HOW TO BECOME A COPYWRITER

I'm a big supporter of the advertising schools. Together with my wife, Johan Krammer and his wife, we helped found the Miami Ad School in Amsterdam, the first school outside the USA. I admire what Rick Boyko has done and continues to do for young talent. And countless other advertising schools opening up across the land. At the same time, I am a big believer that the best copywriters are classically trained writers who have been taught how to tell a story with words and ideas. 'Communications Arts', the old world description of 'Advertising and Marketing', ie the degree my father was handed when he left NY University in 1939 was 'Communication Arts'. It was called such because it combined a classic study of a BA with the science of printing and publishing (advertising wasn't invented as a scholastic endeavor back then). He studied history, psychology, languages, English Lit and communications sciences such as photography and print production. When I went to University I studied the same (minus the communications sciences) and graduated with an Honors Degree in Social Science. I learnt how to write from having written countless theses and university papers. My first marketing job was writing the application letters for half the graduating class of Engineering for $50 a letter. I was then trained by the famous Swedish Adman Nils Welinder in Stockholm on how to express an idea in the most strategicly compelling way. Today the advertising schools produce extraordinarily creative and well-trained students from across the globe. And StrawberryFrog continues to hire elite grads and interns in our Brazil, Amsterdam and New York offices. But increasingly as story telling in new media becomes increasingly important - so too will classic writing become increasingly important. Meaning a solid college experience in Arts writing writing writing combined with the new communications sciences. And of course talent.