Writing copy has always been my first love. While attending Boston House School of Advertising, I got my first job as a copywriter at Fletcher Shelton Coordination in Rosebank, Johannesburg. It was 1998. Budgets were big. Lunches were long. And we had fun. I wrote copy for margarine, hairspray, cars and burgers. I wrote copy for giant corporations and startups. Television, radio, newspapers, magazines and brochures. (I even wrote an ad for heavy menstrual bleeding once – true story.) I set my sights on New York, Madison Avenue, but only got as far as Detroit, for a Jeep photo shoot. Then 9/11 happened.
Flying off to Amsterdam for a campaign brief on a new Chrysler model seemed frivolous, and meeting up again in Frankfurt for a follow-up presentation became fiscally irresponsible. The budgets became smaller, the lunches shorter… and the internet started to play a bigger role in our daily cross-continent communications: email, skype and web-portals.
That’s when I knew I had to re-invent myself as a writer for the new digital world. I re-skilled. HTML, keyword research, SEO, sales funnels, sales landing pages… I even took an internship with an SEO company to see how things are done. I’m glad I did.
To see some of my work, you can go here . I’m also on about.me and 500px.
