Literary Copywriter Spotlight: Evan Brown

Welcome back to The Literary Copywriter Spotlight where I feature professional writers and copywriters with creative pursuits. Today I interviewed Evan Brown, an award-winning copywriter and creative director. Evan has developed iconic advertising for some of the most well-known brands in the world. He is also the author of New Roman Times, a novel based on a Camper Van Beethoven album of the same name, and a short story collection called A-Sides & B-Sides. With a second science fiction novel currently forthcoming, Evan took advantage of the pandemic downtime to write his first cookbook. He currently lives on the west coast with his wife, daughter and two rambunctious cats. Let’s hear from Evan!

Literary Copywriter: Tell me about your writing journey. When did you first realize that a.) you are a writer, and b.) you want to make a living off of your writing?

Evan Brown: I owe a debt of gratitude to two people. The first was my copywriter mom. For some reason around the age of five or six, all I heard from her was that I had the personality for advertising and would have a ball if I ever got in to it. She explained what she did and how fun it was. To my ears, it sounded like she worked with a group of artistic adults who somehow kept their imagination from atrophying. Neat as that was, I was more interested in stuff like toys and video games at that age.

The second person was my tenth grade creative writing teacher, Marilyn Bates. She was a fantastic writer and a gifted poet in her own right. She taught the basics of storytelling and imagery. But she also did something incredibly significant for me personally. She saw the writer inside that I didn’t see at the time. Treating me as an equal even if I was a diamond in the rough had a huge impact on me, although I didn’t realize it until much later.

I spent two summers in high school attending the Young Writer’s Institute program at the University of Pittsburgh. I don’t know why I decided to rebel against my creative nature by studying journalism at Ithaca College but it only lasted a semester. I quickly transferred to Pitt because the creative writing department was highly regarded at the time. I never looked back.

After publishing a few poems and short stories here and there and attempting a novel during college, I realized there was no way I was going to make a living off that kind of writing. I didn’t have the temperament or patience to be a teacher which is what most of the poets I knew were doing. Somewhere along the line I recalled what my mom said and decided to give this advertising thing a try.

After fits and starts and a lot of rejection, I sucked it up and went to the Creative Circus to get a decent student portfolio. After that, it started to fall into place.

L.C. Please describe your copywriting career. How did you get started? Who are your ideal clients.? Do you freelance or work for an agency?, etc.

I landed an internship at BBDO in Atlanta which turned into a full-time job. Five years later, I moved sight unseen to Montreal to work on adidas for a shop called Sid Lee. I’ve spent the past ten years in Los Angeles working at places like 72andSunny, Chiat Day, Saatchi, and Media Arts Lab. I’ve been fortunate enough to work on brands like Apple, Activision, and adidas, but to me there’s no such thing as a bad brand. Only a bad brief.

In 2018 I decided to take time off and write a novel. While I did write the novel, I never took any time off. I’ve been permalancing as a creative director ever since. I’ve been on seven and eight month contracts working at Garage Team Mazda and Faceboook. It’s the best of both worlds as I’m there long enough to make a mark, but I still have enough time to write.

L.C. I love supporting copywriters who are also hard at work on a creative, personal project. This could be a novel, memoir, poetry collection etc. Tell me more about what you’re working on and what you hope to gain from the experience (book deal, more publications, career change, personal growth, etc.). Feel free to share how you balance work, life, and writing. It’s okay, if you’re struggling with this. It’s all part of the process!

I often feel like I had to wait for my ability to catch up with my purpose. After a decade and a half of cranking out scripts and headlines and decks, probably writing tens of thousands of words in the process, the ad industry forced me to get better, often at a frenetic (and usually unhealthy) pace.

The day David Bowie died, I was laid up on the sofa with pneumonia and a high fever. In that weird state I wrote a short story, the first since I lived in Atlanta. Then an idea took hold to take the titles of my favorite songs and use them as inspiration to create something new. The result was a short story collection called A-Sides & B-Sides. One of the titles of the story came from a friend of mine, who then asked if I’d be interested in turning his band’s album into a novel. With that brief, I wrote my debut, New Roman Times. Finally, in March, during month one of California’s pandemic lockdown, I wrote a dark-humored cookbook called Joy of Pandemic Cooking. And since last month, I’ve started publishing articles for sites like Spectator and Splice Today, so in a sense I’ve even come full circle on the journalism route, too. I’ve been more prolific in the past four years than at any other time in my life.

While all of my books have been self-published by choice I’ve managed to find an audience that has been receptive to my work. Now that I’ve finished a final draft of novel number two, I’m exploring the traditional publishing route, and with it the barrage of form-letter rejection slips from literary agents that come with it. But it’s all part of the process.

As for work-life balance, I have a routine of getting up at five in the morning and writing for a few solid hours before work and family time. Sometimes it’s seven days a week. Once I’m involved, it is total immersion. If anything, my wife will sometimes have to force me to take a day or two off.

L.C. Writers are needed but often undermined/unappreciated. Especially those of us with literary goals in mind! If applicable, could you speak to how you’ve faced/overcome challenges in your career? It’s okay if these challenges are ongoing (they often are). Feel free to share any words of wisdom you may have from mentors, literary heroes, etc.

It comes down to knowing your creative worth. I once worked for a horrible creative director. The kind who thinks they are the only one in the agency who can write and will rewrite everything anyone else rather than actually direct the creative as their name would imply. At first his snide and patronizing comments like “you’re just not really getting it,” or “the voice of this brand is hard, not everyone can do it,” made me question my ability and my worth. And by this time, I was an ACD.

I was really disheartened about it. But it gradually dawned on me that I was being gaslit by an arrogant jerk. I found out later I was the seventh copywriter in his group in two years to feel that way. That validated my opinion of him and of myself.

Having said that though, it is important to keep learning, and never rest on your laurels. You can always get better. You just have to know who to learn from.

Whether it’s advertising or literary work, if you can surround yourself with a support group of people who will read your work and give you honest and straightforward feedback, fantastic. You only need one person you can trust. Their value is immense.

L.C. Say someone much younger than you says, “I want to be a writer, but I’m afraid I won’t succeed.” What would you tell them?

I would tell them nobody comes out of the womb a fully-formed writer. Published authors work with editors all the time. Writing will always be a work in progress and this is something to embrace not fear. The only way someone doesn’t succeed is if they never begin.

On that note, I would also ask them to define what success looks like. Obviously, very few of us will ever make Stephen King money. But if you can support ourselves with your words, year after year? I’d call that a success.