Falling into the Vicious Cycle of Creativity as a Copywriter

Our guest author has some tips on how young copywriters can prepare themselves for the agency life.

Since my MBA days, I have been attracted to the creative business. After starting Mad Monkeys about a year and a half ago, I realised that if I ran out of ideas at any point, it might be fatal to my business. In short, as a copywriter, you are continuously running on the wheel of ideas, concepts, and expectations for an apt copy that attracts viewers.

Every individual in the creative business will agree that creativity can never be limited to 9-5 around the clock, still, they will push copywriters to be fast yet persuasive with deliverables. Nowadays, since the first draft copy is being sent for approval, the rush to complete the tasks deprives the campaign of excellent ideas, and less thought is being put into a copy with the deliverables being multiplied at any hour of the day. Every aspect will keep you looped in the vicious cycle. Over time, the routine becomes exhaustive. As a copywriter, you must keep up with social media trends, new trends pop up every second, and multiple people try to stand out amidst millions of brands. It becomes downright difficult to come up with out-of-the-box ideas that have never been used before.

While creating an ad film concept or a billboard text is a one-time job, working on social media is different. On average, a brand posts at least once a day, which would account for 30 posts a month, keeping aside stories, campaigns, topicals, etc. It gets tough for a person to hang on to one brand, and you need more brains beside you to brainstorm for new content buckets regularly. Needless to say, handling a brand’s social media is not a one-man job!

Mainstream advertising can balance your thought process, but when it comes to social media, working on the same brand concept, philosophy, and strategy amidst all the competitors can be tough, especially when you have been working on it for a few years. Ideas do get exhausted, and this comes from a copywriter who has written about 500 posts for a single brand.

When a newbie enters the industry, these preconceived notions of measuring one's ability against the bar of the number of deliverables can take a toll on them. At times, it just takes a minute for that sentence to click, and on other days even after hours of discussion, it might not make it to the deck.

As a copywriter and an agency owner myself, I have been on both sides and have observed a few of these scenarios.

• Multi-tasking due to time crunch

Time is of the essence in an industry where one needs to incorporate uncountable feedback from the client and present the final copy within the stipulated time. It becomes stressful because creativity cannot be demanded on the spot. Working overtime becomes the norm, paving a path for frustration in the long run.

• Research is underrated

Crafting one single line for a brand is backed by enormous amounts of research. A well-researched copy serves as the perfect recipe for a viral affair on social media. Research helps us understand the brand standing, identifies the competitors' benchmarking, accelerates our ideas, and as a result, the copy hits the consumer's pain point, that same raw nerve that transforms them into a buyer for the brand.

• Content production is directly proportional to content consumption

An idea makes way for better ideas. As a copywriter you cannot get new ideas out of thin air, you need to consume more content and be updated with the trends. Scrolling through uncountable concepts from across the world, until your brain finds that one post that inspires you to curate something mind-blowing. 

• Amplify video content

It can be clearly understood that with the declining patience limit of viewers, short videos are ruling the content game. It’s important to amplify the brand’s voice through relatable and entertaining content to hold their attention.

• Update and Upgrade

It doesn’t even take a week for one trend to be replaced by another, for one wrong copy to be bashed publicly, or for ideas to be replicated. In the content game, you always need to be the A1 player to build your brand’s presence as per the requirement at that moment.

The author Karan Raghani is a passionate marketing enthusiast with an impressive skillset of Copywriting, Brand Building, Storytelling, and Integrated Marketing Communications. He is the founder of MadMonkeys Marketing Solutions, an independent marketing agency based out of Ahmedabad.