My Advertising Portfolio, Chapter 4

I wasn't just going to write the letters that no one opened... I was going to make the TV ads that everyone watched on (mute, under duress).

A series about my career in advertising. Here’s Chapter 1 if you want to start there.

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Where we left off last time, it was 2008 and I’d been let go from my job as a proofreader of financial plans at AMP.

And here I was, heading into the Sydney summer. Jobless and in the midst of the Global Financial Crisis .

I wanted a job as a copywriter at an ad agency, but would gladly settle for anything that kept me in Shakey Happy Hour schooners ($2.50) and the big 50 gram pouches of Champion Ruby (can’t remember what they cost).

I didn’t have to wait long to settle. My fellow proofreader Roland and I secured work putting up fly-posters advertising the Tsübi (now Ksübi) Warehouse Sale. It turns out - just like how AMP needed money to pay their proofreaders - fashionable people needed money to pay for their low rise, pre-ripped denim. No one had any money. now Which meant Roland and I had heaps of spare time and Tsübi had heaps of spare jeans - thousands of which were pastel green.

Putting the fly-posters up was an ordeal. As Clive James said: “the problem with Australia is not that so many are descended from convicts but that so many are descended from prison officers.” Sydney (the main bit of Australia) is full of vigilantes. And they aren’t like the passive aggressive ones you get in the UK. Sydney vigilantes are lean and reedy-voiced and love to emphasise the T noise in “mate” when they confront you. In the suburbs they dob on you for washing your car during water restrictions. And in Darlinghurst, they follow you up and down Oxford Street, tearing Tsübi Warehouse Sale posters down faster than you can put them up.

Fortunately, my siblings and I developed our work ethic early in life delivering junk mail pamphlets - so I knew what to do next.

Unfortunately, there wasn’t a local creek or primary school to dump thousands of un-posted posters in. But we managed to find an empty skip bin behind Gelato Messina and that was that.

Tsübi paid us anyway, and a few days later, I was back at the Shakey with a full Reschs and an ambitious heart.

I had a few leads to go off. The first - thanks to my school mate Jono - got me into the Ogilvy building in St Leonard’s for two days at the sports marketing agency he worked at. My job was to sit in a boardroom with a landline and a printed contact list of every junior cricket club in Australia. I was to call them one-by-one and recruit them to play backyard cricket for something to do with Ford’s Summer of Cricket Activation.

I can’t remember if I recruited anyone successfully - or if the campaign went ahead - but I had some nice chats with people all over the country, many of whom had either resigned their club presidency years earlier, fallen out with the new person in charge, or didn’t know how I got their number in the first place.

“Maybe it was the person who lived there before you?”

“Yeah maybe. Could you take me off your list?”

“Yep, crossing you off. Have a good one!”

I’d cross them off. But it was just a piece of paper, not a networked database. So was lying when I promised them that Ford Motors wouldn’t contact them again regarding backyard cricket.

$400 for two days. Not bad.

The second lead - also thanks to Jono - was also inside the Ogilvy building. This time with an actual creative director at one of the actual Ogilvy ad agencies. Against my instincts, I followed the advice of every older person in my life and “dressed for the job I want.” To be fair to the older people in my life, they meant wear a suit. I wore a bad approximation of office attire, including the black leather shoes that incubated the foot fungus in the previous chapter.

The creative director was an English guy called Simon. He wore black shorts, high top Vans and a leather cuffs on his wrist. His office was decorated with award annuals and little Bearbrick figurines of The Cure. Simon definitely clocked my odd energy, but was extremely kind, and patiently read through the printed Blogspot posts and zines I had brought in place of a useful portfolio. He even nodded with interest when I told him my favourite brands were “Tsübi and Peter Stuyvesant” (I wanted to let him know that - in spite of my office clothes - I was a cool guy).

Simon was the creative director of OgilvyOne, a direct mail agency. They primarily worked on American Express. He introduced me to a copywriter who I’m going to remember as Paul. Paul was wearing a cravat and had his feet up on the desk. He showed me some of his recent work - they were offer letters for some sort of Amex that told a long tale of Henry Lawson or Banjo Patterson or one of those famous bush poets. I don’t remember the specifics of the idea, but I do remember being blown away at how well crafted it was and how successfully and persuasively it made its point about getting a new Amex. I wasn’t convinced that anyone actually read or even opened those letters - but I was certain that if they’d read Paul’s copy they’d sign up in a second.

I looked over at Paul: feet elevated, warm neck thanks to his snazzy cravat, probably a big bulbous wine decanter in every damn room of his house… I wanted what Paul had. I wanted to write these letters.

I walked out inspired, but it wasn’t to be for now. Simon was kind and encouraging, suggesting that I apply to AWARD School then come back.

A week or so later a third lead materialised. My housemate at the time’s girlfriend at the time’s friend was dating a guy who was an advertising art director named Pete, who had his own agency with his creative partner, John. They worked out of a warehouse space in Holt Street in Surry Hills.

Like Simon, they were unfailingly kind and supportive and read my printed out blogposts with enthusiasm. Unlike OgilvyOne though, they weren’t bound to any global business KPIs that would restrict them from having a dishevelled 23-year-old man sitting on a couch, rolling cigarettes all day.

From there, Pete and John let me hang around and work on briefs and even paid me a bit out of their own day rates (which I now know is unheard of) Eventually, when they were asked to come and work inside Saatchi & Saatchi - they asked if I could come too. And at some point after several months, Saatchis honoured my squatters rights and gave me a laptop.

On the day I officially got the job, I was also given my own office (this doesn’t happen anymore). It smelled like Lynx bodyspray and was barely a metre wide, but it had a window that looked up at the Sydney Harbour Bridge and across the harbour to Luna Park. I set up my laptop, leaned back in the broken Herman Miller Aeron, stared across the emerald water my forefathers arrived from the other side of the world on and thought about how embarrassing it would eventually be when they all realise that I don’t know how to write ads.

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