JOHN HOFMEISTER COPYWRITER
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Marching On

3/31/2017

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I have been freelancing full time for over a year now. It has proven a boon to my mental health. I make less than I did working for the man, but after a while money is just table stakes in the game of life. And since going out on my own, I have enough to both play and pay. The pay part is the mortgage and groceries and utilities and health care. The play part shows up during lulls of work. And even when busy, I can decide, what the hell, it’s awfully warm for February, so I am going to get some miles in on my bike. I can set aside time for staring out the window, reading, and feeling bad (but not too bad) for unhappy souls working for the man. Of course, I work for the man, too. Everyone has a boss of one kind or another. Mine are my clients who pay me to do what they can’t, either for lack of staff or time or both.

But one thing I don’t have to do is fill out Annual Reviews, a truly senseless exercise in keeping the HR department staffed and humming. This is especially true for anyone in the creative side of the ad business. Reviews typically ask for your successes and failures over the last year. The failures politely worded as challenges or through questions like, Where did you fall short? Of course if your boss didn’t already know this, he’d have to be a pretty awful boss. (And I say him because most of the senior creatives are guys.) But remember, it’s not for him or you. It’s for the HR gang and their Permanent Records. Reviews often include sections devoted to Your Goals for Next Year. What can this possibly mean? What, for example, would be a copywriter’s or art director’s goals for next year? Write great copy? Make exquisite layouts? Come up with interesting ideas to get people to part with their money? But only do it better than last year? Or do it faster (which is what the bean counters are always on the lookout for since they don’t understand why creatives aren’t interchangeable FTEs on an assembly line).
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Maybe art directors could be directed to pay more attention to kerning. Writers might reconsider how often they start sentences with and. And then there’s the corporate mission, often grouped into tiresome clusters about Client Satisfaction, Category Innovation, Career Development, you can fill in the rest. Of course, this doesn’t even skim the awful nonsense that includes Team Work, Collaboration, Fiscal Responsibility, Leadership Potential, and a host of categories designed to drive advertising creatives to blow their brains out. Our account brethren probably find all this just as onerous. If they didn’t, I can’t imagine how long they’d last at an ad agency.
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Having spent a career in marketing and advertising, mostly at agencies, I was exposed to all sorts of fads. Management by walking around. Management by objectives. Management by scaring the crap out of people. And then there was the Jack Welsh love cycle that gave us Six Sigma and Black Belt Training something or other. Oh, I’m sure for some enterprises, such stuff makes incredible sense. But for commercial art, that being what advertising actually is, it’s a pretty big fucking waste of time. It’s the art part of commercial art that clients pay for. And that’s not something that Annual Reviews, Management By Objectives, or whatever dreadful box-checking nonsense the HR kids dump on you can operationalize. Because operationalizing creativity is akin to asking children why they like snow.

© 2017 John Hofmeister
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Latest Listicle: 10 Reasons Why I Freelance

3/9/2017

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Okay, sometime back I posted Why I Freelance. It was a short missive about being able to have a beer in the backyard in the middle of the afternoon while listening to my favorite playlist. Those reasons still hold, but there are many more. Ten anyway. They include:

1. Freaking short commute. I was reminded of this when I told my wife I needed to get back to work. She said, well enjoy the commute. This consists of a flight of stairs and a short hallway to what was once one of my boys’ bedrooms. It takes about 20 seconds. I pay less for car insurance now. Really. I work from home.

2. No office politics. This explains itself. Except of course for the typical spousal ententes.

3. I can say no. It doesn’t happen all that often, but sometimes I am too busy or too suspicious or too WTF-really you think this piece of crap has any hope of finding someone who will pay for it?

4. LinkedIn
. Yes, it’s been a boon to connectivity. I wanted to freelance before the internet was even a thing. Now it is. This means I don’t’ have to spend a fortune on USPS mailings. That money is going to my ISP.


5. The internet. Goes without saying. See #4.

6. A lifetime of schooling. Anyone who has spent as much time as I have in advertising and marketing knows that there isn’t really anything new. Oh, the platforms have changed (Snapchat, Facebook, etc), but the ability to condense a complicated selling proposition hasn’t. Consumers continue to look for value. And they still gravitate towards terms like WIN, FREE, and SEX. Which of course accounts for the best sales headline ever: WIN FREE SEX!

7. On-site Work-out Facilities. I have a weight machine and a set of rollers in my basement. They paid for themselves a long time ago. I am my personal trainer. It doesn’t get any more personal than that. Plus, I can tell him to GFY, I’m pooped.

​8. Personal Barista. I make my own coffee. French press. Ground from whole bean. No tip.

9. Need to sleep in without lying about why I am late. This, too, speaks for itself.

10. ​Medicare. Yes, I am that old. If you think a 23-year old can knock out marketing copy as fast as me, go for it. I have paid into the system. It’s paying me back. Only fair, IMO. And yes, I know it should be “fast as I” but it sounds ridiculous.
Well, that’s 10 reasons, however cheeky. Everybody loves listicles of 10. These are mine.

Find me at jhofmeister.com. Oh, and all the above is ©2017 John Hofmeister. All rights reserved. So there.

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    John Hofmeister

    When I'm not writing for clients, I write about things that interest me. Quite of bit of satire, a genre that has become increasingly difficult to work in since reality has become such a farce.

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Copyright © 2020 John Hofmeister • Freelance Copywriter • Creative Director • Columbus, Ohio. All materials on this website are presented exclusively for viewing by John Hofmeister clients and prospects. ​Any use of this website will constitute your agreement not to copy, modify, reformat, rebroadcast, ​or otherwise reproduce the work displayed here. Thank you.

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