by Freddy Tran Nager, Founder of Atomic Tango + Marketing Professor; photo by Beatriz Pérez Moya on Unsplash…
Q: Dear Freddy:
What’s a good length for my copywriting portfolio? Right now it’s 20 pages, which feels long, but it’s 6 writing samples, and most are multiple pages. Is that too long?
– K in L.A.
A: Dear K:
Not too long for a real marketer to read.
Eons ago when I was a junior copywriter, I interviewed with a marketing exec who merely flipped through my portfolio, glancing at the headlines and photos before handing it back to me. I felt sucker-punched – was my writing that bad?
Fortunately, I didn’t rip my book apart, since it scored me a great job later. I also later learned that the marketing exec never did hire a writer. She got fired for lying on her resume — she wasn’t really a marketer.
So if a creative director or marketing exec thinks your portfolio is too long, you probably don’t want to work for them.
Even if they’re not faking it, they’re out of touch, since a lot of marketing today consists of long-form digital content (blogs, branded articles, web copy, even ebooks).
So when I hire writers, I want to read as much of their work as possible, with samples in different voices for different clients. While many writers can pen a clever headline, their true talent shows in whether they keep a reader’s interest over hundreds of words.
Gone are the days when copywriting portfolios could feature a mere dozen print ads and storyboards. A few hotshot ad agency types can get away with just the short stuff, but they tend to have video reels.
Provided that your portfolio contains your best work and only your best work, 20 pages sounds fine. In short, go long.
— Cheers! Freddy
Do you have a question about marketing you’d like to ask Freddy?
[intlink id=”7625″ type=”page” target=”_blank”]Simply drop him a line.[/intlink]
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