 So, morning everyone, thank you very much for turning out, it's good to see so many faces. I am an enormous fan of 42 courses, I think they do an incredible job and you know in particular the copyright course is the best around. And I say that, having looked into kind of quite a few of what those other options are so it's a real pleasure to kind of be here. The intro Louise gave me kind of covers a lot of what I'm all about I am a lecturer at the University of Lincoln I teach on the creative advertising degree there I also teach on the creative writing degree and I teach copywriting to creative writing students which It sounds strange but it's something that doesn't particularly happen a lot of creative writing courses you go on a creative writing degree, and you can go the whole three years and no one will ever mention the fact that a single copywriting exists. As well as that I am an author I've written a book called copywriting is, you may have bought it if so thank you very much if you haven't, well, we'll have words. And I, as well as being sort of a teacher I'm not particularly a proper academic I am a copywriter that's my whole career has been working in brands and agencies and, and I freelance I continued freelance alongside my university stuff. And that's what I do and that's that's kind of the only sort of job I've ever been able to kind of do properly and enjoy and hopefully kind of be good at. So the university thing is just me kind of bumbling into that and sort of hopefully passing on some of the sort of scruffy knowledge I have to a new generation of copywriters, which is hopefully something all of us. So if you have a copywriter you can do, whether you're on a university course or any kind of course or not just kind of pass on what you know. So that's it that's that's kind of all I should probably say about myself. Back to you Louise. Thank you so much. And so, when we're talking about copywriting there's lots of things that will come into people's minds. I'm thinking of obviously adverts we hear on television adverts we're talking about various different ways but what would you say would be if you was going into a class with introducing the subject of copywriting how do we start out how do we start out on this very, very, very big subject. I think particularly with sort of the advertising students I work with them they're the students I spend most time with. And they arrive often with a more visual background they've arrived at a course like ours creative advertising because they love graphic design or photography or illustration, or even something that media, they used to kind of expressing their ideas in a kind of a creative way but a visual way. So we get a handful who arrived with a bit of background in writing subjects, or just an enthusiasm for it in terms of kind of personal projects we get some bloggers and we've got the occasional poet or the occasional lyricist will arrive but overwhelmingly you're dealing with usually inclined kids. And what you kind of need to introduce them to is the fact that copywriting is almost the only branch of kind of mainstream commercial writing if we're going to call it that way, where you cannot just write what you want. You cannot just write to kind of indulge yourself and please yourself and write the things you love about the things you love you are writing to somebody else's instructions. And that's the kind of the fundamental difference. Now what your job is is to take that message that somebody else has given you and whether you believe in this brand or this product or this benefit or not to express it in a kind of a creative and compelling and above all a persuasive way. So almost the biggest lesson the most important thing we have to kind of deliver in those kind of early stages with the students is that copywriting is about communication, you have to be saying something, and you have to be saying a very specific thing. Now, you can do that in a very functional way you can do that in a very kind of simple and straightforward way and just say what you mean. But your job as a creative advertiser is trying to say this message in a way that no one has yet said it or say it in a way that makes it uniquely persuasive to this very specific audience you're talking to. But ultimately, the first job the biggest job the job that is kind of continuing throughout those three years and beyond is this idea of you are communicator, you are trying to persuade and trying to persuade means you have to be saying something meaningful, you can't just play with words you can't just do something witty and clever and beautiful or shocking or surprising. It has to have purpose and without purpose you're not a copywriter you're just putting words into an advert that is most likely to be ignored and certainly not active. So, Andrew, some people might say, you know, advertising has changed so much recently you know the rise of digital advertising the falling numbers of people watching in the traditional manner in the ad break as we used to watch. Yes. But as you've been saying you know, and I think one of the quotes we use in our course copy is a direct conversation with the consumer. So, when all said and done, to what degree are we still very much drawing on the traditional rules of copy or what would you say is the direction that we are changing in with the rise of digital. I suppose the one sort of constant, if you go back to kind of, you know, early days of appetite even go right back to the sort of the origins where radio is the kind of the dominant medium and it's the most effective medium. The parallels between those days where you know everyone's writing these kind of radio spots, and now where digital means your ad can appear in all sorts of different places and all sorts of it can you know it can be an embedded winner within a game. It's a completely sort of new space, but the idea of creative compelling original engaging and meaningful copy writing words the arrangement of words is still that kind of consistent thing. So often we will say to students you know here is a brief here is a problem here is a brand and sort of a message you've got to try and put out. And then they have to uncover the best place for that to live, because the thing that starts the you know that the beginning point for all of these things has to be, what are we trying to say what do we have to say and how can we say it in a way that people are going to pay attention to and engage with and remember and hopefully kind of act upon. So a big part of where these messages live is kind of driven by the audience. If your audience is in certain space then brands need to be there and again, that's the rule that has always been true for advertising is just in the early days. Those media spaces were more universal, you know, everyone was doing the same things looking at the same things listening to the same things. Now it's much more kind of splintered it's much more kind of diverse and eclectic and, and you know all of these environments gives you almost too much choice. But you have to almost think as a copywriter as a creative, or rather you have to not think about that you've almost got to kind of put that out of your mind and just treat it as if you were doing a press advert. It might not end up to be a press advert that might not be the thing you produce, but that will help consolidate your thoughts that will help you give a really clear direction about what it is you want to say what your idea is. And then you'll figure out how it lives in the most appropriate platform. And, I mean, of course, as humans, we're all very self absorbed. We're always looking for where we are appearing in the message that's being spoken to us. And to what degree do your students do feeling students need to have a good understanding of human psychology human behavior is obviously very important. I think it's, it's one of those things that's a thread that runs through everything we do. And we have to kind of introduce them to, you know, the psychology of decision making the psychology of influence, you know, a relatively new thing or relatively more popularized thing in the industry is obviously behavioral science and rightly so you know behavioral science gives us so many kind of clues and kind of roots into how we can kind of reach and persuade people in new ways. And a lot of the stuff we talk about is is built upon this idea that the human brain is very sort of clever and cunning thing. And it has got very, it has got very effective at shutting stuff out that we don't want to pay attention to, especially now in kind of a modern world where you are, you are bombarded, you know, you are you are inundated with with messaging from different places everywhere you go somebody's trying to say something to you. So the human brain has managed to kind of develop good ways to kind of autopilot through the day, because if you stopped and paid attention to all of these things you wouldn't have time to go to work. You would just be standing in the street or staring at your phone for kind of nine hours. So, you know, the role of psychology is to how do you influence how do you, you know, disarm that kind of autopilot in the brain and give it something that is going to kind of be willing to pay attention to that is going to alert you your consciousness to that this is something different this is something about the ordinary this is something that might be kind of useful or valuable to us. So psychology and behavioral science and all of those things cannot be the only answer you cannot just be brilliant at that, and hope that that will then sort of turn into attention and sales. But if you combine that with creativity and imagination, and the willingness and the permission to kind of do quite bold and different things. Then that is the good and memorable ads you see out in the world. And of course another aspect I think one of the other quotes in our course is from James Murphy. Adam and Eve BBB says we're ashamed of our core purpose selling. Again, you know with your students with people you're talking to about copywriting. Obviously there's a huge art to advertising will you know there's no doubt about that great awards from can the artistic side, creatives, but at the end of the day, there is a core purpose that is to sell the product. Again, to what degree, you know how do we put this message out to you know your students got great highfalutin ideas but at the end of the day they've got to understand we've got to come back down to ground and get to the core purpose. Yeah, yeah, and I think you know it's this idea of purpose which is very much a contentious point in the industry at the moment it kind of always has been to a certain extent. I know Steve Harrison wrote console won't sell which is very much about this is kind of shift away from let's just sell stuff you know that's what we that's what we existed to do that's what we were created for. But I am going to be really unhelpful and sit on the fence here because I do think there is absolutely there was course there's value in in selling that is the kind of the reason for the existence of this industry is the reason the course like ours can be sustained it's why people apply for it is why the industry pays attention to the graduates we put out into the world because they want to be able to sell stuff that's what pays their bills. And then there's a space for purpose driven stuff there is there is this idea that the customers are, you know, it sounds really wonky but customers are buying into a brand and their values, and I think you look at stuff like Ben and Jerry's Ben and Jerry's make ice cream they make silly ice creams. They came out and they said in kind of very, very bold and very sort of direct language to no one else was doing. These are the causes we believe in this is the sort of social justice that we stand for we're going to fight for. And they knew that they were going to lose customers and they knew that we're going to be criticized but they wanted to not just be this money making ice cream selling enterprise they wanted to use their platform to do something. And you know the argument is well, it's not your place brand it's not your place ice cream set let's go and do this. Who else is doing it. If you've got that audience if you've got that profile profile and platform. If you've got a big advertising creative budget to spend. Well, give a bit of that to to you know, helping make the world a better place in some small way, providing it's meaningful and providing you live those values you know you just need to look around on International Women's Day the amount of brands kind of tweeting, you know, garbage about how they support and stand for and celebrate International Women's Day and that fantastic bot was released last year by copyright or I can't remember her name but it's an incredible idea. And it replied to every brand to tweeted about how they stand in solidarity with International Women's Day to point out what the discrepancy was in their gender in their gender pay gap. So you can't just say, yes, I stand for this value and then not live it because people will find out and you look, you know, you look exactly what you are fake. But I think there is a balance between yes, we have to sell use our creativity to blog more stuff. And all the sort of the moral dilemmas that go with that but also creativity can be really powerful thing to make good and positive changes and if you get the balance right between those two things. Is there any reason to grumble with. Now another thing that really interests me and I don't know if it interests any of our people who've joined us today is obviously with copywriting we're told things, you know, clean writing persuasive messaging, often short taglines. And then when we start doing sort of study research into this these are the big adverts often again talking about winners that can. I think actually I've never seen that advert or it's a huge amount of copy or something's admired for being in a certain manner. And there seems to be this sort of little bit of divergence between what's admired in the field in the specialization. And then what, what real people are watching, what's your sort of take on that. Those kind of impossible conundrums and I feel like I am too, I'm conscious of it but I feel like I'm too within the bubble to sometimes be an accurate judge of kind of what a wider audience is going to like. I think I show I show moldy whopper with a broken moldy whopper to students and I get their views on it. And it's mixed I couldn't possibly kind of come back and give you sort of what the definitive answer is. Sorry, there's a fly in my room my daughter's afraid of what it's about baby it's just a fly. Don't worry, just shut the door on it. Let's go shut the door. That's it. Sorry. So I show the moldy whopper and it's this really divisive response to it. I think moldy whopper is good. I think it demonstrates a benefit and a purpose it might do it in a grotesque way and if you're selling food and food brand. Yes, there are question marks about sort of executionally what what impression does that get. But I think in terms of a dramatic demonstration of a key selling point that differentiates you against your direct competitor. Yeah, it takes a lot of very traditional advertising boxes. But I think there will always be that kind of stuff that this this idea of kind of fake work where it's had that's been made purely for can and and is ran on on one sort of obscure site somewhere for two days just purely so it can tick the box and be allowed in. Again, is it right? No, probably not but you know, sometimes it gives their creatives an opportunity to just be, you know, have more creative freedom than they probably would on live work is on kind of business as usual work so I don't know it's hard for me because I am an admirer of good creativity. I love to see great ads. I love to see the spec ads that the students and young creatives make and share. It's not real it's not been commissioned by anyone they've not had all the sort of pressures and restrictions of kind of working with a client. But I like that you know this is kind of just exercising our creative brain so I like to see that stuff. And like I say, I'm very much in that world and my representative of kind of the wider audience who brands are hoping to target and sway. No, I'm not I definitely not. You know, I love Guinness surfer and I think it's a fantastic piece of work. It's probably the greatest that I've ever seen. But I imagine there's a lot of people in the audience. Let's call them ordinary punters who look at that and go what, what, what are you selling? What is this? Why is this about Guinness? What's in the sea? So I think the short answer is here. I'm completely unqualified to comment. And of course I've been talking very much about copywriting in its traditional sense with copywriters maybe in an advertising agency. Other people would argue now today, we are all copywriters. We're producing things with for social media. Obviously we have a copywriting course. But why would you say, why would you say people should learn copywriting today if they're not in that particular field of work. Yes, I think, and this is something I said to my creative writing students very few of them have got their sites that I'm being a copywriter. Copywriting is one of the best ways, if not the best way, just to get better at writing, to be a better, you know, a better arranger of the alphabet. It gives you a better understanding of words and crafting those kind of beautiful, clean, meaningful, memorable original sentences. And that's what it all kind of boils down to. And I think you learn, you know, if you wanted to write a novel or a play or a poem or you wanted to kind of set a successful block. I think learning to write ads, learning to write headlines, learning to write these very sort of compelling short persuasive messages. I think that makes you better. I think it gives you an appreciation for the value of every word you include in something. And it's that old copyright and cliche of, you know, you take it take away words until you can't take away anything else you take away words in your sentence until it stops making sense. And it makes your stuff what James Baldwin would call a sentence as clean as a boat. Now, if you can learn that, whether you're selling lawnmowers or trying to write, you know, the next great novel, that's a useful and valuable sort of skill to have. But I think you have to learn it and then you have to put it into practice. So courses like ours courses like the ones you run that gives you some fundamental principles that gives you some techniques, and it gives you some ways to apply them. If you just sit and learn and absorb that go brilliant this stuff's in my head now great. No, it has to be then kind of put into practice put into action whether you're doing it professionally or not. You need to go and sort of experiment with that stuff. And what about we've talked about courses we've talked very much about agency life copywriting in business. What about talking about books you mentioned a book earlier. It would what do you mentioned what do you suggest your students that they should read or maybe for you know myself if I was coming to the subject and new and I'm saying to you I'd like to have an introduction to copywriting was the best book to read. My answer to this is going to be really really unoriginal I'm afraid so I'm about to rattle out some books so imagine a lot of you have I've already seen or read or aware of. There's the book that we kind of consider to be our Bible course and it's true for most of course as I think in the UK is Hey Whipple squeeze this by Luke Sullivan. Which is on edition eight now I think, but still I'd say it's an indispensable and indispensable guide just to being an advertising creative how do you think of stuff how do you sort of craft those ideas and turn them into something meaningful how do you make sure your kind of creativity is kind of retaining that kind of purpose that kind of core communication at the heart of it isn't just it's just a great book and he's a lovely guy. What else read me is a brilliant book on copywriting by Professor Giles Linwood who also works at the University of Lincoln, say one of the best sort of copywriting textbooks around. I really like junior by Tom Kemeny again who's another lovely fella, a really really good guide if you are just kind of getting into the industry and you want to kind of figure out this very strange and different and sort of you know, slightly intimidating place you've kind of found yourself in I think junior by Tommy is a really really kind of good guide to how you survive that and how you kind of find your feet and how you thrive in that kind of environment. What's on my reading table at the moment my reading table. That's probably the first chew with your mind open by Cameron day is brilliant isn't it's got a piece of chewed up chewing gum to like a brain, my daughter's fascinated by. And I suppose, sort of one of the big ones you might be able to see on the shelf up there and handling content rules and kind of everybody writes. She writes for a huge part of what I teach she writes is such an effective and persuasive and memorable kind of way about how, you know, how to get your words noticed how to kind of create something that people will want to read, and we'll remember and we'll then kind of act upon. I think the stuff she writes is wonderful. So that's a really really kind of short list of kind of potential stuff to write. It's a Dan Nelkin's book, a self help guide for copywriters that came out earlier this year. This is somewhere great really really cool really good sort of against step by step guide to how you know how to be a copywriter my book isn't that my book isn't a guide to how to be a copywriter it's almost a guide to everything you're going to feel as a copywriter and go through. What I love about that is that obviously you're extremely experienced in this subject, Andrew, but you're still seeing value by reading from, you know, other people in the field, which is fantastic. Yeah, it's one of, again, one of those old cliches when you feel like you've learned everything, then, you know, you're lying. So we're so glad that so many people have joined us on this talk to hear you with your, your words of wisdom, Andrew, we've got a great number of people here with us today. I'm just scrolling back through the messages there we've got people here, Marissa from Yorkshire we've got people from Serbia, we are all very welcome that people from Nigeria you're all so welcome today. We've got a question here I don't want to hug you to myself. We've got a question here from David. David would you like to join us to put your question to Andrew yourself or will I read out the question you're still with us David. Yes. Hi there Louise, how are you? We're coming to you from Belfast Northern Ireland today where it's 28 degrees it's the hottest it's ever been for 1000 years. There's a reasonable chance we'll die halfway through this section but. You're very welcome. You're very welcome David. Awesome prayer. Do please put your question. Yes. So Andrew, we principally sell B2B, although most of the content that we see whenever we're learning marketing advertising and copyrighting typically focuses on B2C, and we would just love to see and get a sense from you. Is there, is there a different discipline is it a fundamentally different approach are there different models that we should be using as we're crafting our message. Hello David by the way. I'm not sure it's one of those tricky ones where I think the flippant thing to say is that there's no such thing as B2B and B2C you know you are you know you're trying to come up with something compelling and clear and persuasive. I think that it's going to be an audience and those audiences comprise of human beings. There's a horrible thing that I see floating around a LinkedIn saying it's not B2B or B2C it's H2H human to human which. But the you know the principle of that is sound you are trying to you're trying to persuade people. I say that's the flippant approach because there is a different degree of information that goes into B2B stuff you know you are often talking to an audience that is as technically savvy. Well, we would almost surely be as technically savvy as your own business. That means you talk in different terms if you ever you know if you ever sat in a pub and you'd listen to two doctors or two engineers, speaking together they speak a different language because they know they're on the same page they've got this kind of shared experience, the shared vocabulary so that has to be taken into consideration of course it does. I still think there is a fundamental thing about be creative in your messaging. A B2B audience will be just as bombarded with unwanted sales messages as anyone else's in the world, and they will be just as adept screening out the things they can't be bothered to engage with. Be creative and disruptive and surprising and original and all the things that we ask our kind of B2C writers to be. You are going to make more of an impact. That doesn't mean you have to in any way kind of water down your expertise or water down your, you know, your very specific and technical credentials because you don't. There is a way to blend those two things together if you get a good writer who understands what you do. Maybe that's the key mate is spending time with a good creative writer but getting them to understand your world. Don't just hire a writer and say here's the brief go off and do what you need to do to treat them like what they are a complete novice to your industry and all likelihood. And let them learn a lot about it because they are going to then filter that through their imagination that they're going to come up with hopefully a way that ticks both of those boxes it's going to feel creative and disruptive. But it's also going to feel very much relevant to the kind of you and the audience. Does that make sense. It does. Yeah, we appreciate it. It's been a good chat. I hope you survive the day. We won't leave that help. Thank you so much for that great question. And so I've spotted another question in the chat box and I if you're still with us Rob. I'm doing you in Rob McPherson you're very welcome. You have a question for Andrew if you're still with us. Hi Andrew. Hi, how are you doing I've got this working through it. Sitting alongside this. So I couldn't resist. Yeah I couldn't resist dining into this today. But my question is about the quality of briefs. I know you've been great for clients and have written for years, but I'm increasingly asked to write briefs for people because I think people who are commissioning work often find that incredibly difficult. So, and quite often you'll read how creatives receive briefs and they're just tearing their hair out saying I don't know what's wanted here it's just full of guff. It's not terribly precise. So I'm interested in what you look for in a brief and I mean it was interesting you said before just right. I think if I understood you right right a moment ago you were sort of saying just right as if you're writing a press ads. And I think you were suggesting it didn't sort of matter the context but I think that if I might be wrong in thinking that but to my mind sometimes the context is the most important thing. I mean, yeah, I'm interested in what you look for in a brief really if you could expand on that thank you. Yeah, yeah, not a problem. I think what I look for in a brief and what I get in a brief two very different things. I, and I suppose I need to qualify this question or this answer and probably a few that coming up. I'm a really lazy person. I got into copyrighting because I didn't want to do a grown up job. So if you come to me with a brief that is 18 pages long comes with seven attachments. That you know that will might be in your mind a comprehensive brief that might be a very detailed and thorough account of what it is we need to do and why and who we're speaking to etc. But I'm not going to read any of that. I'll probably read the first page or I'll skim through until I find something that sounds like the one thing we need to do or the objective or something like that. So I do think brief writing in terms of the client and also in terms of the creative is an exercise in reduction. I think you are trying to boil it down to some fundamental things. And I think a lot of clients with the best intentions will give you a lot as a creative they will give think you know you need all this background you need all this context you need. We've spent a lot of time formulating this strategy so we feel like we want to include it in this entirety. So I will want that boiling down and you know most of the time as a creative and a writer you have to go through the exercise yourself. And one of the things we teach our students is when you are when you receive a brief, when you're working on a campaign the first thing you do is you rewrite the brief, and you have to rewrite it in terms of what are those kind of five really key components for your audience. What is the objective of the campaign. What is your kind of key proposition that kind of most compelling thing you can talk about. And what's your strategy, you know what you know put your strategy into five words if you can. And if you have that if you're able to go through the exercise of distilling this one thing into this other the simpler version. The second one becomes your brief, and you almost can kind of push that other one into the sort of the corner, and then you work from that one and you might go through the same exercise again and shorten your short version. And you keep going through that and so you're very very clear about what it is you want to do. I've slightly rambled off topic here. The thing I look for most of all is a very clear communication objective. And in the same way that I have to tell young copyrighters that what we do is all about communication. I feel like you know sometimes you have to say that's the client as well. You want to say one really compelling thing. And whatever the media becomes about what the delivery or the execution, we can have that conversation we can figure that out. We can put it in the back of our minds, but we can figure that out after we figured out what is this one compelling thing that you want to communicate. Because if you don't have that, then there's no point in me developing your, your campaign platform or figuring out what media works best or what channel we need to be or where your audience exists or any of those things because we could get the positioning of this completely right and the placement of it spot on, but you haven't got anything to say. So those people aren't going to respond however primed they are as an audience. So that's the thing I need to see in a brief you know what do we want to communicate. I don't need people to have a go at copywriting it. I don't need to see kind of attempt to set a creative headline, say that one thing in the simplest and clearest and most basic language possible and for a copywriter. That's enough. That's all we need we can figure out how we turn that into a concept. Thank you. Yeah, thanks so much, Rob. That was a really great question. Thank you. Thank you for joining us today. And so we'll bring some more people in for questions soon. But what I'd like to talk to you about Andrew is, I think a lot of us here will all say that we remember very well certain advertisements that we grew up with. Those classic jingles from the television or from the radio. And what I'm always wondering, is that inherently, do you think something to do with, you know, human nature when you're young that you sort of latch on to these repetitive messages, or has advertising changed? I think advertising has changed at the same time it hasn't. And I think it is a bugbear of mine that there is a certain kind of element out there in some industry circles who the golden ages, who will tell you that there was a great time for advertising because every advert was brilliant and creative and witty. And now everything is garbage. And that's not true. There is good clever brilliant witty stuff being made today. There is good clever witty stuff in the past. And there was garbage from both of us, because that is just the inherent, you know, the inherent byproducts of advertising there will always be terrible work and there always has been terrible work. There has always been brilliant work as well. So I do not buy into that. But you know, it of course it has changed in terms of where your audience is where your adverts have to live. The lifestyles, you know, the lifestyles and sort of the ways we spend that time advertising has always been this thing really closely linked to leisure time. And kind of getting people to to invest in their leisure time, get to invest in entertaining themselves. That's always been that sort of a true thing for advertising. But what that looked like in sort of the 70s and 80s is very different to what that looks like. Now, of course it is because again, you know, the digital has kind of transformed every aspect almost of how we entertain ourselves. But the consistent principle, the thing that will always be true is, can you say something creative and compelling and meaningful that demonstrates kind of a clear value for you the audience. Can you cut through the noise, can you be be the memorable advert, the one memorable advert that people engage with in a day where they probably see a thousand. It's always been the case. And even if the media landscape and human behavior and sort of, you know, the potential channels and avenues for those kind of creative thoughts and those kind of communication ideas have changed. The fundamental skills of being a copywriter and ad creative are all about how do you get people's attention. How do you make them take notice of you, how do you persuade them that this thing that you do and you're offering them will benefit them in some way, you know. So, I think, yes, I've probably strayed off from the original point of the question there but hopefully there's some kind of answer in there. And the fact that you say that obviously things have changed nobody's denying that and we don't want to hark back as you say to the golden age of the sort of stereotype of the mad men. Young students coming to the field today and you said to know it is it's a more diverse area. There's a lot of noise. Some people would say there's always been a lot of noise. But what other challenges do you think for people entering this, this field now for your students who you're teaching. I think I would encourage people to hark back, by the way, to kind of older times not not hold it upon a pedestal of this kind of perfect example of an industry that is now sort of degrading itself and sort of decline. Look back at great copyrighting, look back at great ads, look back at great creatives, learn from them, be inspired by them, you know, try and bring some of that stuff into your own kind of process of thinking. But do the same with modern stuff. There's so much incredible kind of modern work being made as well. Don't don't fall yourself into thinking one era is superior to the other in any way. There were great creatives and great creative work to learn from in both ones. In terms of the challenges that you face kind of as a modern, you know, a contemporary kind of young creative. I suppose they're sort of slightly different. We're coming on the back of two very sort of tricky years on the course with COVID and we're of course the functions based on we get students in, we get in our studio together, we spend the day together, we're working on briefs, we chat into each other. It's that kind of face to face process. Now, I'm not saying that it's impossible to kind of do creative work remotely because it clearly isn't. It's been, you know, it's functioned perfectly well over the last two years. But I think when you're sort of shaping a young creative brain and you're these kind of young creative people are trying to figure out their own creative identity and they're kind of creative behaviors and all of these things. Being away from the studio has hit them hard. And I'm enormously proud of them. And they're kind of resilient to be able to, you know, come out the other side of it and be such good and confident and kind of skilled creatives we've got students who are already in work grads who kind of finished learning in May are already working at some huge agencies down in London and beyond. So I think the COVID thing we should we should definitely not underestimate the impact that's had on young people, not just kind of people on creative courses, but all young people. And I think the fallout from that will last longer than maybe maybe we're kind of anticipating. What I would say is there are an awful lot of positives in that. The industry is very welcoming of kind of creative young talent, the amount of kind of creative directors and teams your messages and say send us your best grads, you know, we want to give them a chance we want to, you know, we want to kind of give them a placement. It's competitive because it's always been competitive because it's a job that people want to do. And there are 10 or so advertising degree courses in the UK, there was some fantastic portfolio schools. There are kind of, you know, less obvious routes of getting into it so you've got a lot of really bright young creative things scrapping for a finite amount of jobs. But the industry is open and welcoming. And, you know, I hear from creatives who get taken on in agencies and they're not just at the bottom of the pile. They're not just working on the trash that nobody wants to work in. They're involved in the good stuff. They're involved in everything they're learning from, you know, senior creatives there. They're learning by working on the big and exciting briefs. I might be slightly roasted. It's a great life. It's a fun life. It's, you know, it's a really, really good way to earn your living and to spend your supposedly grown up years. So I am a big fan of it. Is the industry diverse enough? No. Is it inclusive enough? No. Do they know they need to get better? Some of them do. And I think, you know, courses like ours have a responsibility for that. But that's that's something that everyone's going to have to sort of take steps to kind of improve. But it's out there. It's visible. People are getting called out. Agencies are getting called out if they are not doing the right thing. And I'm not saying that's enough to make the changes that need to happen. But it's a beginning, I suppose. And Andrea, you said we do need to hark back to the golden ages, as it were. And I mean, I know when I think of adverts that I remember, as I said, it's never that they're particularly sort of high class adverts. You know, it's like you think of KP Discos and the Mad Jamba Cake Eater and or you'll be sitting there and all of a sudden a jingle from, I don't know, Brookbond Red Mountain, which isn't even on the shelves anymore, but the jingles will go through your head. But when you're actually suggesting classic adverts to your students that you feel they can really learn from, which are the ones that really sort of jump out if we're talking about favourite adverts, things we can really learn from, things we really should draw upon. I do show them a lot of silly stuff, because I think if there is one thing where modern advertising isn't doing as much as previous generations, it is silly, funny adverts. I grew up, I think the first advert that really sort of resonated with me was Tango back in the, I think 90s, probably the early 90s. And it was the Tango Man. And I don't know if anyone's old enough to remember this, but it was a guy opened a kind of Tango and this orange, this man, bald man painted headstone orange with orange pants, ran on and slapped him on the face with both hands. And that was, you know, that was the feeling you've been, you know, when you've been Tangoed. And that advert came out and I was probably, I don't know, I was about nine, 10, and then we went to the playground the next day. We'd all seen the same adverts, you all watched the same things, and we Tangoed each other and you ran around tapping people on the shoulder and slapping them on the face. Brilliant. It was an absolutely fantastic break time. The following day, banned. The advert was off the screens. Schools called us into assembly and said this terrible sort of evil, fizzy drink propaganda as led you all astray, we're going to have to stop. And it was like, oh, okay, right. So this is what the sort of power of kind of an advert is this was like a fizzy orange drink. And it's had schoolchildren all around the country smacking each other in the face. So I think there is power in silly stuff. There is power in, in just kind of the nonsense. I think of, you know, the castle main forex ads from when I was growing up. They were all just like little comedy sketches, they were just funny, they were just designed to be funny. And I think perhaps there is some times in this age of kind of purpose, where we don't feel like or brands don't always feel like they have the permission to just be funny, just be entertaining. Some obviously do. And then we're still kind of amusing stuff on the screens at the moment. But in terms of I suppose kind of the big important work I share with students as well as that. You kind of have to give them a bit of a crash course, not many students arrive at university knowing more than a handful of adverts, which I know sounds strange for students have chosen to be on that advertising course. So you have to kind of give them a bit of a crash course but what we try and do between the lecturers is show them your favorite show them the adverts kind of mean something to you and the ones you really admire. And then they tend to get a sort of slightly different perspectives from us. But then the key is we have to send them out, go out and kind of find, you know, find ads you like find modern ads from ads from past. We give them this little quiz and it's like go and find an advert that's got an elephant elephant, your favorite advert with an elephant. The advert from the year you were born and it's just trying to get you into this kind of idea of there is a billion adverts out there. And there was so much to kind of learn from and be inspired by. I like I say I show I show surfer the students because I love it and I think it's fantastic. I show Sony Bravia and sort of bouncing balls. They are never as enthusiastic as I am I show them the cog the Honda in the car I show them Skoda in the cake. You're very big visual set pieces I think to begin with. But then I also show them small and silly stuff one of my favorite ads is John West, fishermen fighting the bear on the banks. And it's just showing some that can you come up with a very strange and funny surreal sketch. And then that is an advert you know that could be a really compelling TV spot so I don't want them to take it too seriously. No one in advertising should take it too serious. And I think if you can do funny and unusual stuff. I think that does resonate with with a wider audience. That's a great example to tango and actually it was I think it was only last week I saw they've actually got a very strong current post outside poster campaign which is very attractive so they're taking up the good work. I don't know if it's still the same advertising agency after all this time. And I love the idea of the image of sort of sending your students out, be it to see poster ads or to watch TV or to listen to the radio because obviously you said, once you set off with that purpose in mind you see things then in a new way and you start to see things that you hadn't noticed before which is always very true with anything that gets pointed out to us. Marissa had a question earlier and you're very welcome Marissa, how are you, you would like to ask Andrew about any of his own work, would you like to join us Marissa. Hello. Yeah I suppose I'm a big I like following your LinkedIn actually I see quite a lot of what you put out there which is always entertaining. But I thought, is there something that you're kind of most proud of or even if it isn't like the sexiest or the most. Is there some piece of work that you were like, this is the winner. I think, I think, hello by the way, Marissa. I think, when you, when you first start out you feel like the work you've been the most proud of is, is the big shot. And then you kind of learn, actually you take more satisfaction from just a well crafted solution. And often that can be slightly less glamorous and you know I would. I'm too elegant, perfect with it. So I remember walking through like a boot store and I'd done some stuff to launch. It's like a skincare, it's like an anti agent it was a wrinkle cream which I know is an awful thing to work on but there we go. And then it was this advert I did and I just bought past it. I saw my kind of my ad out there in the world and you just feel satisfied. I felt like I remembered when I saw that ad all the agonizing all the, all the sort of the thinking and the angst that had gone into kind of coming up with that line. And kind of getting it through a very, very sort of precarious sign off process. So I took a great deal of satisfaction from that. But nowadays, I think what I like most is stuff where I have had fun on it. I work for an agency as a freelancer called officer and gentlemen is is my favorite agency I've ever worked with, run by Alex and Javi to my pals. And the work that they do. And they bring me on to kind of work. It's just fun. It's just such good fun. I will tell you very quickly about one. It was overlocked down. They rang me up and said we have got a job for Pornhub. Pornhub. Okay, Pornhub. And I thought, okay, interesting. This is a new one for me. And they said, yeah, we are doing this idea where we have found in the biggest museums all around the world and art galleries. It's one of the dirtiest, most erotic classical paintings in the world. And we want to create an audio tour, a Pornhub audio tour so you can navigate your way around these museums and go and look at the dirtiest art in the world. So I had to learn. There was an art historian involved. He wrote these these kind of synopsis of the pieces. And I had to write audio guide scripts for a famous porn star to read out for this Pornhub art audio tour. It's a great highbrow, isn't it? It was so highbrow. It's the most highbrow thing I've ever worked on. And it was for Pornhub. And it was just so much fun. And working with them is so much fun. I think working with lovely people. And so that's the stuff I look for now. You know, I think, I think I've never sort of big agencies have never really massively appealed to me. I've always worked in kind of smaller places. I've done some freelance stuff for some really big agencies, but I always like the weirdness, the unusualness, the unexpectedness of kind of these small places. And I'm a big advocate for that. I do tell the students that. I don't know if that's advice I'm allowed to be giving them, but I do say go and find smaller places, you will have a lot more fun. See your banter between gasp as well. That seems like it's a fun relationship. It is a fun relationship because he's an idiot. Yes, I get that. And if you ever see him, tell him I said that. But yeah, I mean, gasp for another one. They just, you know, I have an enormous amount of fun with them. In fact, coming slightly back to sort of David's, sorry, Rob's question from earlier about briefs gasp. Don't tell him I said this. And yeah, gasp do incredible briefs. A brief from gasp and I'm working for them is usually Giles will send me a WhatsApp and it will be about 22 words long and it will say absolutely everything I need to know. And that's all I said. So it is possible to kind of distill these things down. Sorry, anyway, slightly off point. Thank you for answering. Thank you. Really good to see you. Thank you. Thank you so much, Marissa. You couldn't have known that was going to turn into a porn hub conversation. Exactly. Thank you. Thanks, Marissa. So we've just got time for one more question and I'm going to put it myself just because we're a little bit pushed for time now just finally and I think this is obviously very, very relevant talking about the changes in media. Great question from Vicky. Vicky Finley. Thanks so much for this great question, Vicky. In two minutes. This is your challenge, Andrew. Can you tell us if you've got any specific tips for writing ads for a TikTok? Well, no. I am a 40 year old man. My students are desperate to get me into TikTok and I'm having none of it. It's not a place for me. If you're a copywriter, you've got to be kind of familiar with these things and my advice is really boring, Vicky. It's probably kind of what I've said already a few times is the TikTok almost becomes the second thing. You know, come up with a great idea. Come up with, you know, just like we talked about all the advertisers having enough fun now. Well, probably on TV, they're not on channels like TikTok. It feels like that's your responsibility to do something fun, do something amusing. I've been shown stuff that Duolingo do on TikTok and I find that really funny. You know, that's not what I would expect from that brand. They do these very ominous things with that sort of TikTok. Al, so I treat it, treat it like you're writing for comedy, almost. I think try and be funny, which is so easy said than done. And I think it takes a long time to learn how to write funny stuff. And again, you can teach yourself this in fantastic books on how to kind of write humour. We teach a humour writing workshop at the university and there's lots of kind of different components to it. But I think once you understand kind of the audience and once you understand the things that are popular on that platform, that's kind of all you want to know as a writer. Now just take yourself back to the original brief. What's your big communication objective? What is it you want people to think and feel about your brand? And they just try and write something that you feel is going to entertain people. And I suppose the beauty of writing for social media, which is something that doesn't always kind of funnel up to the decision makers, is that there are no real risks to it. You can gamble, you can do weird stuff, you can experiment and just do something on the off chance that it might resonate. And if you can find a good client that's willing to let you experiment, then just take that opportunity and grab it with both hands and be as kind of strange and different on there as you can and learn, learn what works, learn what bombs and kind of move on to the next thing. I think there is a freedom or there should be a freedom to channels like TikTok and possibly an older version of Instagram. Instagram feels like a dying appetizing space in a lot of ways. But TikTok feels like there is fun and there is vibrancy and there was Schumer, which is a really big part of why people have kind of gravitated into so much. So build those things into your own responses. I know that's a really rubbish, you know, a rubbish bit of advice, but I'm 40 years old. Okay, I'm far too old for this. Well, thank you so much, Andrew. I hope that everybody who joined us today has been scribbling furiously all the words of wisdom that we've learned from Andrew today. I'm so pleased so many of you could join us. Thank you on behalf of 42 courses for everybody who joined us and thank you, Andrew, and really enlightening hour. A nice coffee break for us during the day and I hope that you will all join us again for another event and until then, we will now stop recording and all thank you so much, Andrew Bolton. Thanks so much.