Business Unit: Ogilvy CT Department: Creative Location: Cape Town Type: Permanent Reports To: Creative Director
Accountabilities and Responsibilities
The work
You’ll probably be conceptualising ideas for small, medium and large jobs. These could include anything from a radio ad to a full through-the-line campaign. In other words, you should be strengthening your ability to come up with ‘big ideas’ that can be expressed through a number of mediums, and not just one-off executions.
More specifically, you need to be able to tell the difference between an idea and an execution – an idea being the bigger picture thought, and an execution, a way (perhaps one of many) of bringing that idea to life.
You also need a basic understanding of the digital medium, i.e. banners, websites, apps, etc
Agency people and processes: At this level you should be fairly familiar with all the different departments in the agency, as well as the five basic processes for coming up with and producing great work: briefing, brainstorming, reviewing, presenting and production. You should have great relationships with Strategists and BUD’s.
The briefing process: In particular, make sure you have been properly briefed by insisting on a Kickstart. And always insist on a Brand Proposition, i.e. what is the ONE simple thing the ideas you are coming up with need to say, for example: ‘this is a fast car’.
The production process:
In particular, from a radio/audio point of view:
you should be building your knowledge of South African voice artists
you should be able to cast the right people for your audio recordings
and you should be able to direct performance at an audio recording.
In particular, from a TV point of view:
you should be fairly familiar with the TV production process
and you should be able to assess/help direct performance for TV commercials.
Proofreading: You need to make sure that both your work and anybody else’s that you’re given to check, is grammatically correct and has no spelling mistakes.
Other suppliers: At this point, you should be becoming fairly familiar with directors, photographers, sound engineers, etc.
Personal Qualities and Behavioural Traits
Be interested: Immerse yourself in awards annuals and see what great work is out there.
Be helpful: In general, you need to actively seek out areas you can help with.
Show a keenness to learn: You need to be responsible for learning and up-skilling yourself as a copywriter (with the help of the senior people around you).
Your seniors: Work closely with the senior creative(s) you are working with.
Deadlines: You need to be able to meet deadlines and deliver on the briefs given to you.
Proactive work: You should be doing this and it should hopefully start winning you some awards.
Presenting work: You should be able to present work in meetings if necessary.
Inspiration: Start putting together a collection of great writing.
Relationships
With
Group Head/ Creative Director/ Executive Creative Director
Purpose
To learn from, work with, review ideas with and assist where needed.
Competencies and Developmental Areas
Ideas: You should be able to conceptualise brave, fresh, world-class ideas.
Writing: At this point, you should, at the very least, be able to write clear, coherent copy for all mediums.
Strategic ability: You should be starting to develop your strategic skills so that you’re able to assess ideas both strategically and creatively.