I’m going to be completely honest with you. Before I got to Dunn&Co. for my internship, when it came to writing, I was a pretty long-winded cat. I don’t think that’s necessarily a shortcoming; my writing background was in fan fiction, short stories, and not-so-short stories. The problem was that even in my advertising classes, I almost always gravitated towards long-copy work. You can check; there just aren’t that many taglines or headlines in my book, and the ones I do have are very obvious, “punny” affairs.

So when I finally got my first big assignment– to help craft taglines for a client– I was excited. Not only was I going to be working on something that an actual client might see: I was inexperienced and borderline incompetent at doing what was being asked of me. Hooray!

That’s how you get better at stuff, though. You try and you practice and you work at it and you slave over it and you hate it and then you love it and then you (ever so slightly) improve. In the end, two of the taglines I worked on ended up in a document sent to the client. That’s a pretty awesome feeling. I wouldn’t say that I’m necessarily proficient, good, or quick with my tagline writing yet, but it has drastically improved.

One of the things I learned while writing those taglines is that sometimes I need to shut up and be more concise. Not everything needs a paragraph or page long explanation. In an attempt to practice that lesson, I’m going to try and bullet-point the other lessons and experiences I’ve acquired as a copywriting intern for Dunn & Company. Wish me luck.

• Doing the internship thing nearly full time is apparently uncommon.
• Acting like a big kid with a regular sleep schedule is tough.
• It’s not very hard to pick up a coffee habit.
• Jeeze, the people here are so friendly.
• Good taglines are usually a bit shorter than this, but there are exceptions.
• Avoid puns.
• Throwing a thesaurus at the problem doesn’t solve it.
• You must read more.
• You must write more.
• Read great copy.
• Rewrite/type that great copy.
• See the copy.
• Be the copy.
• Talk to the copy.
• Whisper sweet nothings to the copy.
• Sleep with the copy.
• Research helps.
• So does talking it out with others. They’re experts & they want to help.
• Research comes in all shapes and sizes.
• Radio commercial recordings can be done remotely.
• Professional voice actors have a frightening amount of control over their voices.
• Commercial shoots are awesome.
• Lighting is extremely important when filming.
• Your creative director is way better at this than you. Ask for help.
• Your creative director has cool stories. Ask about them.
• Having a desk three feet from your creative director helps with the above.
• No, seriously, you really need to be reading and writing more.
• The Idea Writers and Hey Whipple, Squeeze This are great places to start.
• I’m still a little wordy.
• You need to love the work.
• I

– Max Dempster