It’s the most badly named job in the world

I once did a workshop with some school kids and asked them what they thought a copywriter did. The silence was so profound that you could hear the astronauts scratching their arses on the International Space Station.

Finally, a boy piped up:

‘Is your job to…copy things?’

‘Hahaha, good guess, but no!’ I said, pushing him out of the room in case he exposed any more secrets of the trade.

Still, they had every right not to have a clue, because it’s a spectaularly badly-named job. I mean, you’d think that a bunch of people whose job it was to NAME THINGS could have come up with a better title.

Commanding Officer of the English Language, Word Chandler, Pun Pusher, Grammar Guardian, Shit Polisher, Failed Novelist - anything would be better than copywriter, which conjures up the following:

• Scrooge-like legal underwriter hunched over desk - possibly Kermit

• Chirpy girl reporter called Jane sent by Humphrey Bogart to cover a story involving Chicago gangsters

• Typist painting nails at desk

• Struggling junior lawyer in an 80s movie, with a terrible boyfriend played by Alec Baldwin

• Lowly secretary who takes notes and resists sexual advances from a man called Ron

• Absolute loser who sits in the corner copying things.

Me and another satisfied client

Of course, none of this could be further from the truth. Being a copywriter is REALLY HARD. I’ve written novels that have been easier than working out the right brand prop line for a structural engineering firm. I’ve laboured over social posts about mobile phone deals for hours. And I’ve also written screeds of words and solved thorny problems so fast that I’ve occasionally considered going home at 10am.

But there is no going home when you’re a copywriter. The office is your head. You can never leave.

It’s the kind of job that keeps your mind working out long after the gym (office) is closed. Work haunts you in the bath and in your sleep. Your brain fires indiscriminate puns and word play at you while you’re looking a menu in a restaurant or in the kitchen, chopping onions.

Copywriting is a cognitive puzzle that’s simultaneously really shallow and stupid and fun and also like trying to work out the solution to world peace on the back of an envelope.

Now, I’m not saying it’s as important as being a nurse or an air traffic controller.

Nobody will die if you can’t think of a banging line for a billboard, or there’s a misplaced comma in a leaflet about boilers.

But it is a craft, and it is an art, and it is a technical discipline that’s worth paying for. And it’s definitely not about copying things.

Really, though, copywriters need to put our heads together and find a better name, because it’s rubbish.

Maybe we should ask ChatGPT.

What’s another name for a Copywriter?

Never mind.

Thanks for reading this month’s blog!

If you need a Creative Writer in Advertising Contexts who has better hand/eye coordination than Kermit (well, after 11am, anyway) give me a shout.