8 books (and a few other things) that made me a better copywriter
and that I reckon might help you become a better one, too
We all love a list. People circulate their book recommendations all the time and ‘Book Shelfies’ still seem to be A Thing on Instagram, making me feel bad at how many books I actually manage to find the time to read these days.
My ‘To Read’ pile has been gigantic for a long time, and yet it has not stopped me from buying more and more books. I’ve only managed to escape this endless cycle for now by simply leaving it all boxed up in London, and moving to Amsterdam with a very slimmed down version of all my worldly possessions.
When I first realised I wanted to be a copywriter (around 2.4 seconds after I discovered it was a real job that existed), I went straight to Google in search of any and every book that might help me make this job mine. There are so many books out there (though mostly written by men) and a lot of them are excellent. But there are a few that I go back to again and again and again that are filled with folded down pages and underlined paragraphs. These are the books that I believe made me a better copywriter, and I reckon could help you to become one too.
Off the bookshelves though, there were two things that really made me a better (and more confident) copywriter. The first thing was somehow managing to convince Vikki Ross (hi Vikki!) to be my mentor for six months, after I went to one of her copywriting masterclasses with D&AD. Over our official mentoring time together (which has now turned into a friendship built on foundations of cocktails, desserts and celebrating all things at all times), she helped me to solve the problems and climb over the hurdles I was facing at the time. Vikki didn’t give me answers or opportunities, but instead asked the right questions in the right way to help me work out the answers myself, and pointed me in good directions for me to run in. I really do believe that a great mentor isn’t someone who opens doors for you, but who gives you the key to go and open it yourself.
And the second thing was being lucky enough to have an incredible Head of Copy, Tom Powell, as my boss (hi Tom!) at an advertising agency. I’m not a huge fan of agency life, but I really would recommend spending a year or two at one (preferably with an excellent boss) to really cut your teeth (or sharpen your pencil) at the craft by working across a load of different brands in a load of different sectors and industries with a load of different voices.
At this agency, Tom taught me that the copywriter’s job is to spend all your time working out ‘how’ to say something. If you’re lucky, when a good creative brief lands on your desk, it’ll be packed with all the thinking that’s already been done for you about the ‘what’, and the ‘why’ of what this piece of creative work is (spoiler: it often isn’t, so be prepared to interrogate that brief yourself until you get what you need). The more thinking that’s been done up front for you, the more time, energy and creativity you’ll be able to use to work out the right way to communicate it to your audience. Because really, if you’re spending all your brainpower figuring out the ‘what’ and the ‘why’ of your brief, the chances are the ‘how’ of how you write it won’t be as good.
So how do you work out the best way to say something? I’d ask these authors, if I were you. They’re probably busy, but luckily for you they’ve spilled all their secrets into these books – which I highly recommend you read.