Copywriting 101: Crafting Your First Ad Campaign | Heather Baldock | Skillshare
Drawer
Search

Playback Speed


  • 0.5x
  • 1x (Normal)
  • 1.25x
  • 1.5x
  • 2x

Copywriting 101: Crafting Your First Ad Campaign

teacher avatar Heather Baldock, Copywriter

Watch this class and thousands more

Get unlimited access to every class
Taught by industry leaders & working professionals
Topics include illustration, design, photography, and more

Watch this class and thousands more

Get unlimited access to every class
Taught by industry leaders & working professionals
Topics include illustration, design, photography, and more

Lessons in This Class

    • 1.

      Copywriting 101: An Introduction

      2:42

    • 2.

      Copywriting 101: The Brief

      4:31

    • 3.

      Copywriting 101: Headline Writing

      7:47

    • 4.

      Copywriting 101: Scripts

      8:05

    • 5.

      Copywriting 101: Ad Making, a Mini Lesson

      3:26

    • 6.

      Copywriting 101: The Big Idea

      4:41

    • 7.

      Copywriting 101: The Portfolio

      5:43

  • --
  • Beginner level
  • Intermediate level
  • Advanced level
  • All levels

Community Generated

The level is determined by a majority opinion of students who have reviewed this class. The teacher's recommendation is shown until at least 5 student responses are collected.

3,442

Students

46

Projects

About This Class

Who is this class for? Writers who would like to step into the world of advertising. No prior knowledge required except a passion for writing and an interest in the ad industry.

Why take this class? These lessons are meant to introduce some basic principles of copywriting for creative ad campaigns. The goal is to get aspiring copywriters to start thinking and creating in a structured way, in order to craft mock projects for a portfolio and get their foot in the door. 

What are we making? A rudimentary, integrated ad campaign with multiple copy-driven components, from print ads to commercial scripts.

If you would like to read a transcript of any of the classes, you can find a transcript booklet in the class resources. Please share your class projects, and feel free to reach out with any questions or just to connect! Email me at heatherebaldock@gmail.com. (Don't forget the "e" in the middle there!)

Meet Your Teacher

Teacher Profile Image

Heather Baldock

Copywriter

Teacher

Heather Baldock has over nine years of ad agency experience between two coasts. Dabbling a little bit in everything, she excels in writing for commercial spots (with one Best TV Spot of the Year Addy), prints ads, digital, social media, and dating app bios (she has a lot of single friends).

Previous and current clients span from health to the tourism industry to energy to law to baseball to food to health to refugee resettlement, to name a handful.

She's always excited by new challenges and HBO TV shows. She currently works as a senior copywriter at the Community, and is also available for freelance. Email her a hello, a note, or a good joke at heatherebaldock@gmail.com.

See full profile

Level: Beginner

Class Ratings

Expectations Met?
    Exceeded!
  • 0%
  • Yes
  • 0%
  • Somewhat
  • 0%
  • Not really
  • 0%

Why Join Skillshare?

Take award-winning Skillshare Original Classes

Each class has short lessons, hands-on projects

Your membership supports Skillshare teachers

Learn From Anywhere

Take classes on the go with the Skillshare app. Stream or download to watch on the plane, the subway, or wherever you learn best.

Transcripts

1. Copywriting 101: An Introduction: Hi. My name is Heather and I'm a copywriter at KSV. I've worked in advertising for over three years. In this class, you're going to learn how to write for an integrated ad campaign. That means you're going to learn the basics of headline writing. You're going to write a brand manifesto, some commercial scripts, radio scripts, and then we're going to look at how we can apply those elements to other areas to really build out this campaign. This is all to help benefit your portfolio, to really build it up and get you in the door somewhere some day. First of all, let's talk about a day in the life of a copywriter. They may differ depending on whether you work at an ad agency or in-house. What do those mean? Working in-house means you work inside the company to create creative content. That means that you're just working on content for that one brand. A lot of the times it could mean you have more of a 9:00-5:00 type schedule too. An example of an in-house agency is Yellow Shoes. They are the internal creative group for Disney. Ad agencies focus on several brands at the same time. For example, Wieden+Kennedy. They've got a lot of accounts, create a lot of work, and a lot of different locations. Ad agency itself can be a very broad term as well. They differ in shapes and sizes and focuses. Some might focus only on food. Others might be small and focus just on local companies. Others might just be focused on digital work. It's all about finding what's right for you. What's a day in the life? Well, typically you're going to work on most your work with an art director. That is the other half to your whole. They're going to help shape the visual side of all of your creative concepts and you're going to work together to make some great work. Sometimes that's set up like a partner who you'll work with exclusively at the agency or maybe you work with a different partner on several different projects. Sometimes you'll be asked to work on a big campaign. Come like this integrated campaign that we're kicking off in this class and other times you're just may asked for small day-to-day tasks. Maybe that's for a smaller marketing push and only one or two digital ads are needed. Regardless, each assignment starts with a kickoff and a brief, which will go into our next lesson and discuss as a whole is just going to teach you the basics; the blueprints for making your own ad campaign. The brand we'll be working on for this class is going to be not real, but feel free to use real brands if you feel some inspiration out there. Just make sure that on your portfolio you're indicating that those are mock projects and not real work. There's a lot of great work out there already and the point is not to recreate that same work, but to try and find new creative opportunities. But enough talking about what you're going to learn. Let's just get started. 2. Copywriting 101: The Brief: Hey, there, this is Heather. We're back to talk about the brief, the most important first step for every project. Now you can think about the brief like your assignment sheet. But it's really a lot more than that. For one, it's created by a strategist. Their job is to look at the client, look at the brand, and do a lot of research to find really unique insights and see where could this go. The brief will tell us some critical pieces of information that we need to make this project. The who, what, where, and when, for one, we need to know the who, the client that we're making this for and also the who of the audience, who are we talking to? We also need to know what do we know about them? Any key insights about this person. Interesting needs that they might have or just anything we really know. We also need to know what we're making, which is the mediums that we'll be exploring. We also need to know where it's going to live out in the world, whether that's going to be online or on TV, or maybe out of home like a billboard. Then we've got another one. When does it do? Make sure you mark that deadline on your calendar. You'll be introduced to the brief during a creative kickoff, which is when you're Q and A time to ask what you need to know to get this done. After that, you'll be setup, working with your art directors, really polish off those ideas. You will next go through some back and forth with your creative director to get approval on those ideas and really polish them up. That's going to be a lot of rounds of creative feedback to get to that point. When your ideas have been approved by your creative director, then it will be pitched to the client. Then you get to learn whether or not it'll get out in the world when making your own mock projects. You will have a brief necessarily. That doesn't mean you shouldn't be stepping into the shoes of a strategist. Every great creative idea you have should come from a bulletproof insight that you found from a brand. Like I said on the last video, we should be looking at brands are already well established, that had a lot of work done already. Looking for new creative opportunities elsewhere. That means you could look for a up and coming brand, maybe something local, or maybe it's a brand that people have heard of. But you've thought of a different type of insight or messaging, a new angle that they haven't explored before that could help them reach a new audience or something. For the project that will work on for this class. Like I said, we'll be working with a fictional brand and they're going to be an electric bike company named Zee bikes. Who we're talking to? Well, not your average cyclists, we are aiming to reach commuters between the ages of 25 and 45 who typically drive to work and make between 50-150 grand a year. That's a big range we know. You can tell this is going to be a broad audience, but here's what we know about them. They usually live within 30 minutes of their work. Housing really varies. Some live in homes with families, some live alone or with roommates, really across the board here. For them, conveniences key. They usually drive to work and they wouldn't really pick up a bike to ride to work because of a lot of different factors, including time, safety, weather, activity level and upfront costs of just buying a bike that will get them around all year long. What are we making? In this integrated ad campaign where Making one digital ad, one billboard, one web commercial spot, one radio spot, and one other idea. I know that sounds vague, but basically we're taking the headlines or we're going to be making in our next lesson and applying those to a lot of different areas. Now I haven't included here where this will live. Typically at an agency, they will already decided the media placements for what you're writing. But for this project, because it is a fictional one, you can think about those ideas for yourself, for the digital ad. What websites will the ad pop-up on? Or for the billboard that would be which highways this commuters passing on every day, and for our mysterious other idea, we'll explore later what that might mean in a later lesson. You can find this brief downloadable on this class. I suggest you spend some time thinking about it. Really research and see what electric bike brands are already out there. For every campaign that I work on, even though the brief has everything that I need to know, what else could I find out? Sometimes it could be a whole new insight or maybe I'm just learning a little bit more about the audience for writing for or about the medium that it's going to live in. Either way, take this time before your next lesson, headline writing to really become an expert about everything zee bike. [MUSIC] 3. Copywriting 101: Headline Writing: Before we get started on writing, we are getting it started thinking, get acquainted with your brand, with your market, with your audience, with your competitors. What's out there right now, what's working? What's not working? What could you do better? And you could even be in this audience too maybe you're one of those commuters that drives to work. What personally would make you reconsider that choice? Maybe move to electric bike yourself. Once I've done all the research, I think I could possibly find out there, then it's time for me to get in the zone. When I'm writing, I absolutely cannot listen to music with lyrics. Something about the words in the song and the words in my head, it just doesn't work. I'll usually have to opt for some kind of instrumental playlists and really that varies. It can go from acoustic music, classical to instrumental Dr. Dre. It really just depends on the mood I'm in and a lot of times I'd like to try to switch it up. Maybe I'll find some music works better for some brands and working on and not for others. Writer's block is very real and to really break out of that mold, I like to practice something I called interval writing. It's very similar in interval running, but a lot less sweaty. Basically what I do is set up a timeline for myself where I'm going to have 30 minutes of absolutely uninterrupted writing and that's heads down, free writing and just really getting anything I can onto the page. Then, after 30 minutes I've earned myself a 10 minute break and during that 10 minutes, I really go do whatever I want. I'll go take a walk, go get a cup of coffee, just do something to really refresh my mind. There's just three things I really try to avoid and that's social media, the news or any kind of TV. All those things were really suck the motivation out of me and really not leave anything creative left behind. For this headline writing exercise, you're going to end up with 20 headlines, three of which you're going to see in action. Headlines or the big bold lines that traditionally live in print, but can come to life through anywhere. Digital, commercial, out-of-home, etc. This isn't to be confused with taglines which are more like the slogans of a brand. Think, just do it for Nike or unloving it from McDonalds. When I'm headline writing, there are a few best practices I like to keep in mind. The first of which, and often the most important is to keep it simple. Less is more here and a lot of the times when you try to have too many words or it sounds too convoluted, your audience is not going to get it. The next is to keep it authentic. That means keeping it honest. If you're over promising here, overselling or simply lying to your audience, they're going to see right through that bullshit. You also want to keep your writing emotive. You're trying to elicit an emotion from the audience, whether it's a laugh or maybe it's a tug at the heartstrings. You want to move them to make them feel a certain way. You want to make sure you're writing his unique. You don't want a different version of something that's already out there or a cliche that people have heard 1000 times before. Try to take your own stab at something new. Next make it visual, even without images your headline should be able to paint a picture onto the page. Lastly, make sure to choose your words wisely. You know already to avoid cliches but maybe there's some kind of phrase or idiom out there that you can put a new spin on that brings a new life to line. This can also apply to the sounds that your words make when they're strung together. There's a lot of poetic devices that really play a large role in copywriting too. This is the now decades old recruiting ad for the agency Chrisman and Porter, which is still around and the message is still really clear here. Sales versus marketing, it's all about the story you're telling and your words. Here's a few ads we can look out right off the bat. This one reads, all clothes warm your body, some warm your soul. Here we're getting kind of interesting play on words, doubled through two lines, one after another and it kind of creates a warm and fuzzy feeling without even being able to touch this ad. The economist is renowned for their witty ads that really tend to play up the intellect of their readers. This line plays on the phrase, we all know very well. Great minds think alike. It's bold, it's simple, has no image. It's just a headline driven ad that's pretty perfect. Rather than rely on wordplay, this campaign use consumer insights to inform their ads and this is from Spotify a couple of years ago, reads to 1,235 guys who loved girls night playlist this year. We love you. Just really funny and makes this ad relatable and fun. In this next ad that I worked on for a campaign a few years ago. We're going to look at how the sounds or words make can really make a headline work for an ad. Here, you can see the line Escalate Your Great Escape, a funny story is originally this was elevate your great escape, having to play on the elevation of the mountain but we were told by the client to not use the word elevate because it was already involved in a different States tagline. Sometimes you come across those kind of concerns, but let's examine this ad. Here we're seeing a couple of different poetic devices at work. For one, for seeing alliteration in escalate and escape a similar sound and the consonant, the stressed syllable of the any of these words, the ESC and the ESC, makes those words sound connected together when repeated. We're also seeing some assonance and that's when the vowel sound is repeated and align in, Escalate, Great, and Escape. It typically like to avoid rhyme and slant rhyme in headlines just kind of usually sounds cheesy and a little lazy, but this kind of puts a new spin on the phrase. Sometimes it's okay to break your own rules. You can also see some body copy here to accompany the headline and just really hit that point home. But really your headline should be able to stand by itself as well. This headline exercise should help you identify the voice of this brand, the bikes. You need your audience to know who you are, but also why you do what you do and that's where I've ran manifesto comes in. That's where we're really painting a picture, but goes a lot further than, say just a mission statement.. This look a lot different depending on the brand, but we're looking for here is a short paragraph, lines of prose that really identify and body, the heart and soul of a company, put yourself into the shoes of this brand and tell a story around it. What problem are you solving? Why do you do what you do? And how are you different than others who might as well be doing the exact same thing. It's what you sets you apart that makes people want to choose you. This is the chance to really identify the voice of this brand and to embody it. You can be bold, you can be fierce. They want to see personality when they're reading this. On this mock project I worked on with a friend for Birkenstock. We identified the insight is being a shoe for people who care about comfort and more about what they can do to get through their day rather than making a fashion statement. We tried to tell a brand manifests around that. These two writing exercises should fit together like two puzzle pieces, each sharing the same kind of tone and voice of this brand. Together, along with the rest of our campaign, will be telling a story about see bikes that no one has ever heard before. Get comfortable, get hydrated, stay focused, and start writing. 4. Copywriting 101: Scripts: It's Heather and we're back with script writing, one of my favorite parts of the job. We're going to be learning how to write for commercial and how to write for radio. When you think of commercial, you might be thinking like big blockbuster, super bowl type spots. But it's not all that. Nowadays, an average super bowl spot can run up to around $5 billion just for 30 seconds on TV. In the age of streaming, a lot of people aren't seeing live commercials anyways. So that's why the web has become a new medium to really explore and take your stories further. Then you're restricted to different parameters. For example, on social, the recommendation is usually for a video to be less than two minutes. Sometimes there's a lot of value and writing spots there just 15 seconds long in a series. There's a lot of room to play there. It's important to note too, that there's a lot of bad advertising out there and you don't want to contribute to that. We're trying to make some things out there that people actually maybe want to see. This could be your chance to tell a story around a brand that is more engaging than say something with a lot of jingles and few flashy colors. Now, we have three different formats. We're going to see your words on screen. The first is dialogue, which is the words being said back and forth between our characters in a scene. Then next up we have supers which are the bold lines that we're going to see. Then we thirdly have a voice-over, which is the narration that can carry through a spot or really sum it up at the end. But it's just an omnipresent voice. It's terrible. It's really tough for the medical bills piling up. If you think you're seeing this dad read a bedtime story, you're right. Some of the best commercial spots just have a really great balance of verbal and visual cues, both which strike emotion and work cohesively together to really tell that story. One thing that can really help is to watch scenes you already love. Whether it's from an ad, whether it's from a TV show, a movie, just natural conversations that make you laugh, that make you feel things, any that inspire you. The next is to write like you talk, which is going to sound more naturally flowing than if you write as if you're writing and add a lot of the times we will get to in your heads thinking about how people speak, it makes a lot of a difference if you write it as you would say out loud. Another important step is to avoid see and say, or on the nose dialogue. Really that's just exactly how it sounds. You're basically saying what things people can already see on screen. Example, if you're crying, you're not going to say, I'm so sad. The audience can already infer that. Another important step is to make sure you're breaking up dialogue with action. You don't want a lot of words in a row with just nothing breaking it up. It just is not visually interesting, engaging. You'd really want to make sure there's things happening on screen that carry that story along. Another step is to avoid stereotypes and any cliches or things that people can easily predict. For example, if you have a scene that's taking place at a hospital, what things that can happen are unconventional or would add an creative or interesting, funny spin onto a scene? Also just avoiding stereotypes of characters in general. It's important to distinguish your characters and make sure that they're fully rounded not flat characters. Even a villain has a weak spot. Another important thing to keep in mind is to make sure your character descriptions are very detailed as this make casting a lot easier. At the very end, make sure you're reading aloud your dialogue and this really helps if you can do that with a partner. But script writing is a lot more than seeing how our words can come to life. It seeing the journey that they're being told through this story on screen. A lot of the times, maybe there's no words being said or heard at all. Here's a spot we did earlier this year at my agency for a pro bono client. Now this is for the US Committee for refugees and immigrants, and there are no words on screen except for a bold headline at that end. Now, there's a lot of different ways you can format your script. Some people like to do it right in a Word doc, others you'll have it formatted as the deck is being built for a client. Other times you'll just make a screenplay right out of it. It really depends what you like. Another really popular approach is to do an audio visual script. That's so when we see right in front of us. On the left we see the video direction. On the right we see the audio direction, which would be what we're seeing in dialogue, voice-over. Over here we can see an audio. We have a voice-over carrying throughout and then video the directions that are being given and what we're seeing on screen. At the top we have the setting and the character restriction for the actor. To help these stories really come to life and see potential elsewhere. That's why it's really good to work with someone who has a good visual eye for these things. I'm sure you do as well. But sometimes if you talk to an art director or producer, they can really take what maybe you just have as an idea starter of a story and build it into something really beautiful and powerful. Now, when it comes to radio, it's a different story. Through one, it's actually meet him. You can execute just your phone and exclusively Word space. You can really own that. I use a lavalier microphone when recording to really try and capture sound best. Writing for radio, on the other hand, has its own unique limitations, but also opportunities. You're not working in a visual space, so your audio carries a lot of weight here. Dialogue and sounds should be able to tell a compelling story and experience that people won't tune out of, whether it's a car or online via like Spotify or Pandora radio. The first tip to writing radio is forget all the reading you've heard. There's so much bad radio out there and you really don't want your stuff to be affiliated with it. Next is to play with sound effects and music. You don't have any visuals to work with here so you need to be able to convey your ideas and story without showing images. There's a lot of sounds out there, so don't get overwhelmed. Next, it's a limit the number of characters you have. When you have too many people talking in one scene, it gets really complicated quick and people can't follow what's happening. In order to do that, you can also distinguish the characters you have and the voices they use that will help tell them apart. Lastly, be detailed in your character descriptions and keep it short. Here's an example of a radio spot kind of accompanies the same format as our commercial spot from earlier. Again, a lots of different ways you can format this. But at the top here we've got the production notes with casting direction here for a voice actor. Specifically called out here we've got sound effects and music specified. Then we've got the lines for the narrator/voiceover to carry throughout the spot. I can't stress enough how important it is to read aloud your work and get some feedback from someone else, maybe partner up and read a spot together if you have a lot of dialogue. A lot of times even run comedy writing, then you know what it's like if you've ever written something that you think is absolutely hilarious and the audience just doesn't get it. If you're writing something that the audience doesn't understand, it doesn't matter how good you are, it's not going to work. So watch a couple commercials that you really love, or maybe some TV shows where you really love how they execute the dialogue or the scenes and just get warmed up. Then just start writing. 5. Copywriting 101: Ad Making, a Mini Lesson: If you need to make an Ad but don't have a designer to help or the software, don't sweat it. I did all my first Ads and Microsoft Paint. Now either work with an Art Director or an Adobe In Design. But if you're in a tight spot, here's how you can transform your favorite headlines into an Ad. Here today I'm going to show you how to make an Ad on a Mac. Attached this class, you can find a couple assets to help you out. For one, you've got the Zee bikes logo and that's the transparent PNG that you can place on top of any image. I've also attached a stock photo that you can use royalty free, and in general, you can find some other images online that suit your fancy if you'd like. Just make sure they're either royalty-free or there's some way that you can credit the original owner of the image. Now, I've downloaded these two assets so I can have my computer. I'm going to open them up side-by-side. Got my logo, got the image. I'm going to paste it on. I'm going to take this logo and I'm going to select all. Can also do this by doing command A or control A. Next, I'm going to copy that and that's going to be command C or control C. To paste that, it's going to be either add a paste or control V or Command V. Now you can see this is now on top of this image. You can see the full corners there. You're going to hold down command or control and that's so you don't miss shaped this logo as I'm resizing it and making it smaller. As I'm dragging to make it smaller, you can see how it stays nice and proportional no matter where I move my mouse, and I'm going to move that to a place where it can sit. I can move this to the corner here. Corner here. Really, this logo stands out in front of a really bright or white background, and the best place for me to put it I think is going to be just down here for now. Now this is a busy background, I would say. But again, I'm not creating this from a designer's standpoint. If I wanted designer to make it, I'm sure they can find a better placement for it or have a better image to put them on top of. I'm just going to leave it right here. For my line, I'm going to click on this for the editing tool. I'm going to open up a text box here and luckily I already has the font I'm going to use. But if you want to change that font, you're just going to go over here to formatting, select your font, select your size, and then I'm going to type out my headline. This one, I'm just going to do two wheels. One, better commute and we're going to make sure to spell commute right. I'm just going to move that around and I think I'm going to let it just sit right here. That is going to be my print Ad and really for a print Ad, you want it to be designed so it looks nice. But if you're creating a copywriter portfolio here, they know you're not a designer. Though it is better to be working with a designer, they really just going to be looking at what kind of compelling line you can come up with. It's going to sit on top of this Ad. Given that I'm going to export, I think I'm going to export this as a JPEG but I can also do as a PDF. But a JPEG is usually better for website format and there you go. You've just made a little Ad. 6. Copywriting 101: The Big Idea: You've made it. It's time to work on your big idea. Now, I've left this intentionally vague because there's just so much out there that you can do. The best part about having a mock project is that there's no budget. You can really do whatever. It's time to start thinking about how you can get your words, your story, your idea off the paper, or screen and just get out on to the world and start some conversation. One of the best ways to start thinking out of the box is to explore what's out there already. Here are a few of my favorite examples. Whenever I've been in conversations about agencies doing killer social work, this ad always comes up. Now, this was done by an agency 360i during the Super Bowl in 2013. This was the Super Bowl, if you remember, that there was a huge power outage, but 360i social team was far from in the dark. They put out this ad on all their social channels in no time, and it's been applauded ever since. This just goes to show the power of using your advertising in the moment, really ricocheting off a current events. This ad done by Gray Spain, for the non-profit Lenore, using lenticular printing, which is the phenomenon of two different images being seen at different angles in this special type ad to really put out a powerful message into the world. On face value, two adults walking by, you saw the message. Sometimes child abuse is only visible to the child suffering it with the picture of a little boy's face. But, if you were under four foot and three inches, then you would displayed a different message. For one, the little boy's face was now covered in bruises and marks of abuse. There was a message, a call to action saying, 'if someone hurts you, phone us we'll help you with the phone number to the organization. ' Now you can tell that this ad truly made a big splash and actually created some real change. In the stun by Alexis Agency working with the World Wildlife Foundation. They were trying to draw attention to the issue of climate change and by doing that, they use augmented reality to really project Arctic wildlife into a public space. People walking by, could interact with virtual polar bears or at least see themselves on the screen doing so. That really called to attention by bringing these animals that we never see but they're affected by climate change right in front of us. This campaign by Wieden+Kennedy and Heineken really took a big chance to associate Heineken with spontaneity and adventure. They tried to literally get people out of their comfort zone by setting up this installation at an airport, 'enter departure roulette'. Instead of going to their plan destinations, visitors could instead hit the roulette button and then get a prepaid trip to any of the location that was displayed on the board. This was part of a larger campaign called 'Dropped', which followed four young men as they traveled to remote destinations to film their daily adventures of Heineken. During the campaign, you could watch these in each episode online at 'Heineken.com' or on 'YouTube'. This is just a unique way that this could live online as well. Now, you might have heard of this campaign, but probably not associated with an agency. This was for the Ad Council. The campaign was called 'Love Has No Labels', and it was by the agency RGA. What they did was filmed a day where we really pictured 'Love Has No Labels'. You might have seen this video on your feeds as it went pretty viral. This stun invited by a standards for a day, and really had them walk behind the screen. Behind the screen, all you could see on the other side was skeletons, where we all look the same regardless of age, of race, of gender. This put out a positive message in the world that, just like their campaign says, 'Love Has No Labels'. There really is no reason to judge people, people are all same on the inside. Finally, this installation, I think you've probably heard of. This was the fearless girl done by the State Street Global Advisors in honor of International Women's Day. It was done by the agency McCann. If you haven't heard of these or would like to learn more, I'd greatly recommend watching the case study videos that are really the behind the scenes and how they made this work, not to mention the results in social impact that they can make. Now it's true all these campaigns had some seriously big budgets. But they also really started a conversation that wasn't happening before. They created a splash on people's news feeds. A lot of the times, you don't even realize these are made by agencies. Some of the best ideas are ones that cross-prompt in other brand or maybe a non-profit. It's a great way to give back into society. So where can you take your campaign? What kind of way can you make it into an installation or explore new medium or some crazy stuff that's going to have people talking about it on social media? Let's see what you can come up with. 7. Copywriting 101: The Portfolio: It doesn't matter how good of a writer you are. At the very end, if you don't have a book, no one knows who you are. You're never going to get hired somewhere. Back in the day, a book you still literally mean a portfolio of work where you could turn the pages and look through and see what you've done. But now almost everyone does it online. I personally like to use Squarespace. There's a lot of online platforms you can use. There's WordPress, there's Wix, there's really just a lot out there. I personally like Squarespace because it's pretty easy to use, the designs are really beautiful, and it's inexpensive. What are my essentials for making a good portfolio? First of all, I want to make sure that it's well-designed, just because you're a writer it doesn't mean you shouldn't have a really good-looking portfolio. Really nowadays there's no excuse. There's so much online that where you can host your own website. A lot of the design templates are really beautiful, really easy to navigate and use, and there's a lot of helping community out there. Next step, it's important to have a website that's easy to navigate, and that's not just saying the platform that you're using is easy to go around. When someone visits your website, they should be easily able to find your work, your about me, your resume, all the really important things that any employer would want to see. It shouldn't be convoluted with a lot of tabs, too much info, or pages buried within pages. It should also be easy to find online, and that means you shouldn't have a website that's from an instant messaging handle that you haven't used for 10 years. If someone searches your first and last name in portfolio, your website should be the first to pop up on their search results, and this will get better over time as you get more visits. Indexing your name in your portfolio is really a long game, but it pays off. The next let's pretty straightforward, is to have at least three portfolio pieces on there. You don't want to really incomplete portfolio, or one that's completely overloaded with stuff that's really not do your best work. It's better to have three pieces of great work than 10 pieces of mediocre work. I would also suggest including personal work on there, and sometimes that can be a blog that you're writing, or maybe it's some interesting art project, or photography, just some other hobby or pursuit that you're interested in. Randomly, the most clicked item on my portfolio is my Amazon review section because it really shows off a funny flare, but we'll get more into that later. Next, make sure you have these three very basic criteria. Need to have your resume so people know where you're coming from. They need to know about you, which is an opportunity to paint a little bio of yourself, and let people know who the real you is, and then also include your contact info so they can reach out. Lastly, make sure to include links to any relevant blogs or social media info that you'd like them to see. If you're really active on Twitter, or if you have a really artistic Instagram, that's something that employers would want to see as it relates to your creativity. When you're in the process of making work and building your portfolio, it's really valuable to get feedback, and a lot of times it's not the easiest to take. Especially early in my advertising career. I would feel really offended if someone didn't like my work. But it's important to treat any feedback you get, whether it's constructive, or mainly critical, as a gift. This is your chance to take that and use it as ammunition to make your work stronger, and 99 percent of the time, no matter how good your ideas are, they could always be better. I'm going to let you take a little peek at my own portfolio. Just entering in my URL here. See it's top of the list right here. Now this is my landing page, and here you're going to see my pieces of work. I think this is probably the most important thing for an employer to see when visiting your website first, so good to have that on the first page. Each of these pieces of work, when clicked, takes to a page just about that work. Here I've got a little bio about what's it about, the description of the work, any credits that are necessary, as well as the work itself. Then this is a link here just to a Vimeo page. I click back on the homepage, on this left side panel, you can see some very important piece of information. One, personal blog that I write that's either about advertising or other things I'm interested in. Then right here you can see my Twitter feed. Under about, [inaudible] see a little bit about me, I'm just showing some personal flavor here as well as another click to my resume. I've also under here, and over here got some contact info which is important. This would click to email me. This would go to my LinkedIn and this would go to my Twitter. Of course, very important I have my resume on here. I want to make sure I'm showing off my background, and then this button would click to download. It's really, there's a lot you can do on your portfolio. One thing I brought up was having a piece of personal work it's really important. I've got my blog over here which counts as personal work. But I've also got this weird little section called Amazon, and it's not things I actually wrote for Amazon. But more of my silly side and it's funny, but I've had employers bring this piece of work up with me more than anyone else, and it's literally just satirical dumb reviews that I've written, that some people think are funny, so it's good. I hope you've enjoyed this class, and really even though we're just getting started here. I would really love to hear any comments, or questions you have, and if you ever just like to connect in general, I'm here.