I moved to New York to write. The Village Voice gave me an internship. After a few months I hadn't written a word so I went to New York Magazine. I held up a tape recorder at City Hall. I culled Walter Kirn's bookshelves and sold the castoffs at The Strand. I tried to interview the famously verbose Harold Bloom. He refused to answer my questions, so it wasn't much of an interview.
Town & Country called with a job that actually involved writing. Hand-carved duck decoys. Luxury travel companies. Books and bikes. I thought I'd arrived.
Then an ad friend looked at my clips and said: these aren't articles. They're ads. He showed me his portfolio. He had more freedom. He was having more fun.
I took a couple of classes at SVA and that was that.
For brands that need to move people, systems that need to hold together, campaigns that need to mean something. The problems change. The method doesn't.
Find the human thing. Build from that.
I've also built a language consultancy, Utter, around that idea. Because language doesn't just break in ads. It breaks inside organizations—when the human thing gets edited out.