But before we get to that, I need to know what your goal is. If you are looking to ‘share a human story’ or ‘build a tribe’, sorry, this isn't going to work out. Find an agency. They might even do the work for Exposure, or for the privilege of working with a brand like yours.

Why not? Because I like selling things and coming up with new ways to persuade people to buy them. Getting more followers and likes and views on platforms that someone else owns, does not sit well with me. I'd rather focus on growing the bank balance - both yours and mine.

I used to think it was the words that did the trick (I mean the ad/idea as a whole, not just copy). "If the idea is good, it will go through. People can see how compelling the insights and communication are, and will greenlight it in no time".

I had good reason too - ‘Check your techtitude!’ was one of the first google search ads that I ever wrote. But then it became a banner ad with a smiling engineer next to it. Then someone was running low on ideas one day (I think!) and it landed on a billboard.

Imagine. My first ad after leaving software engineering, ending up on a billboard. Sadly, I don’t have any photos or designs – I didn’t think I’d ever need it. My ideas are good enough, that should suffice – right?

Not exactly.

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Turns out not everyone likes to read long walls of text. And I wasn’t comfortable selling my ideas then (fresh from another industry, no idea what is going on, better shut up and work), so they  stayed buried. I withdrew, did what was asked of me, and became the reliable backroom. I worked on everything from social media posts to manifestos to classifieds to search ads, and at speed. Wrote video scripts, conceptualized campaigns, created brand guidelines, put down the structure and content for websites - and realized I could craft narratives better than before.

And I could sell those narratives well enough to win pitches and extra business for the agencies that employed me. I always liked making up things, and combined with my newfound penchant for brevity (and irony), my movement up the career graph picked up too. Things were looking great, and…

Covid struck, and I had to 'resign' from my job. Severance wasn't half bad and I could take a step back. I still liked selling, but not the pressure to come up with a big idea that has offshoots on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Instagram to 'maximize' the moment for a athleisure wearable brand on international day of love (if you're running out of breath or character limits, love day). Made some plans, finished a few freelance gigs, helped start-ups communicate their message better, started working on my ideas, reading (again!) and had a good time overall.

That’s about it, as of now. Maybe I’ll add more over the next few years. If you think you have a story that I can tell (based on whatever you’ve seen till now), you can drop a word and we’ll work something out. Until then –

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So long, and thanks for all the fish.