When I said ‘business insights’ (in the previous post – Part 1), I was talking about a certain type of experience. Having a formal business training helps of course. As does a degree in subjects like economics or marketing.
‘Experience’, however, is all about real-life exposure to opinions and thought processes, to the tides of history, micro-economics, news stories, hard-luck and success stories… the list is endless.
In many ways, I’ve lived my life as an ‘accidental’ copywriter. Writing in its various forms was something in which I was always interested. Way back in the day, I fancied my chances as a novelist, but it soon became clear that I was much more interested in the world ‘out there’, as opposed to the worlds I could create inside my head.
Yes, I would’ve loved to be a features writer on a national newspaper or journal, but what editor in his or her right mind would entrust that enormous responsibility to an untried rookie! Maybe if I’d been a high-flying intellectual with lots of family contacts I could have broken into this highly competitive field.
As it happened, I knew a few people who’d made a very good living as marketing professionals in big companies as well as top advertising agencies. It seemed my life was mapped out already. No-one else in my family had gone into marketing. I doubt if any of them knew what marketing was. (In those days, I didn’t know much myself!) But marketing it was – although I still held a candle for the lifestyle of a struggling novelist, starving in my Paris garret!
(To be continued… )
