My major and the career that I have chosen to go into is advertising and more specifically I want to go into copywriting.
I know it may be hard to believe but I did not grow up wanting to be a copywriter or even go into advertising at all. No, no. I wanted to be something much more attainable, an actress. Well as soon as junior year of high school hit I kind of realized I needed to find an actual plan for my life.
I used to memorize commercials and say them back with the same inflections as the people on TV but jingles were always my favorite. I loved to memorize them and at some point, I started making up my own.
I never really gave it much thought until I had already decided to go into advertising, so back to that. In my junior year, I took a creative writing class. I had always kind of liked writing poetry so it seemed like the next step. What I didn't expect was how quickly I fell in love with it. I loved coming up with the ideas and stories. The next semester I took a marketing class and that was it.
Aside from classes though, there was one commercial that shook me to the core. A commercial that I still credit as making me want to be in this crazy, competitive, and lovable career path I've chosen. It is an anti-smoking commercial/public service announcement. The link is below.
This was the commercial that did it. I am a big believer in ending smoking for everyone. I had always kind of liked these advertisements from "The Real Cost" Campaign but this one... it got me.
This ad, it pulled me in and told me that this girl was joining a cult. That she was being torn away from things she loved and was brainwashed. The end with the "contract" rolling up into a cigarette! It gets me every time.
I remember thinking whoever came up with this concept was insanely talented. I realized that I wanted to come up with ideas like this commercial. I wanted to make people feel what I had felt and a thousand other emotions.
I've been looking into finding out who actually wrote this commercial. I would love to meet them and just talk to them about their thought process. I think it would be really interesting to know other people in advertising's one commercial, if they had one, that made them want to get into this.
Even if you aren't going into advertising I think people still have favorite commercials or public service announcements. I'd love to know some of them!
