hurdling with helena langdon: copywriter, comedian and ex-head of social at innocent
a copywriter's word on the value of putting yourself in the right positions, a hatred for ‘wordsmithing’ and how to become the reason a brand has to get had a full legal department.
This week’s interview is with the woman who once had the job that a million writers would kill for, and who still has the personality and wit that most of would die for, too. It is the one and only Helena Langdon, writer, comedian and former Head of Social (and professional tweeter) at innocent.
As her job history (and present) might suggest, Helena is funny. Like, really, really funny. So funny, that she managed to make being funny her job. Today, she writes words, comes up with ideas for brands, and gives talks about how to be funny and creative on the internet.
Here, she tells me about the value of putting yourself in the right positions, her hatred for ‘wordsmithing’ and how she became the reason innocent had to get had a full legal department.
This interview made me laugh out loud so many times. Please enjoy it as much as I did.
Hiya Helena. Please can you tell us a little bit about who you are as a person, and a snapshot of your life right now?
Hi, I’m Helena. Most of my friends call me Hels or Langers. Most of the people who email me call me Helen. Sometimes I let it go. Sometimes I respond by passive-aggressively removing a letter from the end of their name too, “Thanks for reaching out, Jonatha!”.
I live and work in South London and my girlfriend lives in Bristol, so at the moment I’m spending a lot of my life on the Great Western Railway service between London Paddington and Bristol Temple Meads. Always a window seat and always the quiet carriage.
I’ve just turned 40 and I still have no idea where my life or career is heading. And I quite like it that way.
Can you give us an overview of your CV?
I did my undergrad in History and my Masters in Genocide Studies, and thought I was destined for a career in academia until I found myself alone in the library reading about something unbearably gruesome, had an existential crisis and got a job selling crisps off the back of a van instead.
A few aimless years doing sales at PepsiCo (owners of Walkers Crisps) followed, until I got called by someone in HR to interview for a sales role at innocent. I had no interest in the job but it felt like the right place for me to be. My sisters told me to take the job and try to get into marketing. So I took the job and tried to get into marketing.
After a year at innocent, I got my first job in the social team. I spent the next six years running the social accounts, leading the digital and customer service team and doing other copywriting on the side. I adored it, but I had a nagging feeling to go and do something with my own name attached to it. I left, went freelance and started doing stand up comedy.
Stand up was going well, and after a year I made the decision to stop freelancing and go all in on comedy. It was [dramatic pause]……….. March 2020.
In lockdown I found myself feeling much happier sitting in my flat than going out and gigging every night, so I realised stand up probably wasn’t right for me. Since then, I’ve been writing words, coming up with ideas and talking at events about how to piss about on the internet for a living. And here we are.
Q: When you were younger, what did you want to be when you ‘grew up’?
A cowboy. I’m glad I grew out of that because I don’t like whisky and I find horses, as a concept, quite unnerving.
I loved creative writing, but I don’t remember ever seriously thinking I’d get to write for a living. The truth is I still don’t know what I want to be when I grow up – but I have a quiet confidence that I’ll nudge myself in the right direction until I work it out.
Q: Let’s take a journey through time. When did you first discover what a copywriter was? Paint us a picture. Tell us the story.
I first really understood what a copywriter did when I got to innocent. The creatives all sat in a corner of the fourth floor in the very imaginatively named “creative corner”. They were all impossibly cool and inaccessible to me, but my desk mate Clemmie ran the PR and worked with the copywriter all the time, and she encouraged me to approach them and ask to do some writing. I did, and amazingly they said yes.
I started helping out with innocent’s blog at first and then stepped up to sometimes write the wildly successful weekly newsletter on the side while I was still doing my sales job (I didn’t tell my boss I was doing it in case he tried to stop me). By the time a job came up where I’d have the chance to write for innocent, I already had loads of evidence to show that I could do it.
Q: Tell us about your first ever job. Where did you work? How did you get that job? What did you learn?
My parents got me my first job (nepo baby alert). They were both GPs and ran a surgery in the local village, and my siblings and I spent our teenage years working on reception.
A doctor’s surgery is full of characters and quiet drama, tragedy and comedy. It taught me that everyone has a story, nothing gives you a snapshot of a person’s life quicker than their medical records and to always be nice to the front of house staff (they know all the secrets and they hold all the power).
Q: Tell us about your best ever job. Why did you love it? What did it give you? What did it teach you about yourself?
Running the social accounts at innocent was pure magic. I worked with insanely talented and brilliant people every day. I was allowed to do whatever the hell I wanted. I had the most fun you can have in an office unless you’re a character in The Wolf of Wall Street.
I learned that I like existing in a system with set rules, and surrounding myself with people who are happy to help me break them. The corporate world will always be a ridiculous concept to me, but innocent really understands that and allowed me to gently make fun of how stupid it is to be a human being living in the world.
I don’t know if I’ll ever love a job as much as that again. I’m very thankful I got to experience it.
Q: Tell us about your worst ever job. Why did you hate it? What made it so bad? What did it teach you about what you value in a job?
The only two times I have quit on the first day of a job was at the Holiday Inn Maidenhead when I was 16 and the chefs recruited me to play a very involuntary game of ‘Cock or Balls?*’, and when I wrote for a cat food brand and they insisted that I refer to the cats as “fur babies”.
If I had to live one of those two days again? Well. I’d probably go for the fur babies. But I’d have to seriously think about it.
(*If you don’t know what this is, I’m so happy for you. Do your best to never find out.)
Q: Tell us about how you got to where you are today? For example, what did it take? What decisions did you make? What was the path like? What hurdles stood in your way? Was it extremely difficult? What did you say yes to? What did you say no to?
I don’t know, really. It’s always taken me a long time to get to the right thing. I didn’t know what I wanted to study at uni, and I stumbled into History and fell in love with academia. I didn’t know what I wanted to do for a job, and I stumbled into sales and somehow made it to innocent. I didn’t know what to do after leaving my real life dream job at innocent, and I stumbled into freelancing and comedy.
I think I’ve put myself in the right positions, and I’ve worked really hard to be good at things when the opportunities have presented themselves. I’ve never had a 5 year plan and I’ve never been motivated by climbing any kind of career ladder, and I think it’s helped me focus on doing things I care about, enjoy and am good at.
I’ve always had the instinct to run a mile when I see the word “strategic”. That instinct has served me well.
Q: Is the reality of where you are today different to how you imagined it would be? If so, how? What are the biggest differences?
I think if I told 16 year old me that I have found a way to make money from writing stuff and pissing about on the internet, they would be delighted and not at all surprised. But if I told 16 year old me that MSN Messenger isn’t a thing anymore, they’d be very surprised and completely devastated.
40 year old me stands by both of these reactions.
Q: What’s the biggest mistake you’ve ever made? What happened? What did you do? And what did you learn from it?
I’ve made so many mistakes. SO. MANY. MISTAKES. When I joined innocent, they had no in-house legal counsel. When I left, they had a full legal department. Coincidence? No. How do I know that? They told me, many times.
I once sat in a marketing-wide meeting about all the times innocent had put its intellectual property at risk. The meeting lasted for 90 minutes, and every single example they showed was something I had done.
I’ve nearly been sued by Apple, Bic pens, The International Olympics Committee, the BBC and Kanye West. A weird and powerful list of enemies. I loved being on the edge of success and getting fired. The rebellious child in me wants to push it too far, and the adult in me just about manages to rein it in.
That being said, my biggest and most impressive fuck up nearly got all innocent products delisted in Ireland, would have cost them €4 million a year, and was covered extensively in the Irish national press, like this delightful article in the Irish Independent. What did I learn? If you are tweeting about Eurovision by yourself at 11pm on a Saturday night, maybe take an extra 30 seconds to think before posting that joke about Ireland.
Q: Let’s talk about you as a writer. What does a dream day of writing look like for you? What time do you get up? How many meetings do you have? What kind of writing are you doing?
I wake up naturally before my alarm goes off and I can feel my brain is ready to work. Not only do I have no meetings, I have never even heard of the concept of a meeting.
I’m writing about something I enjoy, care about deeply and know a lot about. I’m given a very clear written brief by an intelligent, talented and nice person who knows exactly what they want from me. They tell me they want the writing to be funny and weird, and they actually mean it. As I’m reading the brief, an idea pops into my head that absolutely nails it.
I go out for a run (that feels easy and floaty) and come up with an even better idea. I go back, write it down and I don’t need to do any more work for the day. I send it to the client and they immediately book me for more work.
There is an adorable and very well behaved dog and an unusually friendly cat with me for the whole day, who are both very happy to get attention when I need to take a break but both leave me alone when I need to focus.
The world is calm, there are no wars, genocide doesn’t exist, people are good to each other and I’m not writing my words with a constant looming sense of existential dread.
Oh, and I’m writing from one of those villas in the middle of the ocean that you see on Instagram.
Q: What does a nightmare day of writing look like for you?
I have to do all of my writing from a tiny laptop in the middle of a busy office that I reached on the Central line during rush hour.
I’m invited to a three hour group creative brainstorm with people exclusively from the legal and technical departments.
The brief I’m given is verbal, from a start up founder who tells me he doesn’t know exactly what he’s looking for, but he’ll know it when he sees it. His only real request is that he wants to see some words that “pop”.
I’m asked to write a warm, human and compelling founder story for two straight white men who met at Oxbridge and started a toothpaste company with the sole ambition of selling it to Unilever in three years time for £125 million.
I’m then asked to insert key words into an SEO document that has been written entirely by ChatGPT.
I am told I must refer to cats as “fur babies”.
Q: What does a realistic day of writing look like for you? Tell us the boring bits, the messy bits and the everything-else-in-between bits?
7:30AM: Wake up. Realise I have been grinding my teeth at night again. Make a mental note to finally sort out the mouth guard the dentist told me I need.
8AM: Get outside. Love it/resent it, depending on my mood and the weather.
8:45AM: Start working.
9:12AM: Google “what’s the difference between an aqueduct and a viaduct?”
12PM: Stop working and get outside again.
3:19PM: Google “when was bacon invented?”
4PM: Look at my work, think it’s terrible and I am the worst writer that’s ever lived.
4:03PM: Google “why does Travelodge only have one L?”
5PM: Give up and stop working.
7:30AM THE NEXT MORNING: Wake up. Realise I have been grinding my teeth at night again. Make a mental note to finally sort out the mouth guard the dentist told me I need.
7:45AM: Look at the work I did yesterday and realise it’s fine and I was just being dramatic. Send to client and immediately forget it exists.
Q: When does inspiration tend to strike for you? Morning? Afternoon? Evening? In the middle of the night? In the middle of the swimming pool?
Either when I’m out on a run or I’m falling asleep. My notes app is full of headlines, ideas for jokes and half thoughts from my semi-conscious brain. 10% of them are good. 90% of them are completely insane.
Q: How do you get into the writing zone? Do you write to music? With headphones? Do you need silence? Is background noise okay?
I have trained my brain to start working when I’m sitting at my desk, so I don’t tend to need too many tactics to get in the zone.
I tend to listen to music while I work, mostly gentle indie like Maggie Rogers or Lizzy McAlpine.
In the summer, I listen to Test Match Special. It’s mostly just background noise but my brain tunes in when there’s something really exciting like a run out or a pigeon on the field.
When I inevitably find myself writing about Christmas in the middle of May, I always turn to my good friend Bublé to bring the festivity.
Q: What’s the best kind of feedback to get? What’s the worst?
The best:
- “I wish I’d written that.”
- “This isn’t right, and here’s why…”
The worst:
- “I don’t usually find women funny, but you’re alright.”
- “I’ll know it when I see it.”
- “I want to see some words that pop.”
Q: What hurdle trips you up regularly? Confidence? Comparison? TIme? Money? Fear?
When I write, I try to focus on what I think is good or funny and not compare myself to others. But when I was doing comedy, I found that much harder. You’re always competing with your peers, and people are getting agents, getting great gigs, smashing their Edinburgh runs and getting on TV.
I don’t see myself as a jealous person, but I found it hard when I was in that world to not compare myself to other people and find all the ways that I was not good enough or coming up short. Which probably explains why I quit comedy, found a therapist and am sticking to writing (for now).
Q: What’s the biggest hurdle you’ve ever had to get over in your copywriting career?
Learning to be less precious about my work, and better at listening to other people’s ideas.
At innocent, there was no sign off process. I’d think of something to write on my phone on the way into work, post it on the internet, and that was it. As I got involved in different kinds of copywriting, like billboards and TV adverts, I was suddenly faced with other people’s opinions, rounds of feedback, “aligning key stakeholders” and watching your words get mulched into something unrecognisable.
It used to bother me a lot, because I felt so personally connected to the innocent tone of voice and brand. Now I work for loads of different brands and I’m much better at distancing myself from the work I do, so I can sleep a lot easier at night (teeth grinding aside).
Q: What’s a recent hurdle (big or small!) you’ve had to get over?
There’s a creative itch nagging at me, telling me that there’s something more out there for me. And I’ve realised if I want to do something different, I need to be more intentional about finding out what that is.
I don’t know what that means in the long term, but for now I’ve started by writing more stuff on LinkedIn, just to have fun and see if it will lead to any interesting work opportunities. Who knows if anything will come of it, but I’m really enjoying writing some funny stuff and trying to be creative just for the sake of it.
Q: When campaigns and copy lines land badly, why do you think people come for the copywriters to name, shame and blame them – despite the copywriter never being the final signoff for a line, ever?
Most people haven’t sat in a creative meeting and watched their really good idea get diluted into the dust by risk averse senior people, and it shows.
Whenever I hear “See it, Say it, Sorted” I can’t help but visualise the endless back and forth on Google Docs about whether it should be “sorted” or “sort it”. It makes me shudder.
People don’t see or understand the protracted sign-off processes that lead to work getting out the door, and if they did they would understand that corporate creative work is always going to be a compromise. It’s not about the best idea, it’s about the best idea you can get signed off.
If you ask me, getting something actually good into the world from a brand is a remarkable achievement - both from the people who came up with the idea and the senior people who recognised that it was good and championed it to make it a reality.
Q: Have you ever been in a copywriting accident that wasn’t your fault? You may be entitled to reputational compensation. Tell us about it. What happened? Was a campaign received badly? Did you get publicly shamed? Were you the final signoff? Were you really responsible for it? How many stakeholders did it go through before it went live?
When you work in social, you’re always at the forefront of your company’s decisions even though you had no say in the decisions themselves. I remember my first week on the job in the social team, people were outraged that innocent Noodle Pots had brought out a dish called “Ramen” that wasn’t authentically Japanese ramen. I got shouted at and called racist by strangers for days on end. I learnt a lot, and very quickly.
I learnt that when you work in social, you’re representing the whole brand so it’s your job to hold your hands up, say sorry and take the blame.
I learnt that if I didn’t like something we were doing as a company, I needed to challenge senior people internally and get an answer I was happy with before having to publicly defend it on the internet.
I learnt to think like the people who are buying your stuff, not the people selling the stuff.
I learnt what ramen is.
Q: What’s the best thing about being a copywriter?
It’s not real work, is it? At least it rarely feels like it to me. If I feel like I’m working hard for my money, that’s usually my sign I’m working with the wrong client.
Q: What’s the worst thing about being a copywriter?
When somebody tells me a piece of writing is “almost there” and needs some “minor wordsmithing”. Guaranteed to be one of the worst days of my working life.
Q: What are your thoughts and feelings about AI? Do you use it?
Whenever someone starts talking about AI, I want to curl up in the foetal position. How does society function if robots are doing all of the jobs? How do massive corporations satisfy their shareholders if we all have no money to buy their stuff? I really don’t think we’ve thought this through.
I don’t use AI for work, because I back myself to be better than it. People are paying for my brain, my perspective and my insistence on including both aqueducts and viaducts in every piece of writing I do. If I start relying on ChatGPT to do my job, why wouldn’t anyone else choose it over me too?
I occasionally ask ChatGPT important questions like the meaning of life or how Pitbull was simultaneously able to be at a hotel, a motel and a Holiday Inn. It told me not to take Mr Worldwide’s lyrics so literally and we respectfully agreed to disagree.
Q: What are your hopes and dreams for the future of copywriting?
I hope that it still exists, firstly. And I hope that more funny and talented people realise it’s a great way to make a decent living from writing. You get to write stuff all day and people pay you good money for it? I don’t know why you’d do anything else.
Q: What would your advice be to a young copywriter on the first day of their job? What do you wish you knew then, that you know now?
Writers have good days and bad days, so give yourself the grace to be occasionally mediocre and make up for it when your brain is working better.
You can tip the good day/bad day ratio in your favour by learning how you get the best out of your brain and replicating those conditions as often as you can.
For me, I now know that I can’t drink any alcohol the night before I work. I have given up coffee except for emergencies (ie. I feel quite sleepy). I always get outside before I start writing. And most importantly, I always send my words to a client the next morning because I don’t trust my brain at the end of the day. At 4pm, I believe I’m the worst writer that’s ever lived. When I wake up the next morning, I realise it’s actually fine and I was just being dramatic.
QUICKFIRE ROUND
Q: One work-related thing you can’t live without?
Google. I ask it at least 25 loosely work-related questions a day, like “how old is Mick Hucknall?” and “what’s the difference between stocks and shares?”
(“65” and “nobody knows”, in case you’re wondering.)
Q: Best advice you’ve ever been given?
“Get your foot in the door at innocent and try to get into marketing.” – Katie Langdon and Fiona Edwards, circa 2011
Q: Worst advice you’ve ever been given?
Any unsolicited feedback I’ve ever been given by a man after a comedy gig. Is he a comedian? No. Could he have been on Live at The Apollo if he’d given it a shot? Sure, Jeff! Sure!
Q: WFH or office?
If I have a permanent job at a brand, office (to overhear everyone’s conversations and turn them into content).
If I’m doing anything else, home.
Q: Agency or in-house?
In-house. What the hell is a timesheet?
Q: Freelance or perm?
Freelance. If I never write another yearly objective or attend a team offsite meeting again, I’ll die happy.
Q: Is your desk tidy or messy?
My desk used to be so messy that people would offer to tidy it for me, frequently.
I would say that I’m reformed, but as I write this I can see an alien stress squeezer, a drawing my nephew did for me of his favourite Pokémon and a book of cheese jokes.
Q: Where is your happy place?
My brother’s house in Southampton, waking up in the spare bedroom and hearing the pitter patter of my niece and nephew’s feet on the kitchen floor.
Q: The writer you admire the most? Who and why?
Impossible question. But, who comes to mind…
Nish Kumar has an incredible ability to write political comedy that feels righteous and rageful and hopeful and cathartic all at the same time, performed at breakneck speed with such eloquence and confidence. And so, so funny. Go and see him, I beg of you.
I am not a person who finds it easy to express their feelings (a terrible trait for a writer), but when I read the poetry of Mary Oliver I feel cut open wide. If I find myself succumbing to existential dread, I read ‘Don’t Hesitate’ and the world feels slightly easier to tolerate.
Q: A line you wish you’d written?
“Joy is not made to be a crumb” - Mary Oliver
“Let’s get ready to rumble” - only because the boxing announcer Michael Buffer supposedly makes $100,000 every time he says it. $20,000 a word! (I had to double check that. Maths is not my strong point.)
Q: Your desert island brand to write for?
England cricket, England rugby, the Lionesses – any kind of women’s sport, really.
Q: Ever faked being sick to get off work?
Of course I have. Hasn’t everyone?
Q: Anything to get off your chest about our industry?
This goes for copywriting, marketing and just the whole world in general - it’s okay to not like something and not share that opinion publicly. There’s so much moaning and negativity around, and it creates senior people terrified to take risks and stops good creative work ever getting out the door.
There is enough shit marketing in the world. Champion the good stuff and laugh about the shit stuff in the privacy of your own WhatsApp groups.
Oh, and if you write a lengthy LinkedIn post dunking on a piece of creative work, you should be forced to share one piece of your own work in the comments. Let’s see what you’ve got, Liam.
This interview is part of the Hurdling with Copywriters interview series. You can find more of them here.
You can keep up with Helena, and see some of the work (and all of the jokes) she shares, on LinkedIn.
Genuinely cackled/shuddered at the nightmare day of writing.