Bad advice and a good creative diet

Here’s some food for thought – what’s the worst bit of advice you’ve ever been given?

Mine came in a job interview. I was sat in a craft beer bar (where else do you have an interview for an agency?) running the creative directors through my portfolio. 

Eager to prove my chops, I made sure they knew every contribution I’d made to the creative. ‘That visual was my idea’, ‘I edited this video because the motion designer was on holiday’, ‘I’m learning to code’.

I was locked into my flow state – my work was strong and I had an insightful answer to every question – and then one of the CDs stopped me.  

I’d just shared a video I’d written, found footage for and edited together. He looked me and said, ‘You’re applying for the copywriter job. Stop trying to do everything and stick to copywriting.’ Sharper words than the citrus notes cutting through my IPA.

As a young creative I was eager to please, and I listened when people gave me advice. So my salads of Bauhaus design, Petra Collin’s photos and Spike Jonze’s films became a gruel of
Trott blogs – words words words for breakfast, lunch and dinner. I stopped training on Code Academy and deleted a YouTube playlist full of After Effects tutorials.

Five nouns and verbs a day

The next year passed in a lexical haze and I started to wonder if I could stomach being a copywriter being so razor-focused on words. I decided to go travelling and get away from agency life. And a funny thing happened – I didn’t write a thing outside of my diary.

I spent my time designing t-shirts and stickers in my head. The time, landscapes and European bread made me realise I was starving for some creativity. The advice was bad, but much worse, by following it, I’d put myself on a creative diet.

I realised you need the right nourishment to grow your creative body of work and make sure you have a healthy, rounded outlook on how to solve clients’ tricky briefs.

Once my adventure was done, I came back to the industry refreshed and jumped straight into learning more about strategy and how to bridge the gap between strategy and studio teams… My copy has never been better.

Those that eat together create together

Here at Storycatchers, I have the platform to follow my creative hunger wherever it takes me. And I’m not the only beneficiary of that – my colleagues and our clients are too.

My job title is a Storycatcher, the same as everyone else in the agency, because ideas can and do come from everyone. It’s a liberating way to work.

The freedom to look beyond the words and narrative of a project gives me a much wider understanding of, and influence in, the creative process. By working collaboratively and unrestricted, we can get to the right answers quicker and spend more time fine-tuning them with clients.

Looking back, I’m grateful for the bad advice. It took me on a journey, and I now have a real appreciation for my creative hunger.

I’m going to stick to copywriting. But I firmly believe it’s a copywriter’s duty to gorge in the trough of everything that intrigues us – because the results are often both wonderful and delicious.