Copywriter and creative director at The Beautiful Meme Tom Sharp spoke about the need to be creative and different to avoid sounding like copywriting
“When you don’t think like other people you make other people think”
Tom began with examples of writers or people who write creatively:
Poets
Novelists
Playwrights
Sitcom writers, soap opera writers
Songwriters
Comedians
Political speechwriters
Columnists
People who write viral Facebook posts
Heartfelt well-written posts on Facebook your friend wrote
Heartfelt badly written posts on Facebook that someone replied ‘U OK hun?’
People who write garaffiti in toilets
Then: Copywriters
"For respect, we’re not very high."
"How do we change this? What do we do?" he asks.
He says, "When you don’t think like other people you make other people think”.
"Perfection doesn’t exist, but it’s the pursuit of it that drives us. We need to find a better approach."
"Is what we do art? But it’s commerce – we need to sell stuff."
"Some people say we live in a cold world. We are so unlucky that in history we live under capitalism. Outside it people have more self-respect. I don’t believe that. Look at William Morris."
"100-150 years on, what he produced is art. His movement was the first agency. They produced work so sublime that we look back and see it as art."
"Look at the Renaisance artists. The Sistine Chapel. Was it painted for the glory of god or the glory of the pope – a man?"
"The popes, the dukes the princes wanted glory," he says.
"Look at Shakespeare, flattering Queen Elizabeth in A Midsummer Night’s Dream."
"Art always appears."
"Today there are great comedians creating art. Banksy has created art from graffiti."
"I don’t see that with copywriters."
"We need to find our own voices, our own weirdness."
"Words are the world."
"Who thinks we are living in a simulation?"
"According to Nick Bostrom, any civilisation can reach the computing power to simulate a universe. Are we in one? People are taking it seriously. People like Elon Musk believe this."
"What’s real? Maths or language? My money’s on language."
"Changing consciousness. Changing reality. That’s what we do."
"People don’t like the messaging out there, and that’s why people are putting up cat pictures in place of ads."
"I have a problem with heroes. Innocent – I’m sick of hearing abobut innocent. We have got to get over them."
"Every six years a new band comes along to tear everything apart. Innocent did that and it's fantastic and they own it. We should be pushing it on."
"Everyone knows the Apple Crazy Ones copy."
"I see that referenced so much. We aren’t the misfits in the agencies – we are the tracked changes accepters."
"We should be the ones with ideas and pushing it," he says.
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