Having Agency: How I Found My Way Here

If someone had asked me a few years ago why I wanted to get into advertising, I probably would have said, “I like writing.” It would have been true, but it also would have been a fairly incomplete answer.

I don't think I ever had a single, dramatic moment where I decided advertising was what I wanted to do. It was more of a slow realisation that a lot of things I naturally enjoyed seemed to make sense here. I just didn't know they were leading me anywhere.

I've always been a little too interested in things that probably don't require that much attention.

I'll notice a line on a billboard and wonder why they chose that particular word. 

I'll see an oddly named dish on a menu and think it's a much better name than it has any right to be. I'll hear someone say something in a very specific way and remember it hours later.
For a long time, I thought this was just me being easily distracted…Then I started working in advertising and realised that paying attention to things is actually quite useful here!

A lot of the job is looking at something everyone has already seen and wondering if there is another way to look at it. 
A familiar product, a familiar problem, a familiar audience.

The interesting part is finding the detail that makes it worth looking at again.

I've always found it strange that changing one word can completely change how something feels.
You can have a sentence that is perfectly fine and still spend far too long trying to find a better word for it. Sometimes you eventually do. Sometimes you realise the original was better and you've spent half an hour going in a circle.

I remember working on Schwarzkopf, and realising how much weight a small wording change could carry. We weren't just trying to make a line sound catchy. We had to communicate what made the product different, without making the copy feel like a list of product claims.

Finding a way to make those details feel natural in the sentence made me realise how much thought can go into a line that someone might read in a few seconds.
But I like that process, and advertising takes that tiny obsession and gives it a deadline, which is probably for the best.
Writing copy also made me realise that the words themselves are only part of the job. You have to understand what you're trying to make someone feel, what they already know, what they might care about and what might make them stop for a second.

That distinction is what makes me enjoy it more.

One of my favourite parts of working in advertising is the slightly strange journey an idea can take.
Something you see on your way to work can sit somewhere in the back of your mind until, days later, it suddenly fits a completely unrelated brief. A conversation can remind you of a campaign. A reference that initially seems completely wrong can send you in a much better direction.

Advertising gives you permission to do that.

You can take something from outside the world of advertising, bring it into the room and see what happens when you put it next to the problem you're trying to solve.

Sometimes the connection goes nowhere. Sometimes it becomes the best thing you've thought of all week. I like that you don't always know which one you're going to get.

Pitches make this even more obvious. Working on JSW Paints or Siens by Dabur meant spending time understanding categories, audiences and problems that weren't necessarily familiar to me at the start.

You learn enough to find the interesting part, and then you try to turn that understanding into something people can actually connect with.

The biggest reason I think I ended up here, though, is probably the challenge.

Nobody has to care about an advertisement. There are far more interesting things happening on someone's phone, and there is always another thing to scroll past. So how do you make someone stop?

Not necessarily for a minute. Sometimes you just need a second.

Maybe you give them a thought they haven't had before. Maybe you make something familiar feel a little different. Maybe you put an idea into words in a way that makes it click.

With brands like Lauritz Knudsen, for example, the challenge was even more interesting. How do you make someone care about something they probably don't think about until something stops working? Suddenly, the job becomes finding human relevance inside a technical category.

That challenge is what makes advertising feel less like simply making things and more like figuring people out. You have to understand what might matter to someone before you can ask them to pay attention to it.

One of the things I didn't expect when I started working in an agency was how much I would enjoy the variety.

You can become strangely invested in a subject for a few days because you have a brief about it, learn far more than you ever expected to know, and then move on to something completely different. The work keeps pulling you into new corners of the world.

I like that I don't have to choose one thing to be interested in.

Ting has given me plenty of reasons to keep doing exactly that. I've gotten to work on briefs that have taken me into subjects I never expected to know so much about, and I've had the chance to work alongside people who can look at the same problem and see something completely different. 

I came here thinking I liked writing. I think Ting has helped me realise that what I really like is everything that happens around it.