TCC Podcast #132: Telling the Truth About Advertising with Bob Hoffman

Former copywriter and Ad Contrarian, Bob Hoffman, is our guest for the 132nd episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast. If you know anything about Bob and his special brand of commentary, you already know that you’re in for a treat. He’s been an outspoken critic of what’s wrong in the advertising world and he had a lot to say about privacy, ageism, and social media. Here’s what we talked about: •  Bob’s path from bad school teacher to contrarian copywriter •  the most important personal quality if you want to be a copywriter •  how to write in a way that attracts interest from your audience •  why he started his own ad agency—more than once! •  the dark side of running an agency and the difference when working alone •  the things about advertising that drive Bob crazy •  why privacy should be your #1 concern as a marketer and consumer •  what it will take to fix the privacy problem •  what ad agencies are doing well right now (spoiler: it’s not much) •  Bob’s complex love-hate relationship with social media •  the limits of brand building with social media •  the ultimate goal of the work that you do •  Bob’s process for selling better ideas to his clients •  the problem of ageism in advertising today—and why it matters We also asked Bob about what he’s focused on today, his book recommendations, and what’s next for him—no surprise, it’s another book—and his reluctance to tell us his predictions for the future.  To hear this one, click the play button below or download it to your favorite podcast app. Or you can scroll down for a full transcript.   The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: Hoffman Lewis Bad Men by Bob Hoffman 10 Influencers Under 10 The Choice Factory by Richard Shotton Dave Trott Where Did It All Go Wrong? by Eaon Pritchard Eat Your Greens by Weimer Snijders Laughing at Advertising by Bob Hoffman Bob’s website Kira’s website Rob’s website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group The Copywriter Underground Intro: Content (for now) Outro: Gravity   Full Transcript: Rob:   This podcast is sponsored by The Copywriter Underground. Kira:   It's our new membership designed for you to help you attract more clients and hit 10k a month consistently. Rob:   For more information or to sign up, go to thecopywriterunderground.com. Kira:   What if you could hang out with seriously talented copywriters and other experts, ask them about their successes and failures, their work processes and their habits, then steal an idea or two to inspire your own work? That's what Rob and I do every week at The Copywriter Club Podcast. Rob:   You're invited to join the club for Episode 132 as we chat with author, Ad Contrarian and chief aggravation officer, Bob Hoffman, about what's wrong and what's right in advertising today, what it's like to found two successful ad agencies, what copywriters need to know about marketing and copy right now and what it means to be a true contrarian in an industry where group think is rampant. Kira:   Welcome, Bob. Rob:   Hey, Bob. Bob:   Thank you, thank you. It's great to be here. Kira:   Bob, how did you end up as a contrarian copywriter? Bob:   I started as a contrarian person and then it led to me being a contrarian copywriter. Well, I started as a copywriter, I didn't really start as a copywriter. I started as a science teacher, believe it or not. Kira:   Oh, wow! Bob:   I was a science teacher for a couple of years in middle school and then I ran into a friend of mine who I hadn't seen since college, this was about three or four years after college and I asked him what he was doing and he said, ‘I'm a copywriter,’ and I said, ‘What's that?’ and he said, ‘I write ads,’ and he said, ‘And you would be really good at it.’ He said that to me because we had written some stuff together in college. He said, ‘You'd be really good at that,’ and at that time, I was fed up. I was a terrible teacher, and I always wanted to do writing, although I wasn't trained in it. I said, ‘How do I do that?’ First, I need to say that he said to me, ‘You know those things, the TV commercials you see on TV.’ I said, ‘Yeah.’ He said, ‘I write those.’ It had never occurred to me that civilized people actually sat down and wrote commercial. I thought somehow, they just appeared on television magically and he said, ‘Yeah.’ I was, ‘Okay, yeah. That sounds like something I'd like to do.’ He gave me some information on what to do and I put together a sample portfolio and I took it to see a headhunter. I was living in New York at that time and she told me I would never get a job in advertising and that's when I knew I had to get a job in advertising because I'm a contrarian. I did get a job and I worked in New York for a couple of years and then I moved out to San Francisco and got my first agency job in San Francisco. In New York, I was working in house at Panasonic. They had a large advertising department about 40 people or so. I got my first agency job in San Francisco, and yeah, that's how I started. Rob:   Obviously, there are differences from maybe when you got your first job to writers today, but what are the things that you did in order to land that first job? What was that made you stand out so that an agency would be willing to hire you? Bob:   I begged. I pleaded. I bribed. No, what I did … How did I get there? Well, my first job I got in New York, the in-house job was they had interviewed about 50 people or so and somehow I convinced them that I was good. I really didn't know anything. I had never written copy, but I got lucky and they hired me. When I got to San Francisco, I had a pretty good book which I had. My book of work from New York was pretty good and the first agency I went to in San Francisco which happened to be the first one in the Yellow Pages hired me, so I got lucky there, but I think that the most important thing for a copywriter to get a job, and as we talk today, I think this will become a theme in what I have to say is to be interesting. If you're going to be a writer, you have to write interesting stuff. I don't care if you're writing copy, if you're writing poetry, if you're writing movie scripts. The key is to be interesting, and if you're not interesting, if you're writing like everyone else, if your point of view is like everyone else, you're not going to be very successful. We already have enough people who can follow the script. You need to be someone who can write his own script and do it in a way that makes people want to read it. To me, that's the essence. Kira:   Can you talk more about being interesting? It seems like it could be something you either are interesting or you're not or is there a way to deconstruct it so that every copywriter could be interesting if they do these certain things? Bob:   No, I don't think every copywriter can be interesting. I don't believe that we're all equally talented. I think there are some people who are more talented than other people and some people who are more interesting than other people. I don't know if you can teach how to be interesting, but you can teach interesting people how to write in a more interesting way. The way to write in a more interesting way is to not worry about being correct all the time. Nobody is correct all the time. Nobody bats a thousand in this league. Sometimes, you're wrong, but as long as you're wrong and interesting, people will read you. As long as you're wrong and interesting, people will get something from what you're writing. If you're wrong and uninteresting or even if you're right … I'd rather be wrong and interesting than right and uninteresting. Okay, did I make any sense? Rob:   Total sense, yeah. In fact, you can totally see this playing out in politics today. The most interesting people seem to be the most wrong on both sides of the issues. Bob:   That's a good point. It's a sad fact of life, but in the communication business, being interesting is critical or no one pays attention. Rob:   Yeah, let me follow the train of your career then. After writing as a copywriter, at some point you also founded your own agency. Tell us about that experience and why you chose to do that. Bob:   Well, what happened was I was a copywriter at an agency in San Francisco and it was a very small, not very good agency. I came in there and brought a different vibe to it. I brought kind of a New York wise guy vibe to what was a very kind of conservative small California agency, and as a result of that, I got to be Creative Director of the agency at a fairly young age and I became a partner in the agency. Ultimately, I became the CEO of the agency and then we were bought by one of these international bozo agency groups and I worked for them for a couple of years and I hated that. As you can probably tell, I'm a good team player as long as I'm the captain. I didn't like working for other people particularly in like a publicly traded company. That just wasn't my vibe at all. I worked for them for a couple of years and then I went out of my own and did freelance creative work. I did that for about three years and that was great. It was very lucrative for me and I did stuff that I liked lot and I was on my own. Having been CEO of any agency and been responsible for a whole lot of people was a real pain in the ass for me, but being on my own doing it my own way was a lot of fun. I did that for three years or so. Then I just got lonely. Working on your own all the time when you're used to agency environment, it can be lonely and I always say, ‘The agencies are terrible places to work but great places to hang out,’ and I missed the hanging out part of the agency business, so I got together … I had my own little creative services company and I got together with a guy who had a small agency and put it together and we started a new thing called Hoffman/Lewis and it grew very, very nicely.