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So here’s my sad sob story: I graduated from Miami Ad School about 6 years ago, back when there was a lot of emphasis on traditional and 360 campaigns in our education - social was a relatively new medium and Instagram wasn’t the brand mecca that advertisers are flocking to nowadays. I haven’t had much luck with award briefs during my time at MAS, but I still got a decent book out of it that demonstrated my concepting and creative strategy skills. Since then, I’ve been lucky enough to get internships at agencies in NYC like Digitas, DDB and McCann. Managed to get some agency work in my book, though to be perfectly honest, they are mostly one-off social campaigns or online videos. Have been involved in new biz pitches, some of which have made it to the final rounds, but sadly no success in being credited for any of the work I’ve done on any of these pitches or existing clients. After an unfortunate mass layoff at a midsize agency I worked at, I had no other option but to go to healthcare and worked there for a couple of years. I hated the category, but it was decent money, and I managed to get a great TV a d digital campaign out of it. I’ve managed transition out of healthcare through a media agency where I got to work on some programmatic and addressable campaigns (mostly web banner copy). I haven’t been able to use or add any of my work there on my portfolio.
I want to get back to doing the kind of award-winning work that I wanted to do ever since I decided I wanted to become a copywriter. I’ve been dreaming about being at agencies like W+K or Droga or Deutsch. But I feel I’ve jeopardized my career through a string of bad luck and lack of good agency experiences or campaigns to write home about. I’m in my early 30’s now, and contemplating whether I can still salvage my career or breathe life into an already stale portfolio to make myself more lucrative to recruiters and big agencies.
Sure
Tailor your book to the places you want to work at, not the places you’ve been
What do you mean by “no one wants to hire you”? Are you getting interviews at all? Are recruiters ghosting you from the jump?
Applying to every single copywriting gig out there. Not even getting a single interview. All I get are generic automated responses that say “we have reviewed your application, but we do not feel there is an appropriate fit with our current needs”.
Work on personal projects, do the work that these agencies are looking for. And I would try to get rid of healthcare pieces in your book when you can