I know nowt about black holes. But I do know how long I've been writing...
I learned the craft of copywriting in my early 20s, working at Menzies Advertising in late 1980s Glasgow. This was one of the first ads I wrote.
In those days, studio folks glued the images and text onto board to create the artwork, and it would then be sized up or down using the winder handles on a big darkroom camera to suit the newspaper’s column width.
After it was photographed, run through the developer fluid, rinsed off and dried, we’d call a courier to pick it up and deliver it before the print deadline.
Quite a palaver. And thinking about it now makes me feel pretty primordial.
It wasn’t long before my naïve perception about how glam and racy it would be to work in advertising was brutally rectified by the reality of the agency’s client roster.
Terrible puns ensued.
Okaaay. You know the drill. Scroll on.
I wrote a lot of rufty-tufty copy in those days. The agency didn’t have many 'sexy' clients.
And back then, underlining didn't signify a text link. It was just that my word processor didn't do bold. This copy was typed into a state-of-the-art beige computer with a green-on-black monitor screen.
Meanwhile, along the hall from my office, the agency's computer room hummed with the sound of three washing machine-sized hard drives.
So when brontosapiens underline headings, cut them some slack. They come from the pre-internet era!
Not long after the first Macintosh computer arrived in the studio, I finally got to write something a bit fluffier and see it produced in colour. Corblimey!
In the 1990s, I bade my copywriting job a fond farewell and flounced off to become a professional actor.
This wasn't something that just happened overnight. I'd been deeply involved in theatre-making since my teens.
Come 2005, I'd settled in Leeds and was back in the advertising game.
Thankfully, this time round, I didn’t have to write any more brochures about drainage pipes.
The clients were sexier and the office considerably swankier. Glass desks. White MacBooks. All the bells and whistles of branding world at the turn of the century. And, of course, writing for the web had become a thing.
Since then, I've written countless websites, most of which have either gone through a brand refresh since or, in the case of campaign microsites, they simply no longer exist.
Such is the way of the web. And all I have is a distant memory and the original Word doc I typed the copy in…
At Greggs, we bake our own fresh bread every single day. Our bakers are a meticulous lot. They take great pride in their baking. Once they’ve prepared the dough and popped it in the oven, it takes about 10 minutes for our rolls to bake to perfection… and up to 40 minutes for our beautifully baked big bloomers!
Still warm and smelling heavenly, Greggs bread and rolls roll out in our fleet of bakery vans to your nearest Greggs shop. It’s only once they arrive that they’re sliced and filled by the people with the friendly faces you see behind the counter. And that, my friend, is the fresher-than-fresh journey of your Greggs sandwich.
My life as a freelance copywriter began. Simultaneously terrifying and exhilarating!
Since then, I’ve worked with lots of lovely clients, who have said some rather nice things about me and my copywriting work…
“I have worked with Lesley on a number of direct mail pieces over the years and love her creative approach to writing, her speed and accuracy, not to mention her patience when we keep moving the goalposts! Great fun to work with too.”
Nicola Pinder
Internal communications consultant, invigor8
“I’ve been working with Lesley for nearly five years and she is one our favoured freelance copywriters.
"We create a lot of content aimed at children, teenagers and parents – all tricky audiences to engage with. Lesley consistently delivers on brief with a varied tone of voice to suit our range of clients, along with strong calls to action which, in my opinion, have impacted on the engagement levels of the campaigns.
"Some copywriters struggle to amplify their personality within their work, but Lesley has buckets of it – her work is fun, clever and engaging.”
Aaron Lipman
Head of creative, NSP
I love writing for young people. It's so much more fun than writing for grown-ups.
Come on, now. Given the choice, what would you rather write about? Bogeys and dinosaurs? Or life insurance and fleet management?
“There's nothing nebulous about what Lesley's copy does. Our analytics clearly show that her writing improves click-through rates on our e-campaigns.”
Louise Leach
Managing director, Clearsilver
Sometimes I'm thrilled to discover the web copy I wrote many moons ago is still being used - even when the site design has been updated. #warmglow
“Lesley makes words speak a thousand pictures, breathing life into even the most seemingly mundane things.
"She understands people and differentiates between what motivates them and what a company or brand wants to say to them.”
Rob Pratt, RPA Communications
From flying classes to fancy lashes, tone-of-voice switches are par for the course for an experienced copywriter.
From flying classes to fancy lashes, tone-of-voice switches are par for the course for an experienced copywriter.
I somehow ended up joining the Board of Script Yorkshire. Me? On a committee?
I never thought I’d see the day. I suppose it's one of those things that happen when you turn 50.
Anyhoo, I am now the webmaster and radio competition director and producer for this fab little charity which helps aspiring scriptwriters.
And the point of me telling you is this: if you have a great idea for a screenplay but you don't know where to start, check out what's happening over at Script Yorkshire!
Not long ago, I had an epiphany: enough already with the art of persuasion. Life is short. And I want to keep my creative powder dry for my personal projects and practices.
Would I ever dust off and don my copywriter's cap again? Mmm. Unlikely. Not least because, in this brave new world of human-tweaked, AI-generated content, my hourly rate makes my carefully crafted copy a luxury few can afford.
What kind of writer are you looking for? If you're not really sure, you're not alone. Because at some nebulous point shortly after the dawn of social media, the terms copywriter and content writer were smooshed into a homogenous clump and used interchangeably. But the truth is they're not really the same thing at all. So what's the diff?
is an online brand ambassador. Creating content could be their main gig, or they could just as likely be one of a bunch of people on the payroll with access to the company Facebook page.
Either way, they’re writing to engage customers old and new via the internet. It’s not selling per se; it’s more about generating warm and fuzzy feelings in people who interact with a brand, encouraging them to be part of the tribe. We’re talking blog posts, articles, emailers, TikTok videos, that kind of thing.
is a commercial writer through and through. They’ll dream up product names and straplines, work on campaign concepts, crafting everything from short scripts for TV to long copy for websites.
They’ll write blurb for brochures, boxes and labels, product descriptions and point-of-sale collateral. And they can do all the online stuff too, including SEO meta-descriptions.
So there you have it. Content tickles; copy cuts to the chase. Capiche?
What now? If you need some advice about copywriting, email me via my button. Then we could maybe swap numbers and do talking. On the phone. I know. Who even does that any more? Let's be naughty and buck the trend.
Then again, maybe you'd like to hang out on the internet for a while longer. In which case, the button of mystery beckons...
