Confessions: Existential Dread in the times of COVID-19

• Our confessions series is a platform where young professionals from the advertising, marketing and media world will get to pour their hearts out on how the outbreak of coronavirus has affected their daily routines, the good, bad and ugly sides of working while under house arrest and talk about if it's even possible to balance work and personal life in a situation like this.
• In today’s column, Mohit Rao, Copywriter, Tonic Worldwide confesses how challenging dealing with client feedback can be, how to avoid getting stuck in an existential loop while working remotely, and what keeps him going every day.

There is no geographical solution to a vocational problem. Issues of the work place have a wonderful way of manifesting themselves wherever it is that you try to connect your questionably functioning laptop to a dodgy wifi connection. It begins with the usual physical problems- the O key isn’t working, the CAPS key is behaving erratically, and I’m working on Schrodinger’s Wi-Fi – all that jazz. Soon, however, the issues will transcend temporal boundaries and start becoming more existential in nature -- what am I doing, why am I doing it, is any of this even worth it, is anything worth it -- before mystifyingly looping back to the physical as the G and H keys, too, stupefyingly stop working.

In many ways, I am grateful to these physical problems. They serve as a welcome distraction to the peskier existential ones. The stupid message or email taking forever to actually be sent to the client serves as a necessary irritant that will tire me out or work me up enough for the real issue that will prop up when the message or email does go to the client.

Rejection in all its myriad forms is part and parcel of this job -- it’s the form this rejection takes that is the source of angst for a copywriter. See, every other cog in this machinery that is advertising and marketing receives feedback that is at least tangential if not coherent. If plans or budgets are rejected then there were certain specific facets of these plans and budgets that can be pointed to as the reason; if design gets rejected it’s because said design doesn’t match up to the picture the client has in mind, and so resulting feedback initiates the Herculean task of trying to imagine what someone else is imagining and trying to bring this image into existence.

Things get nebulous when it comes to copywriting for one simple reason -- language. Language is an extremely interesting tool developed over millennia by this species. There are things that must be said, and there are things that must be heard, and between these two is the gulf where all of humanity’s interactions and communication takes place. Copywriters are using this magnificent tool that is language to perform highly complex tasks such as convincing another sentient, cognizant human being to essentially do their bidding. No, not even their bidding -- the bidding of a corporation that wants to sell to the people goods and services they may or may not need. It is for this reason that in modern times this business has come under rightful scrutiny and is looked upon by suspicion and derision by people -- it might be the closest we have come to mind control. I might write ‘Lijiye raseele phalon ka mazaa’ but what I am actually doing by using the inherent complexity of language and resulting communication is imbibe the seemingly innocuous imperative sentence asking people to enjoy fruits with an underlying sensuality, which will then further be enhanced by having a leading actress hold up a bottle of fruit juice. This entire exercise is being carried out in service of this fruit juice, to ensure it sells well and makes a corporation a lot of money.

Thus, copywriters aren’t just sitting around writing a witty sentence or two all day long -- they are busy crafting an intricate mantra that will ultimately convince another fully sentient human being to buy tickets to a movie, or order food from a specific restaurant from a specific online service. This job becomes all the more difficult when other people start giving their feedback, often vague and indecipherable. I staunchly believe anyone who manages to correctly interpret ‘Make it more crisper’ has a strong future in this field. When dealing with feedback, the copywriter must not only have to defend the integrity of what was originally created and the meaning of the original copy, but also the way it is being interpreted by others. Copywriting is thus equal parts performing sorcery with language and performing the Sisyphean task of having to deal with other people’s interpretations of what you were trying to convey with your copy. Compromising your original objective the copy meant to convey is a given- after all, like a joke, a copy doesn’t really work if you have to explain it. But the reason for angst for many copywriters is when their underlying craft is swept aside wholesale by a party that neither bothers understanding what the copywriter tried to say nor explaining themselves in clear terms. And thus the frustrated copywriter is left dealing with trying to himself interpret language such as ‘Make it easier to understand’, ‘Use simpler language’, ‘Mazaa nahi aa raha hai’, ‘No’ and of course, ‘Make it more crisper’ (not just crisper, mind you. More crisper)

And thus, at the end of the day, you are left with your existential dread, arising from having to decipher ambiguous feedback from multiple parties. When your sixth attempt to give the copy results in ‘Not working out’ coming as a feedback, you are left pondering about what is it that you are doing, what’s the point of it all, and whether any of this is even worth it.

Stuck at home for so many days, these questions have been gnawing at me more and more. Home is supposed to be a man’s sanctuary, but stuck between work from home and work at home, it doesn’t take too long for it to become your prison. And being in prison gives you a lot of time to get lost in pensive thoughts about what to do, what you are doing and what is the meaning of it all. Is it ironic that those whose job it is to imply many meanings with their sentence construction wonder the most about the meaning of it all? Maybe.

Then why keep going? If the snake truly does eat it’s own tail and a copywriter’s life is being stuck in a loop of saying someone else’s words for them, why do I eagerly open this laptop every morning trying to connect to ‘Dad use this Wifi’? Why endure the late nights, the hectic schedules, the bizarre deadlines, the endless rejections and the feedback you don’t agree with? Because every once in a while, you will write something that is truly magical. It will swipe everyone off your feet, become part of a creative that is actually great, somehow actually will be posted online on time, and will actually be received well by the public. Sometimes you will perform the alchemy of language so well that someone really will appreciate it for its own merit, and maybe even buy that fruit juice. And that, believe it or not, is almost worth everything else.

- By Mohit Rao, Copywriter, Tonic Worldwide