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As an eager yet inexperienced copywriter looking to make their mark, having the opportunity to start my career with Storm Creative, the UK’s #1 agency as rated by The Drum, was an incredibly exciting prospect.
While I lacked formal copywriting experience from the outset, some of my previous roles had given me a solid foundation and passion from which my writing skills could flourish and grow.
So, I joined Storm as a bright-eyed Junior Copywriter in November 2021 under their Content Academy Programme (CAP) and got to work learning the ropes, putting metaphorical pen to paper and sharpening my fundamentals.
However, as I quickly began to realise, there’s more to copywriting than what you say and how you say it. It’s crucial to consider how the final product will look, what imagery will accompany a piece, and where that collateral will sit.
This brought me on to my first revelation. There’s lots to learn.
It’s no exaggeration when I say that I’ve learnt something new every single day at Storm. Whether it’s how to write a script, how to optimise content for search engines or how to create an article with UX in mind, each job brings its own nuggets of insight.
Because there is so much to learn, I was given a variety of writing tasks before tackling live client work. Not only did this training help organically hone my skills, but it also doubled as an excellent introduction to Storm’s clients.
Over the course of several weeks, I quickly got a feel for each client’s tone of voice, their likes and dislikes, as well as the kind of products and services they offer. All of this, I soon realised, would be absolutely core to the craft.
Simply put, truly understanding a client is the greatest preparation a writer can have.
Sure, someone can glance at a tone of voice document and produce something passable. But, unless they truly immerse themselves in the brand, they won’t be able to produce extraordinary work.
During the training phase, I was exposed to the many facets of copywriting. On one day I might have been tackling a long-form article, and on the next I may have been writing a marketing email or ideating blog topics.
Because each medium is so different, each requires a unique approach. This led to the third, and arguably most important lesson I learned during my time on the programme:
Nothing is ever perfect, there is always room to improve and grow.
With so much to learn, dozens of types of copywriting and an almost limitless variety to the kinds of clients we work with, it’s impossible to truly master the craft. And that’s what makes copywriting so appealing to me. There’s never a limit to what you can learn; every job will keep you on your toes.
After months of training, a well-deserved festive break and several dozen training articles under my belt, the beginning of the new year saw me introduced to client work for the first time.
While my exposure to live projects was (naturally) limited at first, as the months passed, I was tasked with many more responsibilities; jobs that required much more accountability and ownership. I sat in on meetings, met with clients, interviewed stakeholders and played a more pivotal role in delivering some of our client’s monthly content retainers.
One article soon turned into a whole month’s delivery, and before I knew it I had gone from spending portions of my day on billable work, to entire weeks on client projects.
My day-to-day now sees me creating social posts, working on ideation for storyboards, and crafting long-form (predominantly B2B) content for a range of different applications, across many different sectors. I’m now collaborating with the wider team to pitch ideas for corporate straplines, produce SEO-rich articles and plan digital assets.
No two days are ever the same - the variety, pace and opportunity to further develop my skill set, is something that I’ll never get bored of at Storm.
So, what’s next for me? Forwards!
Even though I’ve progressed so much already, I know there’s still so much to learn, so much to do and more ways for me to grow. That is a very exciting prospect.
But it isn’t just my progression I’m looking forward to - having the opportunity to get hands-on with groundbreaking tech, like AI copywriting assistants, only fuels my passion for the future of medium!
It’s an exciting time to be a copywriter, and I’m just at the beginning of my journey with an exciting agency that never stands still.
