@dereklwalker.bsky.social
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dereklwalker.bsky.social
Listing product benefits or features is not writing copy.

Neither is parroting the strategy.

And hell naw! Typing a call-to-action isn't either.

Copywriting is more than writing, a lot more.
dereklwalker.bsky.social
Crash & Burn is neither a DEI book or about me.

It will say the things we tend to leave unspoken: that whether you have a career or not, depends less on skills/tech/AI, and more on mentality.

How bad do you want it?
dereklwalker.bsky.social
Kickstarter update: 11 days to go - "Don't make me have to cut ya stage achieved."

Not over support.

Doing a Kickstarter for my book, I've had to talk about it a lot. I'm so tired of people thinking I'd write a DEI book or a book about myself.

www.kickstarter.com/projects/cra...
Crash & Burn
10 Easy Ways to Ruin Your Career in Marketing & Advertising (Or Any Other Industry)
www.kickstarter.com
dereklwalker.bsky.social
Artificial intelligence is less a threat to creativity in advertising than poor and fearful leadership.
dereklwalker.bsky.social
Win the heart, and the mind and wallet will follow.

Disrespect or ignore the heart, and the mind and wallet will slam shut.

There is always an exception, but they are driven by conditions.
dereklwalker.bsky.social
Kickstarter update: I can't wait for this to be over.

Working on the Kickstarter campaign to help me bring the book to life means that I can't write the book.

It's funny how this works. It is either promote the campaign or write, not both.

www.kickstarter.com/projects/cra...
Crash & Burn
10 Easy Ways to Ruin Your Career in Marketing & Advertising (Or Any Other Industry)
www.kickstarter.com
dereklwalker.bsky.social
Everyone is a writer until they have to write a headline.

And let's be clear - subject lines for emails, text opening lines, and the first line of social media posts are all a form of headlines.

Copywriting looks easy. It is just words, until it isn't.
dereklwalker.bsky.social
There is a generation of adv. folks who don't understand that "working" like an office worker is not the best way to foster great creative, that better work tends to be done by less "professional" behaving folks.

Our goal isn't to be efficient, it is to be effective. Or it was.
dereklwalker.bsky.social
It was advertising creatives playing music or games or sitting around thinking who produced much of the work that had agencies printing money, which led to holding companies buying agencies.

And then holding companies cut all that "foolishness" out in the name of efficiency.
dereklwalker.bsky.social
Kickstarter update - 15 days to go: Stage why is derek smiling?

Because I ain't right in the head.😂

Doing this campaign has forced me to think about what success for all of this looks like to me. I'm liking the derek who is taking this chance.

www.kickstarter.com/projects/cra...
Crash & Burn
10 Easy Ways to Ruin Your Career in Marketing & Advertising (Or Any Other Industry)
www.kickstarter.com
dereklwalker.bsky.social
When the idea or thought about a project just comes to you as you're doing something else - that's working.

Employers and clients benefit from this without compensating for it.

There's no way to track working subconsciously, but we should acknowledge it to clients.
dereklwalker.bsky.social
If you really want to know how creative an adv. person or an adv. agency is - ask to see their timesheets.

Timesheets are pure fiction.

Very seldom does any human being work a 6 hours (lunch and breaks) day, let alone an 8 hour one.

We've perfected looking like we are working.
dereklwalker.bsky.social
That is today's lesson for me. There is no perfect time to try to drum business.

I have been wrestling with whether or not to reach out to organizations who have "asked" me for DEI help in the past.

I didn't help them to have a favor but they really should have paid me.
dereklwalker.bsky.social
Kickstarter update 18 days to go:
This is late in the day, but that does not mean I haven't been trying to drum up support.

Doing this in the 4th quarter might not have been a good move, but when do clients & agencies have money.

It is never a good time.
www.kickstarter.com/projects/cra...
Crash & Burn
10 Easy Ways to Ruin Your Career in Marketing & Advertising (Or Any Other Industry)
www.kickstarter.com
dereklwalker.bsky.social
Some of us in advertising need to be afraid of AI.

You've stopped pushing to do better. You've gotten comfortable - stopped being hungry.

Lord, AI is going to eat your lunch, and it should.

Advertising has become a job for you, and that makes it easier for AI to take your job.
dereklwalker.bsky.social
I really wish that advertising/marketing folks could talk about the work - creativity, copywriting, art direction and presenting with the same energy that they talk about AI.

If we could, maybe AI would not be as much a threat to some.

I'm not afraid of AI, I'm still restless.
dereklwalker.bsky.social
Kickstarter update: Stage - I don't want to keep on showing up on people's feeds about this.

Frequency is not reach. So, instead of one message repeated over and over, I'm going to be me.

This book won't change your life, but you might regret some moves

www.kickstarter.com/projects/cra...
Crash & Burn
10 Easy Ways to Ruin Your Career in Marketing & Advertising (Or Any Other Industry)
www.kickstarter.com
dereklwalker.bsky.social
Or were you "encouraged" to make curry from scratch? Check mate.