Poetry and fiction may be more personal works, thus requiring seclusion from the distraction of others. But agency copywriting is a different ball game altogether.

Marketing writing is a form of communication that is constantly evolving, and to be successful copywriters need to be actively involved with others. I have learned a few things from my experience in writing copy for Hile:

1. Swallow your pride. As a young writer in the advertising world I had to learn very quickly that not everything my creative little fingers typed out was gold. Writing copy for a website or a script for a video is not your personal memoir, so take a dose of humility and make adjustments, edits, and rewrites where the client wants them.
2. Respect the input of others. An advertising agency is a diverse community; there are designers, programmers, project managers, copywriters, etc. When your writing is under review (and it will be) don’t discount the critique of the web programmer just because he took fewer English courses than you in college.
3. The more perspectives the better. Think of the workplace as a microcosm for the larger, diverse communities of people that will eventually read your writing. So, send your copy to more than just your boss for review. This doesn’t mean you need to adhere to every single suggestion that you get back, but it will give you a better idea of how your work will be read by the public and the client.
4. Designers are your friends. Marketing materials are composed of both images and words, and the best kind happen when words and images are married to form a happy union that we dub “advertising.” As the writer, it is crucial that you work with the designer rather than simply expect him or her to create images that conform to your writing.
5. Don’t always expect a high-five. Writing is a personal endeavor because it is a form of intimate creation. It is also a measuring stick of your intelligence and creativity. But, just because the copy you wrote for that coffee company brochure is riddled with metaphor and alliteration, don’t always anticipate getting a pat on the back. Writing for the media is a job, and while it’s nice for good work to be recognized, don’t take every project as a personal appraisal of your worth as a writer.

In the words of the poet Richard Tillinghast, “humility is naturally rare, particularly among young writers, for whom the value of doing something remarkable is vastly increased when they can say it only took them fifteen minutes.”

Writing for the media is not about sitting down at your computer and producing a masterpiece of copy in “fifteen minutes.” In fact, no type of writing should be about quick and easy creation. Working in an advertising agency is a good way to learn that the best copywriting comes from collaborating with the people around you, whether through requesting editing and revision, a wider range of perspectives, or a simple dose of inspiration.

Maggie Tibus is the Copywriting Intern at Hile Design.

Imagine you’re a client eagerly about to review Hile’s proposed design for a new website. You click on the link we’ve given you and there on your screen you see a mocked-up web page featuring clean, stylish design, a just-right photo for your banner image and … wait a minute. What the heck? In place of where the copy should go you see this:

Where you thought you’d see words somehow related to your company’s industry or purpose, there in its place is what appears to be a long, lost Romance language. You rack your brain trying to decipher what is now taking the place of the expected text. Of course, the words (if you can call them that) are there to show you how the page will look with copy and, unfortunately, hold as much meaning as a baby’s babble.

What Lorem Ipsum basically comes down to is designing and organizing a website, brochure, etc. that visually looks like the finished product. It doesn’t distract the viewer with actual copy, and the letters are spaced out well enough so that it appears on the page just as intelligible English would. 

If Lorem Ipsum is simply a way to take up space, why not use something less cryptic? Wouldn’t a series of “blah blah blahs” do the same job? Not really. And let’s face it, seeing “content here, content here” all over a design comp (short for “composite,” advertising jargon for a preview or mock-up) can be about as boring as the drone of a person who gets up to the microphone and repeats ”check 1, 2, 3.”

Besides, why alter a dummy text that has survived for over five centuries and made the jump from standard printing to electronic typesetting*? Let’s show Lorem Ipsum a little respect here.

Way More Than a Placeholder

While Lorem Ipsum is not a language itself, most clients are not far off in assuming that it is. While it would be fun to say that we just bang on the keyboard and call it Lorem Ipsum, the placeholder text actually comes from The Extremes of Good and Evil, a book written in Latin by Cicero in 45 BC*. So the next time you’re on a website that sells toilet seat covers or the like, remember that Lorem Ipsum, that shout-out to one of the greatest Roman philosophers, held the place where the description of the latest cartoon soft seat now sits.

Lorem Ipsum has come a long way since the pages of Cicero, though. Today it is even built into most publishing software and can be found online through numerous text generators. If people are going to use dummy text they want the good stuff.

For those familiar with Lorem Ipsum, it has become a sort of inside joke, spawning numerous text generators that morph Lorem Ipsum into humorous, thematic dummy texts. These include Gangsta Ipsum, Pseudo German Ipsum, Marketing Ipsum, plenty of food-oriented placeholder texts, and, our favorite, Hipster Ipsum, Who wouldn’t want a dummy text that uses words like “sustainable,” “cardigan,” and “banksy?”

Lorem Ipsum Generator Sites to Tickle Your Fancy

• hipsteripsum.me
• tlipsum.appspot.com (Yorkshire Ipsum)
• www.lorizzle.nl/ (Lorizzle my dizzle fo shizzle)
• www.duckisland.com/GreekMachine.asp (We like the “Psuedo-German” and “Marketing”)

Apparently food Ipsums are popular:

• baconipsum.com
• tunaipsum.com
• veggieipsum.com
• beeripsum.com

Alternative to latin-ish Ipsums:

• www.cameroncreative.com/filler-text.html (Check out the “Terms & Conditions”)
• chrisvalleskey.com/fillerama (Monty Python filler? Yes please.)
• www.fillerati.com
• slipsum.com/lite.html

With that, I will leave you with these kind words: Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Cras imperdiet. (Let’s pretend that means “So long, have a good day. Thanks for reading.”)

* Fact and figures according to www.lipsum.com

My 3-day a week treadmill regimen lasted 2 years.

Yup! I was a statistic. (Lest you think I’m a total slackard, I was exercising sporadically, but not on our expensive treadmill.)

Two and a half years ago when I decided to launch our company blog I had the same noble intentions as my early exercise aspirations. I promised myself I’d write two fresh posts a week, including compelling interviews with industry leaders, and that my entries would be GOOD. By my fifteenth post I realized that all those great ideas I’d had when I decided to become Mr. Social Media had run out. Uh oh. All of a sudden it got harder to be clever and meaningful. My blogging had ceased being a lark and had become work. This was especially problematic since I was counseling several of our clients to start blogging. After encouraging them about the benefits of writing online as a way to engage with their customers I always ended by warning them, “…and you know you have to stay with it since there is nothing sadder than an unblogged blog.”

A few years ago there was the belief that blogging several times a week was optimal or you’d risk losing the interest of your followers. That often led to people posting… how should I put it?… less than thoughtful content. As I followed the blogosphere and read more articles stating that producing compelling content was much more important than churning out posts for quantity sake I was somewhat relieved. Like a good portfolio, a few good articles are better than a few good articles along with a bunch of uninteresting ones.

But the fact remains that for a while my writing regimen got pretty sparse by anybody’s standards, so I am recommitting to making the time to write regularly. It’s challenging because I am the president of my company and I manage all the duties associated with my title. We’re also in the process of developing a new company website for which I am writing the content, so my time is even more limited than usual (Could that be why I am writing this at 7:45 pm?). But you will be my judges. I don’t have any excuses left for not writing regularly after this post goes live, so hold me to it!

P.S. A year and a half ago my wife and I adopted a dog from a shelter and it’s now my job to walk our pup Ellie every night for about 45 minutes come rain, snow, sleet or tsunami. I DO get my exercise since I need to walk her briskly, because she barks and lurches energetically at anything on 2 or 4 legs, which embarrasses me in front of my neighbors. Good for me!

I’d like to think that the expenses of this trip paid for more than college credit and that what I learned while across the pond may be applied to the work I’m doing here at Hile.

So, besides finally being able to define a “crumpet,” what have I learned? My literature courses revolved around legendary writers such as Jane Austen, J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis and Lewis Carroll. But, at Hile I’m not writing about ill-fated courtships or magical rings. Now that I’m out of the classroom and back in the office I feel like I’ve taken a tumble through a rabbit hole to land on my head in the world of advertising.

However, my job here can really be boiled down to one thing: words. Constructing, organizing, manipulating, sometimes even creating words is really what my job as an assistant copywriter comes down to. And what were Tolkien and Austen really doing but stringing together words to fashion a plot and characters? I realize it’s a simplification, but the realm of words is where literature and advertising live before they each evolve into something greater.

Now that I’m working on websites and press releases again, I’ve found the extensive reading and essay writing that I did in Oxford does not end with a letter grade. Words are constantly transforming as we apply them to different mediums and the work I’m doing now is part of that future growth. In Oxford I was able to see a glimpse of where these words have already been and studying that literary history makes me better equipped to use them today.

Besides bragging rights for studying in the same library where they filmed Harry Potter, my time in Oxford has shown me how a degree in English Writing may be applied to careers beyond being a teacher or a starving poet. Give me a job in advertising, a cup of tea and a warm scone and I’ll be happy. Note to Dave: feel free to make those last two a part of my pay.

I assist Monica Getz in researching, editing and, in those occasional, blissful moments, writing copy. I move in a nomadic fashion around the office as I hop from desk to desk depending on who happens to be absent the day I’m working. I’m usually stationed at Mary Cooper’s desk, but currently I’m sitting at a table in my mom’s office. Note to Dave: these chairs look very modern and stylish but they do nothing for the posture.

Now, I’m certainly not pampered at Hile because of my last name. Most of these people have known me since I was in middle school and have, through phone calls to my mother and the annual holiday parties, witnessed my maturation. Apparently they liked how I turned out since I am now employed, but just how much of an influence did mommy dearest have in this decision?

If I weren’t her kid, Julie Tibus would surely intimidate me. She knows what she’s doing, how to get it done and has the confidence to help lead this company wherever it needs to go.  Lucky for me, when she’s giving me an assignment in what I like to refer to as her “business mode,” I can think back to all the days I’ve seen her in a raggedy t-shirt vacuuming the living room and belting out a Michael Jackson song.

I wouldn’t recommend it for everyone, but working for my mother isn’t half bad.  And, if anyone says I’m only here because I’m a Tibus I will stamp my feet and call for mommy. She will fly over in her blazer and heels, lift that ferocious one eyebrow, and the perpetrator will be put in his place.  Or, I suppose I could just keep proving myself worthy of my position and see where that gets me.

My time has come. We all knew it was going to happen, but we tried to forget. And upon the final hour I eat bagel after bagel at my desk and contemplate how to sign off wittily before they come and take me away.

Well I guess I’ll actually be walking out, hopefully without an escort (sorry about the stapler, Dave), and hopefully with my dignity intact. I am sad to see my end here—it’s really a fun place to be. And I wasn’t kidding about the bagels; I’m eating them right now, a bit of a going-away treat.

It’s hard to get too upset about leaving when I think of how much better off I am since starting in February. I now have something more to say than “I watch TV” to a potential employer when he asks me about my experience with advertising. A while back I looked at my resume and thought about what skills I could add to it since working at Hile, and I was quite pleased. I owe it all to the people at Hile for taking a chance on me and seeing what I can do. Unfortunately, nothing I did was that impressive (otherwise I wouldn’t be writing this), and I’m going to work minimum wage for the rest of my life. Just kidding—I’m excited to see what opportunities await me after the experience of working here.

I could go on and list the technical skills I’ve acquired, but that would be awfully boring. I’ll just keep it brief and simple and give the best advice I can think of for anyone in my position: Don’t be shy about approaching a company and relentlessly pursuing them until they submit to your requests. Well, not exactly, but bring some confidence to the table (especially when you don’t have much else to prove yourself with) and let them know how much you want to work with them. What have you got to lose anyway?

Editor’s note: John’s right. While we didn’t exactly “submit to [his] requests,” John’s polite perseverance—via emails, not phone calls—kept reminding us of his availability so that when we did need someone to help with a pro bono project, he was the one we thought of. Thanks, John, for all your hard work and witty writing—and when you’re famous, don’t forget your first advertising job!

But honestly, what is the argument for books being preserved over music or newspapers? They cost more, they are just as difficult to steal (kidding. I mean I’m sure they are, but..), carrying many of them at once is difficult, the actual content is not compromised when transferred to digital—sounds like it might be a lost cause.

Think about the tangible qualities of a novel: You can write notes in the margins, underline parts, dog-ear pages, use memorabilia as bookmarks. And what about the wear and tear a favorite book displays as a badge of honor after years of reading and rereading? Or there’s the pungent scent of the breeze created from flipping pages—differing with a book’s age and the materials it was made from, conveying an unknown history of where the words may have been.

Do these compare to characteristics of other endangered artifacts of artistic expression? I think vinyl’s come close to possessing the novel’s venerable status, but then again I also still covet a large collection of those. I’m 22 and I’ve had many options for playing music throughout my life, but I don’t think CDs and cassette tapes have the palpable aesthetic qualities of an old (or new) record. Something about the process—removing a large fragile vinyl disc from a sleeve, with music delicately etched into its surface, all encased in a cardboard canvas of sorts. Then, having to carefully place a needle on it to receive the auditory pleasure and remain present and attentive to flip it—the ritual aspect of listening to a record is inherently more special than the action of opening a plastic case and shoving more plastic into still more plastic. And listening to vinyl is certainly more satisfying than pressing a button on a hunk of metal smaller than your hand, not to mention the differences in sonic quality, the warm analog hiss versus the compressed mp3s streaming from an iPod.

Anyway, back to books. There’s also the fact that novels have endured for so long. The earliest work that’s been called the first novel is from 1470, while the earliest known modern sound recording is from 1859. And the novel has arguably gone through more technological stages than music when considering all the different printing, paper type, and distribution advancements. Perhaps it’s here to stay?

All that said, I’m more than willing to imagine the exciting possibilities of fully digitized storytelling. I’m not too well read on the subject (har har), but I see a lot of design options coming into play with e-books. Each page could have a unique background or margin design. Different fonts could be used throughout, or for different speakers. Colors could be abundant and illustrative, pictures could become more commonplace, or there could even be interactive elements. Maybe you could combine the words and pictures and sounds and have the words spoken out loud or with the pictures moving or … oh wait, that’s called a movie.

Not to be too cynical—I do think there are some serious opportunities for innovative design work within digital books. I also think that what makes it so plausible (and perhaps why none of these design ideas are commonly implemented in printed versions) is the money saved when you get rid of all printing costs.

But I ask you, Future, please leave the printed novel be, like you’ve done with … I don’t know… walking? Or not.

• Out in / out of left field – Out in left field is used to refer to someone whose ideas or actions are, according to Answers.com, “a little crazy.” There are various theories for the origin of this phrase, two of which have to do with the New York Yankees, so I will not discuss them here. (The Yankees get enough attention, most of it undeserved.) One of the other theories is interesting: Before the Chicago Cubs moved to Wrigley Field, they played at Chicago’s second West Side Park, which was later bought by the University of Illinois College of Medicine. Eventually, U of I built its Neuropsychiatric unit on what had been West Park’s left field. You can connect the dots from there. A related phrase means something unexpected happening, as in, “Wow, that came out of left field.” When a runner is traveling from third base trying to score, he may be thrown out at home plate by a ball delivered by the left fielder, whom the runner has his back to and therefore can’t see.
• Drop the ball – OK, so this expression could refer to multiple sports—basketball, football, even dodgeball. Now I’m curious about whether the phrase truly did originate in baseball. Excuse me just a moment while I check … I’m back. There’s no real agreement on the origin of the phrase, probably because it’s so generic. In any case, if you do drop the ball while you’re attempting to catch a fly one, throw a baserunner out, or catch a wild pitch, chances are good it’ll come back to haunt you later. Big-time.
• Three strikes and you’re out – This one is pretty self-explanatory, but let’s give it a positive spin, shall we? If you watch any great match-up between a pitcher and a hitter, you’ll see that the hitter actually gets an unlimited number of chances to hit the ball (not only three), as long as he can “stay alive” by getting a piece of it, or hitting the ball foul. Foul balls only count as strikes up to the second one—strike three must be a swinging strike. So, you’ll hear sports announcers say a hitter has a “great at-bat” if he can extend the number of pitches the pitcher throws him to eight, ten or even a dozen. There’s a life lesson here, so excuse me if I sound like a self-help expert for a moment: In real life, as in baseball, you get more than three chances. Just keep trying to get a piece of the ball. And don’t swing at the really bad pitches.
• Threw me a curveball – We’ve all had the  experience of someone hitting us with an unpleasant surprise, whether it takes the shape of a last-minute meeting at work, a late-night phone call or a breakup announcement delivered by that most sensitive of social media, Facebook. Yup, someone just threw us a curveball, and our first response is often to throw the darn thing back, only harder. The trajectory of the curveball is north-to-south (like a rainbow’s arc), so it has the effect of dropping suddenly as it crosses home plate, leaving hitters swinging at the place they thought the ball was going to be. Here’s the thing to remember about curveballs: pitchers don’t throw them to hit batters, but to unbalance them. Maybe that’s true of life’s curveballs, too, even though they do sometimes hurt. (See a video about Tigers pitcher Justin Verlander’s curveball.)
• Hit a home run or Hit it out of the park – People use this as a compliment: “Wow, Joe, you really hit it out of the park with that idea.” If you’re a frequent home run hitter, chances are you’ll be welcome on any team. All home runs aren’t alike in importance, though all are exciting. The more runners there are on base, the more meaningful a home run is; a grand slam garners the hitter’s team four runs. So, while “hitting it out of the park” (that is, hitting the ball over the stands) is a display of a hitter’s power, it’s more significant to hit a home run with runners on base. Another thing about home runs: the more of them a hitter produces, the more strikeouts he is likely to have—case in point, Babe Ruth. He had 714 career home runs and nearly twice as many strikeouts at 1330. The moral of the story has been repeated multiple times, but I’ll restate it here: You have to take a lot of big swings in order to hit home runs. Sometimes you’ll miss, but sometimes you’ll hit it out of the park.
• For you Tigers fans, here’s your very own list of baseball names and words that, taken as a group, are probably only meaningful to you: Mags, Miggy, Cabby, Gibby, Sparky, Ernie, Pudge, JV, DD, Game 163, Jim Joyce, Paws, 1968, Rod & Mario, Jim & Dan, and finally, “near-perfect game.”

I could write about the marketing aspect of baseball, but that gets into unknown (foul?) territory. I just love the game itself, and don’t want to bother myself with all the moneymaking and shaking going on. Now I’m off to see if the Tigers can break their losing streak and head toward first place again!

Here is the list of nominees, who can guess the winner?

9/11

blog

google

green

text

war on terror

And the winner is…

Google. I’m not surprised. The official definition is “verb: to use an internet search engine, particularly Google.com,” and I have to say I completely agree with the choice.

At the beginning of the decade I was 11 years old. I remember on my home P.C. I had just downloaded Napster and started to burn CD’s. In those days I spent a lot of time tying up my family’s phone line while downloading Metallica songs at 56 kb/s (ironically, or maybe not, it was Metallica’s drummer who filed the lawsuit to shut Napster down). Then, I would use AskJeeves to search for the lyrics. By the way, if you remember the old AskJeeves, you should check out the new 3-D version of the namesake mascot – they do still exist. Anyways, Google was not far behind Old Jeevesy, and within a couple years it was the default homepage on my school’s computers. It’s permeated my life in ways I never would have imagined. Aside from being the starting point for dozens of research papers and providing thousands of hours of internet-browsing fun, it’s become what I refer to as the modern day Oracle in the Temple of Apollo that is the World Wide Web. I’ve been saying for years that my biggest regret from high school is asking for money as a graduation gift when I should have just asked for Google stock shares HINT: they’ve gone up… a lot. Maybe I wouldn’t have applied for a Bridge card last week if I had thought of this at the time.

So there you have it, Google wins and continues wiping decent companies and lexicons into obsoleteness.

Perhaps more entertaining is the “Word of the Year” nominations. It’s an extensive list with mostly humorous categories, despite the otherwise solemn nature of the American Dialect Society.

Here are a few of my favorite categories and their winners:

MOST UNNECESSARY: sea kittens- fish (according to PETA)

MOST EUPHEMISTIC: hike the Appalachian Trail- South Carolina Governor Mark Sandford’s term for his romantic visits to Argentina with illicit lover.

MOST LIKELY TO SUCCEED: twenty-ten- a pronunciation of the year 2010, as opposed to saying “two-thousand ten” or “two thousand and ten.”

LEAST LIKELY TO SUCCEED: Any name of the decade 2000-2009, such as Naughties, Aughties, Oughties, etc.

But the winner of “Word of the Year”? Tweet. “Noun, a short message sent via the Twitter.com service, and verb, the act of sending such a message.”

Twitter is something I refused to get on board with, as I originally did with facebook. But kind of like the childhood urge to stare at the sun, I proceeded to burn my retinas and get further sucked into the black hole of social networking media. Don’t get me wrong, social networking is great for keeping in touch with people you otherwise wouldn’t be in contact with, or for promoting businesses, it’s just that it’s also great for wasting time indoors staring at a screen. I am amazed at the rapid growth Twitter experienced in the last year, and, like “google” for the decade, “tweet” seems to be an appropriate winner for the year. I barely knew what Twitter was (some type of distilled facebook?) and then all of a sudden every business, whether it was a restaurant or a television channel or a shoe company, was urging me to “follow” them. For me, Twitter has simply become a source of comic relief throughout the day, as most of the people I follow are my favorite comedians – if you haven’t searched for yours, I highly recommend it. Being really funny in 160 characters is not easy. Hey, kind of like advertising!

But back to their question of what to call the last decade… When forced to think of what I’ve titled it, I realized I must have always sidestepped any type of moniker. “The Aughts” is the technical term, but it sounds so unpleasant. It can’t roll off the tongue like “Sixties” or “Seventies,” and I can’t imagine seeing VH1’s “I Love the Aughts.” Actually, after consulting the oracle, I realized VH1 also sidestepped and simply used “I Love the New Millenium.”

What about next year? What will it even be called, two-thousand eleven? Two thousand and eleven? Twenty-eleven? I think it’d be cool to truncate it to a number of its own, one I call “Twentyleven.” It flows perfectly, the long “e” sound of the last part of “twenty” forming the beginnings of “eleven.” Can I patent that?

Anyway, I’d like to hear some nominations for 2010 word of the year so far, and maybe you could provide a definition if it’s obscure. I’d bet that something to do with Twilight Vampires (which I know nothing about) will be on there, or universal healthcare, or maybe something with the BP oil spill ­– What do you think?

*You can download the press release PDF for the American Dialect Society Word of the Year and Decade, plus nominations, here.

A graduation ceremony combined with a two-month back-and-forth email correspondence finally got me an interview. I was brutally grilled in the darkened conference cave by the hotheaded Dave Hile and ice-cold Monica Getz about how I would contribute anything other than a waste of time to their company. Though I don’t really remember what actually happened due to blacking out from fear and stress (but appearing to remain conscious and functional—a skill I learned while dealing with project and term paper deadlines at U of M), it appears I somehow convinced them to keep me around.

Day one, while sitting at my (shared) desk as an (un)paid intern, Dave army-crawled from his office to my area and tied my shoelaces together. As I stood up to embark on finding the restroom (that no one would direct me to), I struck the ground fast and hard. In a daze, I saw Bob, Hile’s Director of Online Technology, approaching me. I met Bob last semester too, as he also came to speak to my class while plagued with swine flu and a sharp disdain for people in general that day. His presentation didn’t inspire the same (false) hope I left with after listening to and speaking with Monica. But I digress—getting back to Bob, I thought he was coming to help me up, perhaps in return for appreciation that I was the only person to ask questions during his “presentation.” He did show me where the bathroom was … but he dragged me there by my hair and then gave me a noogy, repeating something like a dark Gregorian chant with the words, “Welcome to Hile, now go make me some coffee.” I got back to my desk, and Art, Hile’s web programmer, came over to give me my new company email address, UMhotshotLoser@hiledesign.com. My computer also mysteriously crashed an hour later and has yet to recover. Art blames me.

(The above story is completely fictitious. But recently liberated from strict college paper guidelines, I took the suggestion of writing a blog post about my time here as far as I saw fit.)

So here’s the real story. My time here as an intern at Hile has been fantastic. Hile has given me a foot in the door to an industry that I didn’t really know how to approach, and I can’t thank them enough for going out on a limb and trusting my writing skills. Everyone in the office is friendly and willing to answer my potentially obvious and/or annoying questions, and even in my first week I have already gained valuable insight and portfolio work that I never could have received in school. I have never had a “real” job before, or rather, one that put my academic skills to use, and it’s exciting to be in an environment where I get to finally utilize them. I’m very much looking forward to future work and getting to know the company, and yes, maybe even eking out a minimum wage.