Inspire Yourself with a Creative Brief
How advertising agencies avoid writer’s block.
When I was in my twenties, I got my first job as an advertising copywriter at DDB Turkey. All thanks to a short and clear brief in the newspaper disguised as a job ad!
This was the 1990’s. I had studied urban planning at the university, but I had realized that it was not for me. I moved to Istanbul and started looking for a job. I didn’t know what to do.
I believed creativity was my thing, so I talked to a friend of a friend for advice. He was the head of account executives at one of the major advertising agencies.
The guy told me to forget about it. Creatives were either art directors or copywriters. To be an art director I should have studied fine arts, not urban planning. To be a copywriter, I should have been born as an extremely talented poet or a writer. I wasn’t.
Completely discouraged, I went home.
Then came Sunday. In the newspaper, I saw a job ad that said:
“Wanted: A copywriter who likes to fly”.
In Turkish, ‘to fly’ is slang for ‘to make up stuff’, ‘to lie’. The ad was an open invitation to lie.
