that’s tough. They’re like my babies. It’s hard to put a to give one an apple, I would say they all have things to recommend them. But again, you know, for since we’re in this strange, again, heading towards the end of the pandemic landscape, I’d recommend going with a smaller group. I think that’s helpful.
Kelly
It’s also interesting that you talk about proofreading because it’s really a lost art. To a certain extent, people don’t hire proofreaders anymore. And they should, because the stakes are still made. And I don’t see many at agencies anymore, do you?
Allison
I don’t, I can’t remember the last time I talked to a proofreader at an ad agency. And you’re so right, because it’s, you know, I read all them a bunch of major and some minor websites all the time. And I see typos all the time. And not, you know, you don’t want to knock anybody but if it was a proofreader in the room, you know, that would be helpful. You make a great point about that. It’s, um, you know, I know people use a lot of online tools and stuff like that, but the typos still kind of sneaking up there.
Kelly
We all have a story or two, in fact, we did a whole podcast episode about it. And I had plenty to tell. So, tell me a little bit about what skills you think are make for a good writer for advertising and marketing?
Allison
Oh, gosh, that’s a good question, too. There are different kinds of writers, of course, so you must take that into consideration. Specifically for marketing and advertising. There’s, there’s certain skills that can be taught, and there’s certain skills that some people naturally have. So, you have to think about that balance a little bit, too. Yeah, there’s a lot of lots of things that can be learned. And then it’s helpful, I think, if you have certain characteristics, and not everybody has to have the same ones, of course, but it’s helpful if you have some of these that you can sort of deploy when you need to be able to, one of the first things I would say is, these days, everybody’s taking in so much information. I mean, I think I read somewhere that we take in more information, like in a week’s time than our grandparents did in like a year’s time, some wild statistic like that, which is mind boggling. But it’s true. You know, we’re online all the time, we have our devices all the time, you were getting information coming at us like, like crazy all the time. Keep it simple. Whatever your messages, whatever, whoever your audiences, whether you’re trying to sell a product or a service, or promote, let’s say, a nonprofit, keep your message simple. The simpler, the better. If you’re trying to encourage somebody to either buy something or take advantage of something or, you know, on the website take a specific action, that the shorter the simpler, the better. Because the other thing we have is now people don’t read that much anymore. That video has exploded, you know, to the point where there’s people just reading headlines and watching videos. So, if like your headline isn’t catchy, or your text is too long, you’re going to lose them right off the bat. So, simplicity is the first order of business. To the point you just made about proofreading, you got to have a basics. You got to have your spelling and your grammar and your punctuation. Yes, again, there are a ton of online tools. But you got to have those basics down. Otherwise, they’re going to come back to bite you. And usually at the worst possible time on the biggest campaign with the biggest dance do. Yeah, yeah, every time, every time. Understanding who your audiences, whatever your message is, whether it’s a Facebook ad, or you’re writing a blog post, or reading banner ads, or reading in an email nurture campaign, every audience now is going to be different, we have so many digital channels, we still have the traditional marketing channels. So, you must look at the you have to first understand the channel you’re writing for. But then more importantly, you must understand the audience you’re writing for. Like every, every sort of writing engagement is going to be different. Now you can’t write the same thing for everyone or every channel. You know, Facebook has the character count and your blog post is only so many words and your email campaigns must have certain specifics in them. And you really must understand how the challenge work and then even more, what you want how you want to engage your audience and drive them to specific actions. This is another thing that’s very basic, and you hear it all the time, but it’s I think it’s even more important now with all the digital noise and trying to cut through that clutter and trying to you know, engage not only your loyal customers but also prospects in terms of you know, selling a product. You have to be able to tell a story that not just engages them but keeps them coming back. It has to be a story that makes sense to them. Yes, of course, you want to move your products, you want to promote your services, what have you. But you also, if the audience isn’t there with you, that’s not going to drive revenue for you, that’s not going to drive your company objectives, that’s not going to make your brand sort of stand out in the sea of like the millions of other brands out there that are popping up, it seems like literally every day. So, it’s, you know, storytelling is one of the oldest forms of entertainment, you know, on the planet. And it’s more through, like a lot of different sorts of variations over the years. And I think it’s more important than ever, because if you’re not telling a story, that’s engaging that audience that’s exciting to that audience, like the looking to see what you’re coming up with next, whatever you’re doing,
You’re going to lose them in like a second, like, these days, there’s no time to like, sort of, you know, wander around in the forest, and oh, look at the trees. Oh, that’s a nice tree. Unfortunately, we live in this, you know, every nanosecond counts, digital age, where you kind of have to be on point as much as you can. And of course, I’m not saying there’s no room for enhancements, improvements, adjustments and so on. But before you try to sell anything, right, anything to sell anything, or promote anything, what’s your story? what’s, what are you going to? How are you promoting this brand? How are you positioning this brand? You know, what are you telling people about who you are? Yeah, we want to know all about them. And, you know, we track them, and what did they click on? And what did they like, and that’s great, but they want to know who you are to. And if they don’t like who you are, they’re going to go someplace else in like five seconds. So that’s, that’s, I think one of the basics that gets a little bit lost in translation is people talk browned, and post and clicks and links and Google Analytics, and you got to keep that in mind that the story needs attention to, it’s helpful if, particularly, if you’re working on a lot of digital pieces, you have a strong understanding of SEO and keywords, and how the search engines work. And analytics as well. Google, of course, is the beast of them all. And then there’s an open source, one called Matomo, that’s really, good, has a lot of things you can do to see what your visitors to your website are doing. But yeah, just get a, you don’t have to be like, you know, data scientists’ level with them, but get a firm understanding of what the analytics are. And especially if you’re working on, you know, specific complex campaigns, where you’re going to have multiple pieces, it’s, it’s very helpful to understand who’s doing what, as you go through that.
Kelly
I think people in advertising are used to writing or thinking in 30 seconds segments, right, because that’s the standard length of a TV spot. But it seems obviously since social media that we need to communicate and even less time, if you’re talking about other digital elements that you’re doing, or a banner or Google AdWords, etc., there’s so many ways, elements that are out there to be able to try and get your message. So, keeping it simple is really the most challenging thing. I think, for all of us in advertising and marketing. If someone asked me, you know, write a plan for this write an ad for this, I can write all day long on any topic, but to write it to a specific number of characters. That’s the challenge. And so that really takes some experience and learning and understanding what the, what the important keywords are the motivating words, right? And those sorts of things. And so that’s what I find the biggest challenge I recently had, a client asked me to write their marketing plan in one page. Wow. Yeah. And I think it took me a whole week to figure out how to do that. I mean, I can write a marketing plan with my eyes closed, but to write it in one page and really condense it down. I mean, that’s really thinking it thinking about it. So, there’s so many ways that we use writing in our daily lives in this career, no matter what position that you have at it, but it’s extremely important. So, um, talk to us about what your best writing hacks are, and what are the tools that will help you become a better writer?
Allison
My favorite hack is the Thesaurus. I know a lot of people use spellcheck, but it’s interesting. thing, as I’ve talked to people here and there over the years, people don’t go to the thesaurus so much. It’s interesting of all the things you know. And I love it. I love it. Because what it does for me, I dropped my word in, it could be like the simplest word like range or complicated word like obfuscation, I dropped my word in. And it brings me back a bunch of words, which don’t necessarily always automatically give me a word that I’m going to use. But what it does is it starts the engine of or I click on some of the words and I get more words, and it gives me sort of a line of sight into, oh, maybe I could say this, or I could say that, or I could put this word in art, put that word out. It’s a great stimulator to just sort of get your creative juices flowing. And like I say, sometimes I walk away, you know, I’ll jump on the site, I’ll pull up some words. And I’ll think, oh, I don’t like any of those words. But it’ll get me started thinking, especially if I start playing a rough run with take some time and start playing around with them and seeing what comes back. And it just gives me that stimulative point that I need to keep moving with whatever I’m doing. Another thing I use is a word tune. This is great. It’s a free tool on free online, too. I’m running that down. And it’s, it’s great. You just whatever you’re writing, you just drop it in the little box. And it comes back with a bunch of different suggestions of how you could write that. =
Kelly
Where have you been the last 20 years? You did not tell me this piece of information? I guess maybe it just started existed the last couple years. Oh, that’s fantastic. Thank you.
Allison
You’re welcome. Yes, so that’s helpful, too. And again, it’s, it’s these things are great, because they give you these stimulation points that you can work with to give your ideas. You might not, again, like every phrase or sentence or with a thesaurus, like every word that comes up, but it keeps the juices flowing, it gives you that stimulation when you feel like you’ve got writer’s block, but you can’t quite think of the next thing. And one of the, that leads me into my next hack, which is I think even growing up I got this impression too that, okay, if you’re going to write something, you must sit there for two or three hours and write it till it was finished. And it had to be every word had to be perfect. And I that pressure must go away; I think it’s still out there a little bit. It’s, it’s not going to be perfect the first time you’re writing, it might not be perfect the 10th time you write it. But as a writer, this is what you’re going to be doing. And so, what you want to do is put yourself in the best position possible to write something that might not be perfect, but that’s great. And so, take breaks. And that goes against all conventional wisdom of God, right? This Oh, my God, what’s my next word? Oh, my God, I don’t know what to say, at all. You’re just staring at a blank screen, which is literally my favorite hobby. What’s next, take breaks. Like literally, I would recommend writing in half hour increments, hmm, I’ll tell you, that’s what I do. And it’s made, it makes such a difference. Because you’re writing you’re writing and you’re burning your brain and you’re straining and you’re, you know, you’ve got 20 files open on your computer, and you’re like, Oh, my God, oh, my God. And let me tell you, you stop and you break for five or 10 minutes, go outside, talk to someone play some music, whatever you like to do. And then you come back. And it’s like, it just starts to flow. But you must do it all the time. You can’t like sit there for three hours break for half an hour, and then go back and burn your brain for like another three hours. It’s got to be like relatively consistent. And of course, figure out I do have every half an hour, figure out your, your parameter, what works for you, depending on of course, your living situation, we’re all at home now. And figure out like the routine of that, that works for you. Because it makes a huge difference. Because when you’re sitting there straining, it does not come I can tell you that from 20 years of, you know, working through this, it does not come or stuff comes out but it’s not as good as it could be. Whereas if you give yourself give your brain the chance to sort of process the information you’re working with. To get to the information that you want to put out there. It’s it makes a huge difference. And, the other thing you can get up joking about staring at the screen. But what I also do, I didn’t do this early in my career and I wish I had because it would have been really helpful but what I’ve done what started to do the last few years is stuck writing on paper, I don’t even look at the screen, I get a sense of what the project is what the messaging is supposed to be, look at the creative brief talk to the creative team, the account people, you know, get your head around whatever it is, or if you’re in advertising and marketing, but you’re not a writer per se, and you’re working on PowerPoints and, and recent emails, and so on, understand what it is you have to write from a very general perspective, then just sit down with a piece of paper and take your time with it as much as you can. You know, we all have insane deadlines, I know. But if it’s particularly if it’s going to be this big, complex campaign, or, you know, important set of emails, that kind of thing, just walk away from the computer, put the computers down people and get a piece of paper, get your notebook, and just jot some things down. And again, it’s the same process, it doesn’t have to be perfect, jot down your ideas, jot down your sense of whatever it was you got from the creative brief, or the last meeting you were in with the team, that kind of thing. And just make some notes, make some notes, go outside if you can, and make these notes, and then go back to the computer. And then what you do, you build an outline, don’t write anything except the outline, build an outline from your notes. Same thing, take your breaks, go to the kitchen, get a snack, or set the snacks on hand, very important. And then come back. Once you’ve done your notes and your outline, then you’re ready to write. That’s the point where you start to go, Okay, this is what we’re going to talk about here and there and so on.
Kelly
I love that. So, I call some of that like marinating where I need to marinate on something. And I must walk away from my computer. And the ideas usually come to me either in the shower, or time between 11pm and 2am. while I’m sleeping and think marinating on the topic, and that’s why I always have my phone or, you know, a notebook next to me at bed. And I’m always writing down these random notes on my phone to remind me what it is that my big idea that I came up with? Yeah, because your mind must have that time to process. And, you know, like you said, it’s difficult if it’s a new business pitch, or if it’s some, you know, campaign and you have a deadline ideas don’t necessarily come on demand, you have to kind of pull them out. And there’s different techniques to do that. So, I think you gave some great suggestions there.
Kelly
So, tell me what you enjoy about writing the most?
Allison
I’m always tempted to say well, everything, but that’s not true. At sometimes it’s you know, sometimes you’re just under pressure. And it’s, that’s always the toughest thing, because you want to deliver a good product. And there’s multiple moving parts, and there’s changes. And there’s, you know, there’s specific things that you must do. So that’s, that’s the thing that I wouldn’t say I disliked the most that I know, I’m going away from your question, but I’ll come back to it. I wouldn’t say that’s the thing I dislike the most. But that’s the thing, that’s the most challenging, because for me, it’s I want to know everything about what I’m doing. I want to know everything about the audience. I want to know all the analytics I want to and it’s tough when you don’t, you can’t take the time to kind of dive into every single little element and play with it and play with the words. And I just want to do I want to play with the words more. That’s where I’m coming from. I have to say my favorite thing is writing headlines. Yeah, I know that it’s kind of random. But I’ve had to do so many of them. And they’re always challenging because it’s, you know, it’s four or five words, maybe six or seven, depending on your character can wherever you are, but it’s no more than that. And you must communicate everything in those 567 words at you don’t you don’t have the benefit of a you know, a blog post. It’s what you know, 1200 words, what have you to what you were saying about your client asking you for one page marketing plan. It’s a little bit it’s a little bit in that wheelhouse of I have to communicate a whole campaign and this promote a product in this sell a service in this. Talk about a nonprofit in this. Sometimes the first headline you write for the first campaign you write is might be the first thing that people see, you know, people come in at different points of the, of the, the consumer prospect cycle. But a lot of times, that’s going to be the first thing that they see. So, there’s a lot of pressure on that. It’s like, you could write dancing in the dark. And it would mean a lot of different things to different people, but does it communicate what you want to communicate about your brand or your service that we’re happy? So that’s, that’s my big thing. I spend a lot of time doing that. And it’s challenging, but I really, really enjoy it. Wonderful.
Kelly
So, for those young people who are, you know, moving into advertising and or marketing, and want to become you’re thinking about becoming a writer, how did they determine that this is the right path for them? in it, because a lot of frankly, a lot of advertising people, including myself, or want to be account people or want to be creatives and or failed creators thought that that’s what they were supposed to do. And that kind of moved on over to the account side? Or, you know, how do you know that this is it for you that that the writing side is really the path that you should follow?
Allison
Great question. Yeah. And it’s, it’s tough today, because there’s a lot of options out there. You know, kids can just pick up a computer and start creating video games like your son does, or, you know, the Bitcoin thing, the whole cryptocurrency thing and mining this, there’s all of that, too. There’s a lot of avenues people could choose. So yeah, how do you decide my writing is with my head down, you know, typing out all these words is going to be the thing. I think you want to ask yourself a few questions before you do anything before you talk to anybody, or jump online and go down these rabbit holes of this is what you should do. You want to ask yourself, okay, to the point you just made? Do you like being creative? in any form? It doesn’t have to be writing necessarily, but do you like sort of what you’ve seen of creativity to this point in your life? Um, you know, that it’s helpful to just have that mindset, because I’ve learned through the years from working with just tons of different people in different industries, there are different mindsets. And you don’t necessarily have to be 100% creative to be a writer, but it’s helpful if you have some creative feeling and understanding of it. So that’s, that’s one of the main questions I’ve asked yourself, also, do you like to read? Because you’re going to spend most of your time reading? True? Yeah, yeah, it’s, um, it’s not something. You know, it’s not like accounting, where you’re going to be able to minimize it or get away from it. Because you’ll mostly be working with numbers. It’s something that you’re going to have to do. Yes, you’ll be in meetings. Yes, you’ll be on Team junkets. Yes, you’ll be on the zooms as we are all everyday now. But you’re going to have to do a ton of research. To get your writing going, you’re going to have to read, you know, emails and creative briefs and white papers and blog posts, and you’re going to be constantly doing that. So if that’s not something you think you’re going to want to do every single day, then you’re gonna have to think about that a little bit. Have you started actually writing anything? Up to this point? Have you? Did you write for your school newspaper? Do you have your own blog? Do you? Have you been able to intern at an ad agency, that kind of thing? How much experience Have you had at this point? Do you sort of know what the actual job would entail? And of course, there’s different kinds of writers, you know, somebody who writes for, say, a publishing company, as opposed to a marketing group or an ad agency, or an in-house corporate group doing say, HR, communications, those would all be different things. So, you’d have to sort of extrapolate what kind of role you want to do as well. So, these questions are, you know, they’re somewhat simple, but they really if you sit down and give it some time, and really sort of look at your experience, and think about what you want for career overall, we’ll help you determine if you know, this is really the direction you should go in and understand that it’s a lot of work. I’ve had people say to me, oh, you’re a writer. That must be such a cool job and an is, but it’s also a lot of work. You’re not just you know, sort of getting on the computer for a couple of hours a day and writing some playing with a thesaurus and writing some nice things. campaigns are very complex. Now you’ve got all the digital channels to deal with. You have the analytics to deal with. And there’s a lot of moving parts, there’s a lot of details and you must be on top of these details. Because if you write the right the wrong thing on something that goes on a website, or on a banner ad, that’s not good. So just ask yourself these questions, as Kelly was saying, let it marinate a little bit. And then once you sort of figure it out, if you come out of that, with a positive feeling of Oh, yes, this is something that I really could get into, I really want to do talk to people who work in the field and get their sense of for somebody starting because it’s different. Now. When I started, there was no, you know, digital, it just didn’t exist. You wrote, you wrote, but there was no Facebook, there was no Instagram, there was no, you didn’t do banner ads, there was none of that. So, it’s very different. Now, I would highly recommend talking to people who have written not just on the digital side, but also for traditional marketing as well.
Kelly
That’s great. I think that’s really wonderful advice. Well, how can people get ahold of you? Allison, if they’re interested in learning more or connecting with you?
Allison
Oh, gosh, just go to my LinkedIn, which is Allison Phillips, https://www.linkedin.com/in/allison-philips-3b33b624/ or email me, aphilips10@gmail.com.
