•The Rambling And Self-Indulgent First-Person Version

I have managed teams of writers across projects of all sizes, and I strive to get others to be as excited about the process of writing as I am.

I’m as comfortable writing a sonnet or a short story as I am crafting UX story arcs or an 80-page pitch deck or a radio spot (a lost art, IMHO).

I’ve written commercials in which Tiger Woods and Lionel Messi read my copy. And I’ve toiled over super arcane ads for vertical publications like Convenience Store Decisions. I’ve written TV spots entirely in iambic pentameter. I’ve won awards and trips to fancy hotels for my work, and I’ve had things I wrote die in obscurity or get pulled from the air. It’s a continuum, and unless you’re the most insufferable kind of douche lord, the process keeps you humble.

We’re never really done learning about writing. I’m grateful for that.  There’s always some Rashomon-like way to inhabit another character or another point of view to better relate to a new audience. And it’s fun to create those new voices.

Before the tech startup work, before the years of hired-gun freelancing, before the wearing of many hats at agencies large and small, there was just a love of words and stories. There were summers in a television-free farmhouse near the southern terminus of the Appalachian Trail. There were yarns spun around literal campfires and figurative ghosts around most corners. There were maps and legends and people whose only currency seemed to be cornbread and survival information. There were Pulitzer-prize winning poets and journalists and salty copywriters and I was lucky to have all of them as my teachers.

It’s not as if much of that fits into your average banner ad or marketing assignment, but I think it’s actually pretty universal, the need to connect to stories and the desire to pursue truth. I don’t delude myself that every project has the chance to send seismic waves around the planet, but I do think that just about everything brings a chance for people to feel seen and heard and related to.

We ought to be able to tell a brand’s story and still be telling the truth. Because truth connects.

In the end, that connection is what makes brands feel authentic to consumers.