What NOT To Put In Your Advertising Portfolio

August 7, 2008

Developing your advertising portfolio is like conducting an orchestra. Highs and lows. Sour notes and beautiful ones. You get the metaphor.

When you begin building your perfect portfolio, its natural to want to put in some sexy categories. You know…perfumes, fashion, cars, beer. The stuff you see around you every day. The high gloss type of products.

Big mistake.

You cannot afford to put products into YOUR portfolio that already have tremendous advertising behind them. You cant. Youll doom yourself. And you’ll instantly make your search far harder than it needs to be.

Years ago, I had a great campaign for a beer that I loved when I was looking for my first job like you may be. It was, I have to say, really funny and tremendously powerful.

Beer. I mean, that’s a great portfolio product, right?

I had really solid work, very smart. YET…Almost everyone who looked at it said the same thing, Yeah. But its beer.

But its beer.

Exactly. It was a category well-known for super ads (IN FACT SUPER BOWL ADS) that had already been done. So instead of competing against other people for the job, I was suddenly competing against everyone who had ever done a great ad for beer.

And thats impossible.

No great sneaker ad in your book is better than a Nike piece. Theres no car ad in your portfolio that is better than what VW has been doing lately. Sorry. There isnt.

Its a completely level playing field when that portfolio is opened and your great portfolio products pop to the surface and hopefully that blinding light comes out of it. And if you choose (after being told not to) to include categories and products that have already been hit out of the park) then youre nuts.

And I don’t want you to be nuts.

So by being as careful of what not to put into your advertising portfolio as what to put into it, you greatly increase your chances of getting hired at Mullen.

And isn’t that what you’re after?

To learn exactly how you can use your writing talents to earn a substantial living through article marketing, and to learn specifically how to break into advertising and
become a copywriter, visit Mr. Browne’s new site http://www.become-a-copywriter.com

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