ADOI Blog

Intern Copywriter’s blog

edward_ong on 08 20, 2009

Day 1
My first day at work. Still can’t believe I landed this gig. They gave me a place next to the photocopy machines, facing the office servers. It’s a little hot here and the ceiling leaks. Whatever. Am so ready to show them what I’m made of.

Day 4
So far, nobody’s given me any work. The secretary brought me around this morning and it was great meeting all these award-winning creative types. Everybody looks super busy doing research on Youtube, getting inspired by award annuals and exchanging ideas on msn.

Day 5
There’s this Art Director working on the same ad for several months now. He’s done like a couple hundred layouts already – sometimes making very minor changes, for example moving the logo 1mm to the left. I ask if the client’s being difficult, he tells me they haven’t found one yet. Wow – if they put in this much effort for clients they don’t have, imagine the work they do for existing ones.

Day 12
Was briefed on a contest press ad. Wrote 20+ lines after some heavy brainstorming with my art director. However, the CD felt that none of them were quite ‘there’ yet. Then he proceeded to write the mother of all headlines in about 5 seconds. The art director immediately agreed that it was the best one.

Day 15
Copy-checked a calendar this morning. This was after it had gone through the senior writer. Didn’t know February had 30 days. Was also given a new FA of an ad that ran yesterday. Learned that corkscrew, if misspelled with a ‘c’, can produce some interesting results.

Day 23
Ok, I get it now. The jobs that nobody wants to do get passed to me. The jobs with little information or constantly evolving objectives are also passed to me. The jobs needed yesterday are of course, the intern’s job. Have slowly come to realise my position in the food chain.

Day 37
The only thing more depressing than being in the office at 10.50pm, and eating dinner out of a Styrofoam box, is accidentally chewing a piece of Styrofoam and not noticing the difference.

Day 41
It’s 8.44pm. The lazy-ass creatives are as usual, either YouTubing or copying stuff from the award annuals. I am at my so-called desk, wondering about the social and professional implications of strangling my art director. We are all waiting till 9.30pm so we can claim the taxi fare home. 

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