Last week I attended the 2017 Copywriting Conference, hosted by ProCopywriters at The Crystal in London and billed as “One day dedicated to the art and science of copywriting”.
For Firehead’s sponsorship of the event, I gave a CV Surgery. Conference attendees brought me their CV works-in-progress and, during 15-minute one-on-one sessions, I gave them bespoke advice as a recruiter working in the field of digital communications. It was a fun and interesting way to meet people who are looking at the future of content.
One thing I learned is that many creatives are both interested and worried about the changes that new technology will be making on their careers. There’s a fear, for example, that machines will take their jobs. As I’ve said before, the wise content producer will always be adapting to the new environment – we all need to be life-long learners now – but machines will not be able to replace the creative process as efficiently as it will other specialities. Machines will be able to provide quick and accurate aggregated research to use as input to creative work, but humans will still have a place in the process.
The 2017 Copywriting Conference was very popular – it sold out long before the date – and the speaker line-up was fantastic:
- Sarah Richards (who I set up as a keynote speaker at TCUK17 in Wyboston Lakes recently) gave an amazing talk on The Science of Ordinary Words. She has the audience excited about looking up terms like “regressive reading” to help their clients. Check out her new book: Content Design.
Amy Harrison of Write with Influence, an online copywriting training course, delivered a talk on The Customer Disconnect: How Inside-Out Copy Makes You Invisible. (Her father doesn’t understand what she does for a living, either.)- Sasha Damjanovski, film writer and director, gave two sessions called Pitch me Perfect – looking at how to improve your pitching as a copywriter.
- Copywriter Katherine Wildman gave two sessions on Creative Writing for a Distracted World – all about unleashing your creativity.
- Mel Henson, head of creative at AWA digital, also author of Flicks & Clicks: How to Create Websites and Catalogues that Sell More gave two sessions on conversion rate optimisation (CRO) and Copywriting for More Conversions.
- Tim Fidgeon, speaker, trainer and consultant at Econsultancy, gave two sessions on Mobile UX for Copywriters.
- Richard Owsley, MD of copywriting company Writers, did a lighthearted review of 10 common client statements in How Copywriters Wish They Could Respond to Clients.
- Nick Parker, freelance copywriter and strategist, looked at making the strategic case for your copywriting in Call yourself a copywriter?
Amy Harrison of Write with Influence, an online copywriting training course, delivered a talk on You can also read Dawn Kofie’s round-up of the conference on the ProCopywriters’ blog.
I’ll be following up here on the Firehead blog with a post on CV Rules. At Firehead, we have a rather unique approach as recruiters in that we’d rather see your creativity than streamline things with standardisation. Because we are a boutique agency operating in the digital communications field, it’s all about finding out who our job candidates really are, and how they communicate, so that we can find the best fit for our clients.
If you want to find out more about becoming a Firehead candidate and joining our talent bank, please visit our Candidates section.
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