2. Leave the office
Before you even open your pad, open five other things You ears, your eyes and your mind.
You’ll never be a good writer of anything if you just sit in your office and stare at your desk. Your raw material isn’t in the office or in Groucho’s for that matter. It’s out on the streets. Look at pictures. Listen to music. Go to films. See plays. And more importantly look at people. They’re those funny things with two legs we’re meant to be writing about, remember.
It sounds obvious but it’s amazing how many people in our incestuous little business just spend their spare time with other people in this incestuous little business.
Get out. And observe.
For instance, the Castlemaine xxxx campaign would never have happened if my parents hadn’t sent me to Australia to make a man of me. This it conspicuously failed to do. But it did teach me how to get bitten by a wild cockatoo, how to cheat at poker, and fifteen years later how to write a xxxx ad.
Excerpt from: D&Ad Copy Book by D&AD
