How to Hire a Great Ad Writer

Tips for finding the perfect pitch person for your business

BY ROY H. WILLIAMS | January 10, 2005|

Article from http://www.entrepreneur.com/article

Common sense would tell you that a person with a degree in advertising and marketing would be a better than average ad writer. But then common sense would be wrong. Rarely can a person with a marketing degree write anything more interesting than a grocery list. Or at least that's been my experience, having hired more than 150 ad writers during the past 25 years.

Strangely, the college degrees that I've found to more often indicate writing talent are these:

1. Art history. Surprised? You shouldn't be. This degree requires a tremendous amount of writing. The successful art history student must routinely find words to express what is by nature inexpressible. "Explain the difference between the impact of Jackson Pollock and that of Pablo Picasso." Show me a person who can wrap their arms around that, and I'll show you a great ad writer in the making.

2. English. People who love to read and write will often major in English, even though they know there's little they can do with their degree after graduation. There are two kinds of people who graduate with an English degree. One is a natural editor, great at content evaluation, thought organization and sentence structure. The editor knows instinctively what to leave out. The other is a romantic in love with words, and he or she always knows what to include. Look closely at the cover letters accompanying their résumés. The editor's letter will be clear, concise and well organized. The romantic will be flamboyant in his or her use of colorful words and phrases. If your product is purchased intellectually, hire the editor type. If it's purchased emotionally-from gut feelings-hire the romantic.

The most important question to ask during an interview is this: "How many books do you typically read in a year and what have you been reading lately?" Anything less than 15 books per year is not acceptable. Extra points for the person who reads 25 or more, and nonfiction books don't count. You're looking for the person who reads poetry and novels and spends his or her spare time writing short stories and screenplays. Putting the right words in the right order to express the right idea in the right way is a skill not unique to advertising. Show me a hungry reader of great literature-something besides newspapers, business books and magazines-and I'll show you someone who can bang words together so the sound of them will ring for miles. Make no mistake: That's exactly what it takes to make your ads stand out from among the clutter.

I'm not suggesting that ad writers use a literary style in their ad writing, only that they create the same kinds of word-juxtapositions, elegant incongruities and joltingly vivid descriptions that distinguish the legendary authors. And writers can't hear these kinds of phrases echoing in their ears during the day unless they're filling their minds with them at night. Hire a hungry reader in love with language.

Be sure you interact substantially with each of your candidates in writing before you ever speak with them by phone or in person. Why? You're not likely to be impressed with a great writer during a face-to-face interview. Writing is their preferred method of communication, remember? And great writers are a different breed. As John Steinbeck wrote in his diary (published by The New York Times): "In utter loneliness a writer tries to explain the inexplicable. He must believe that what he is doing is the most important thing in the world. And he must hold to this illusion even when he knows it is not true." Wow. What a perfect description of a great ad writer.

Great writers were rarely the quarterback or the head cheerleader or the student voted most likely to succeed. They were usually misfit kids like the legendary screenwriter David Freeman, who recently said, "The goal of life is to take everything that made you weird as a kid and get people to pay you money for it when you're older."

Go hire a David Freeman, and your ads will start pumping out prospects like you never thought possible. You'll probably find your David working at a Barnes & Noble.

The opinions expressed in this column are those of the author, not of Entrepreneur.com. All answers are intended to be general in nature, without regard to specific geographical areas or circumstances, and should only be relied upon after consulting an appropriate expert, such as an attorney or accountant.

ROY H. WILLIAMS | January 10, 2005|

Article from http://www.entrepreneur.com/article

Quiet Strength: 'The Cooked Seed': Anchee Min's Journey From China To America

26 minutes ago - by Katie Baker
Article from http://www.thedailybeast.com/witw/articles/

Bestselling author Anchee Min pens a follow-up to 'Red Azalea' about her long, hard road to success in the U.S. The Daily Beast spoke with her about immigration, China today, and the ecstasy and terror of writing honestly.

The Daily Beast: What made you decide to tell the second part of your story now? The first part, about your childhood in Mao’s China, you told in Red Azalea. What made you decide to talkabout coming to America in The Cooked Seed?

Anchee Min: I think it had to do with my daughter. She was born in Chicago and grew up in America…raising her was a learning experience. She grew up here and when she was applying to colleges a few years ago, she said, 'You know, Mom, you have a platform'. Lauryann reminded me that I had a platform, and that I represented a population of immigrants who are voiceless. Back in China, I wrote Red Azalea because so many of the people that I knew in labor camps, they just vanished. And I had this survivor's guilt and I came here and wrote Red Azalea—it was voice they didn’t have, and I voiced it for them. And it never occurred to me that I could represent a population here that was also voiceless. But it makes sense. Because I came here without English, with no education, so therefore I could only work on low-end jobs and live in the bottom of the American society. Which turned out to be a blessing for me as a writer—it made the foundation for The Cooked Seed.

That was such a powerful part of the story, where you writing about how you had just come to America and you were struggling to stay alive. So many immigrants do have to struggle so very much just to stay afloat. You write about the loneliness, and the constant fear of deportation. Are you ever in touch with those students from your early days in Chicago?

I'm aware of what they are up to. You see, I’m in a difficult situation right now because of the [literary] celebrity thing. Many of them are still ... they are doing well. They gained a higher education, even though they didn't know the language—but they strived on. They went into nursing, or if it wasn’t the medical profession, into restaurants and the like. They are still living a good American life, but they are still working hard. And I am on, like the high end ... [so]  I’m afraid that people might feel uncomfortable, if they do hear about you. It’s different now.

Are you still in touch with the actress Joan Chen? That was such an interesting part of your story, the fact that you were in a labor camp in China together as kids.

We spent time together two days ago. She was producing a piece for the San Francisco Film Festival, she had her first screening, and she invited me.

Do you ever talk about those early days in China?

No. It’s very strange, the silence. When Chinese get together—what’s buried stays buried. We don’t even discuss our embarrassing early days struggling in Chicago. This is also the hardest challenge of writing The Cooked Seed. I believe many of my fellow immigrants, we have to stare at our own humanity right in the eye—sometimes you can’t bear it. It’s beyond uncomfortable, because it means having to reveal, in my own case, my darkest thoughts—embarrassing, humiliating human moments. You read about my video store thing [renting an X-rated film out of loneliness]. How all these years throughout my youth, I craved for affection, but my relationship was with this sex video tape… I feel like I would have never shared that with my daughter or anybody I knew.

That was really brave to write about it.

So I thought I was American enough [to be aware that] the true value of my writing lies in my honesty. It wouldn’t be my best contribution to America, however hard it is—there would be no meaning in writing it—unless I could commit myself to 100 percent honesty. And I struggled to conquer my own demons, and I deleted some of the paragraphs, right after I wrote them. I had to fish them back from the recycling bin.

Was it difficult to relive some of these episodes you write about? You talk about some very difficult things: rape, an attempted murder, abortion, a loveless marriage—was it hard for you to revisit those points in your life?

Yes... you see, the great thing about America, with [its tell-all memoirs and] Oprah Winfrey, Dr. Phil … all these memoirs [like] Frank McCourt's— I realized, it wasn't my fault if I was raped. But the hardest thing was. how do I dissect my own life and perform an autopsy on my failures? To point out my failures. My daughter is going to see them, my family is going to see them. And my daughter accepts me; my father says, 'I don’t read English, my gut feeling is I trust you'. But my family members, my siblings, are having tremendous trouble with it: 'Why do you have to [reveal things] that big, at that level? Reveal the scope of it?' I understand, they want to protect me; they thought I was putting myself in harm’s way. In China, this is considered a shame. Silence is expected for a Chinese woman. No matter how American I become, I’m considered part of the Chinese community by my own family.

So this is what I’m dealing with. It took me 29 years to realize that the value of my material was the life I was living. And my everyday struggles in America reflect a part of immigrant history, and that it’s larger than myself, larger than my own sacrifice. I talk about giving back, this society talks about giving back. But when I really come to the bottom of what I can give back, is it the glorious moments? You know, ‘I made it, I have five toilets to show off, a big house’—or is it my failures, my humanity?

What was going through your mind when the literary agent called and said she was interested in Red Azalea?

I thought I was hallucinating. The moment before, my husband and I were mad at each other. We were taking down the plumbing because it was leaking, all because we were unwilling to spend $1.29 for [fixing the pipe]. If only I could afford $1.29, if only I could afford a new model, this would not happen. And next thing, Sandy [Dijkstra] was telling me the number [for the book]. In Chinese, the hard thing to translate is the math. I just couldn’t get it. I thought $750 would be great. I asked, ‘$750, or seven-five with two zeros?” And she said, ‘Three zeros, honey.’ I thought I heard her wrong. You can come here a nobody. You can come to America off the boat, a nobody…and you can get [a book deal].

You worked so very hard to get there. You sent the manuscript out to 12 literary agents. That’s tenacious. Is it strange when you look at China today and it’s become this flourishing, capitalistic society? It’s so much different from your childhood.

The words that come to mind are: I’m not surprised. Not surprised. Because the people who are managing China are people like me. You see, during my time, half of the country's people were sent to the Cultural Revolution's labor camps or the countryside. So we knew what did not work. Our whole generation was a disillusioned generation, therefore politically mature and very practical. So look at the streets of Shanghai during three different decades: the first decade, there was a lot of [praise of] Chairman Mao and carrying on the Cultural Revolution to the end. And the second decade was Deng Xiaoping’s 'White cat, black cat, whichever catches mice is the great cat' capitalism. And then the third was, 'Let’s build 18 million toilets in Shanghai, and borrowing to take a loan is not bad'. So I think this really reflect the Chinese middle-class mindset, which I think is the strength of my writing—I think I can easily penetrate that way of thinking.

What's going on China, I have no problem comprehending, understanding. I see in my daughter, and she is so ill-prepared throughout the American education system, she was not prepared with any knowledge of China. As a country, as Americans, I feel we can no longer afford to ignore China. And I think that I’ve made it kind of my mission, to help Americans understand where China is going by showing where China is coming from.

Will this book be published in China?

I don’t know.

Was Red Azalea published in China?

No. It was rejected. Many books on the Cultural Revolution are ok, China embraces them. But this one was an international bestseller, and China felt kind of unsure and vulnerable. When something’s big, it has to be perfect. If there’s any hint of anti-Communist party [sentiment], any question of that, then they get nervous ...But this one, I’ve got so much positive feedback from Chinese friends. Actually, we’ve never discussed Red Azalea. With The Cooked Seed, we discussed it, and one person wrote to me saying that she cried in many places when she read The Cooked Seed. They feel they could share this American experience. In a way, it’s what China wanted to read. Red Azalea is something they want to forget, And The Cooked Seed, they feel like they can be inspired—it’s a piece about moving on.

The theme of mother and daughter is so strong in the book. When you were pregnant, you said you wanted a boy, because being a Chinese woman, you knew females have a tougher life. Are you glad now that you had a girl?

Oh yes, I’m so thrilled that she’s a girl. I’m so blessed; I’m so, so happy. Also, she proved me wrong. She made me realize my core values. You can be constantly surprised by what your own American culture is doing to you. It made me see how corrupted to the core I was...And I thank my daughter for educating me on that level. In a way, it is a fulfillment of a life. I probably never would’ve even reached that—reached enlightenment—if I hadn’t been in America. If I had remained in China, I would’ve been dead. Physically—and if not physically dead, then mentally dead. Because I would’ve never reached the spirituality, the enlightenment, the richness of my life, the potential of who I am, if I haven’t become American.

It sounds like your daughter is also reaching her potential, too. In the book, we see her getting into Stanford.

The thing I appreciate the most is that she’s in the mindset of giving back. Because it was my biggest fear. I have witnessed so many, I'm sorry to say, self-centered people of this generation, my daughter’s generation. And I thought I couldn’t do anything about it. But I can do my best to avoid letting my daughter go in that direction. And I also have to give credit to my husband. He’s American, a U.S. Marine, and Vietnam Vet. He’s the Tiger Dad, still today. He’s the Tiger Dad at home. They all assume you’re the Chinese woman and you’re the Tiger Mom. I’m not; Lloyd is.

Katie Baker
Article from http://www.thedailybeast.com/witw/articles/

Are kids still learning the basics?

 Dougall Public School student Kyle O'Keefe, 6, works on a task Wednesday, May 8, 2013, in Windsor, Ont. (DAN JANISSE/The Windsor Star)

Brian Cross
May 10, 2013 - 11:59 PM EDT
Last Updated: May 12, 2013 - 11:19 PM EDT
http://blogs.windsorstar.com/2013/05/10/are-kids-still-learning-the-basics/

When parent Nikki Pilutti walked into her daughter Jill’s Grade 3 class and saw “Lerning” misspelled prominently on the board, it drove home what she’s long believed.

Like many parents raised on weekly spelling tests, grammar work sheets and multiplication times tables, she contends the basics aren’t getting the attention they deserve.

“They don’t focus as much on the phonics and the repetition of doing your addition and subtraction over and over and over again,” said Pillutti, a LaSalle mom who takes her two kids to a Kumon tutoring program to supplement their regular school with old-time, back-to-basics education.

“They drill them,” she said, “for days and days and weeks, we’re doing the same work over and over again, until I can look at my five-year-old son and ask: ‘What’s eight plus four?’ And he says ’12.’”

He’s not counting on his fingers, he just knows, says Pilutti.

“They don’t get that at school.”

It’s a sentiment felt by an army of parents who are complaining their kids can’t spell, have terrible grammar and don’t know their times table. In response, tutoring centres have sprouted up across the city. Scott Sylvestre started with one Kumon and 20 students in 1996. Today he has two locations and 300 kids.

Parents cite the lack of emphasis on spelling, cursive writing, phonics, times tables, basic adding and subtracting. “That’s what we do,” he says of his program. He thinks the basics are “glazed over” at schools because they have so much to get through. “Believe it or not, we have teachers bring their children to us, so something’s missing.”

The biggest comment that Oxford Learning Centre franchise owner Andrea Esteves hears from parents is what happened to the basics?

“It used to be we’d have to memorize the times tables and that doesn’t necessarily happen anymore, so a lot of times I have parents come to me, they have kids in Grade 6 or 7 and they can’t say off the top of their heads what five times seven is.”

When Amanda Coughlin was supply teaching a Grade 7-8  class few years ago, about 75 per cent of the students did not know the times table. When it comes to one of the basics, teachers teach it and move on, and the kids who haven’t grasped it are “kind of left hanging,” said Coughlin, whose tutoring service is called There and Back Again, a reference to her back-to-basics approach.

“I’m finding that drilling, as old fashioned as it is, if you drill and practise, practise, practise, it starts coming easily.”

But Ontario’s Education Minister Liz Sandals insists that “absolutely,” kids are still being taught these basics, just in different ways. They’re still learning phonics and spelling. And when it comes to math, what they’re doing in high school is work that used to be done in university, she told The Star.

The average student who graduates high school now has vastly more knowledge than someone who graduated decades ago, she said. “The amount we expect our kids to know is actually quite astounding,” said Sandals, citing studies that show Ontario’s education system is one of the best in the world, and standardized test results that show a continuing improvement year after year.

Nowadays there’s a greater emphasis on students figuring things out, the minister said. “It’s not just parroting back, and ultimately that is what allows you to go forward in any subject.”

When asked about parents mourning the absence of the basics,  Clara Howitt, a superintendent at the Greater Essex public school board, said “I think we get caught up in what we know, what we experienced.

Dougall Public School student Arlind Avdo, 6, works on a task Wednesday, May 8, 2013, in Windsor, Ont. (DAN JANISSE/The Windsor Star)

“But we don’t do spelling like we used to, writing out the word 25 times, because I don’t think that necessarily makes people better spellers.”

And there are tools to help us we didn’t have before, including spell check, she said.

Howitt said when she was in school it was largely about memorization and regurgitating. “Well, for your kids and for my kids, I don’t want them to regurgitate, I want them to think, I want them to be creative, I want them to challenge and just not accept an idea.”

J. Richard Gentry, the U.S.-based author of a new generation of spelling textbooks, believes that spelling has been put on the back burner and as a result kids these days are lousy at it. What’s taken over is the discovery approach to spelling, where kids explore words. And what’s disappeared is the old fashioned memorization method. “In my own view, what’s more appropriate is a kind of balanced between these two,” said Gentry, whose books, he said, are very different from traditional spellers.

Dougall Public School student Mason Lapansee, 7, centre, watches a video Wednesday, May 8, 2013, in Windsor, Ont. (DAN JANISSE/The Windsor Star)

There’s a preponderance of research that says the old way of memorizing and drills is not the best way to educate our kids, said Susan Holloway, an associate professor at the University of Windsor’s education faculty who studies literacy. Perhaps kids aren’t as good at spelling as they once were, but that’s largely due to the fact they’re reading less in this computer-game-crazy era, said Holloway, who likes the way schools are heading when it comes to teaching kids to write.

“I’m not in any way saying it’s not important to teach grammatical skills … but those skills are better learned when they’re tied directly to students writing.”

For example, she said, learning the correct use of a semicolon might be started by a short 10- or 20-minute lesson on a Monday, followed on Wednesday with students being asked to write a short story which includes at least one sentence in which a semicolon is properly used.

Dougall Public School teacher Kathy Freeman teaches her grade 1-2 class Wednesday, May 8, 2013, in Windsor, Ont. (DAN JANISSE/The Windsor Star)

Having students use the grammar they’re taught in their own writing, said Holloway, “is really key to their actually taking it in.”

Students at Dougall elementary don’t use the old spellers with weekly word lists, but that doesn’t mean they’re not learning to spell, says principal Diane Beck. Indeed, you should see the vocabulary list in Kathy Freeman’s Grade 1-2 class. Environment, garbage, carbon and pollution were among the dozen or so words these six- and seven-year-olds were learning to spell and write.

The words all come from their study of polar bears, a subject the kids themselves chose, but which incorporates all kinds of curriculum requirements for their grades. After learning throughout the week about polar bears and how their survival is threatened by climate change, they each wrote letters – edited and corrected – to Prime Minister Stephen Harper asking him to help.  Last week, they focused on space, studying reports from Canadian Commander Chris Hadfield aboard the International Space Station. The inquiry included forays into math, science, writing and reading.

Dougall Public School students Simran Parker, 7, left, and Brooklyn Dell, 8, discuss a video they watched Wednesday, May 8, 2013, in Windsor, Ont. (DAN JANISSE/The Windsor Star)

“They’re doing (spelling) for a real purpose,” said Freeman, who calls her room an inquiry classroom, which has a word wall filled with hundreds of commonly used words, which the students put up themselves and then reference when they’re writing.

“Instead of just memorizing a word as part of a list and it’s gone next week, we learn with the words, play with the words,” she said.

This week, they were working on their KWL pages, where they write what they know, want to know and learn about space.

Fernando Garcia, 7, proudly says “I’m writing about space,” as he carefully writes in his KWL: “When you sleep in space you are on the flor,” a minor misspelling that probably won’t get pointed out immediately. That will wait until he makes the final draft of his report and he edits his work.

Dougall Public School student Fernando Garcia, 7, watches a video Wednesday, May 8, 2013, in Windsor, Ont. (DAN JANISSE/The Windsor Star

“They’re still doing spelling, it’s just not in the traditional sense where every week there’s a random list that may or may not have a connection to what they’re doing,” said Emelda Byrne, a superintendent with the Windsor-Essex Catholic board.

She believes that moving away from memorizing and towards a discovery-based approach better prepares students for the modern world. Instead of concentrating on memorizing the times table, students learn how multiplication is the repeated addition of the same number. She recently witnessed a classroom where students were broken into groups and asked to figure out how to put 475 students going to a field trip onto school buses that seated 50. Some did addition, some estimated, some did division, and then they had to figure out what to do with the remainder – the 25 students left over after nine buses arrive. They then decided to take the 10 buses they’d ultimately need and calculated how many students each should have.

“It was a great operational question,” Byrne said, “And it led them to problem solve, which was what was expected of the assignment.”

Dougall Public School teacher Kathy Freeman teaches her grade 1-2 class Wednesday, May 8, 2013, in Windsor, Ont. (DAN JANISSE/The Windsor Star)


Brian Cross
May 10, 2013 - 11:59 PM EDT
Last Updated: May 12, 2013 - 11:19 PM EDT
http://blogs.windsorstar.com/2013/05/10/are-kids-still-learning-the-basics/