How Building A Team Of Copywriters Can Only Help
I’ve been looking forward to writing this blog for a while. When our creative lead, Paul, gave me the chance to write for Rocksalt’s blog, one of the first inspirations I had was how I wanted to write about the great team we have.
As I developed this series on teamwork, I started to look forward to finding out more about how Rocksalt got started and how it came together. So I sat down with Paul to find out a bit about Rocksalt’s history and what lessons we can take away from that story for people looking to build, recruit, or hire a great team.
Photo credit: Miquel Parera @61085photography on Unsplash
The Dream
Rocksalt’s story goes back to 2007. Paul had been working in-house at BT creating digital content. Through his work and his awareness of trends in digital content he understood that as a glut of content poured onto the web at an exponential rate, it would take focused teams of professional writers to cut through the babble.
Karen Byrne, a freelance strategy planner (and Paul’s partner), had already been developing responses to current trends in online communication, steering firms with solid strategic direction and a strong focus on business goals. Together, she and Paul began to form the concept of a copywriting agency that would store up great talent that could respond to the evolving digital landscape.
The Reality
Paul tapped into the relationships he’d built over the course of a career as a journalist and copywriter to find top notch writers. What Rocksalt needed was a bullpen of trusted writers, freelance professionals who had the personality and the temperament to work independently. Self starters would be key to this operation, having the instinct for finding the angle on a piece of writing, developing client- and audience-specific work, participating and responding to an editorial process, and having diverse skills and experience that fill gaps.
Those criteria in mind, Paul reached out to his colleagues and the team was assembled. With some emails, some phone calls, the first clients and briefs, they were off to the races. It would take some trial and error, some exploration and discovery, but like any trailblazers, the Rocksalt team forged ahead carving out their niche with maverick creativity.
Over the next decade, Rocksalt came to be the trusted copy team for firms like UKTV, Hiscox, Landmark Trust, and Amazon.
The New Guy
By the time I came onboard, Rocksalt had already been at it 12 years. I was introduced to Paul through a chance meeting he had with my wife. When she mentioned I was a writer Paul was interested in finding out more about me—that keen nose for talent had caught the scent.
When I heard he wanted to hear from me I immediately got in touch. Although I had never thought of myself as a copywriter per se, my experience as a creative lead for my own social media management agency had given me plenty of opportunities to craft focused and well written copy for all kinds of media. When Paul read my portfolio he told me he wanted to bring me onboard and trial some work.
I was teamed up with André Spiteri, copywriter extraordinaire, on Amazon UK’s Treasure Truck. This was a great opportunity to collaborate with an experienced writer on a creative project that would have a real impact with immediate results. André’s confidence, his critical eye, his command of tone and style and how to craft copy with precision was eye opening. I knew that if I wanted to take copywriting to the next level, this was a team I had to stick with.
The Lessons
As Paul and I wrapped up our chat the other week, I asked him what the key takeaways were in the construction of Rocksalt. As you might expect, in the end the lessons were a fairly simple set of values adopted over a long career.
“Seek out maverick creativity...looking for diversity in the team...champion good writing...value people.”
Over the previous 15 months I’ve spent as part of Rocksalt’s stable of copywriters, I can tell you that each of those lessons ring true.
I know we’ve only scratched the surface, and I’m really looking forward to sharing more about each of these lessons later in the blog. And I hope you’re looking forward to reading more about them!
What about you? Have you ever recruited or worked with a team of copywriters? What did you learn from the experience? Share your insights with us—I might even get in touch to find out more.
As always, for more of what we’re working on here at Rocksalt you can check out our portfolio, and follow us on Twitter at @rocksaltnews and on LinkedIn.
