Agencies do complex branding and marketing work. Within the agency, copywriters "own" and articulate clients' brands, so agencies require writers to do much more than write. The copywriter starts each job with an art director: These two are the creative "dream team," dreaming up the concepts that become a brand's exterior face.

Throughout creative development, the agency copywriter ensures a consistent message across pieces in a campaign and across mediums. During production, many agency copywriters also direct vendors and sometimes talent for television, radio, and video, both conventional and for the Web.

A good copywriter puts a client's ideas and material into clear, easy-to-grasp copy. A good agency copywriter puts those same ideas into a memorable concept that grabs the target audience's attention, so they will read that copy. An agency copywriter makes sure the client gets noticed and remembered.

A strong advertising/marketing concept works for one reason: it links the client's message tightly to a felt need in the target audience. You need to forge that link, or your advertising or marketing is just noise in a very noisy world. An agency copywriter sees everything from that perspective.

An agency copywriter writes everything: Television spots, phone menus, restaurant menus, print ads, newsletters, email newsletters, sales education materials, product names, box copy, websites, website videos, presentation videos, etc., etc.

And it all meets the expectations of clients who believe an expert in that kind of copy wrote it. Well, an expert did write it, because an agency copywriter is a versatility expert. Agency writers learn styles and voices on the fly. They're experts at pouring a client's strategy into copy that's appropriate for the audience and medium required.

People watching a viral video have one set of expectations. People reading a newsletter have a different set of expectations. The agency copywriter knows each medium's strengths and weaknesses.

No one medium can deliver all aspects of a particular business strategy. Some mediums create urgency, others build ccredibiilty, others are best for building awareness. The agency copywriter has long experience developing advertising in all mediums, and so can craft messages built on strengths in each.

The agency copywriter needs to persuade your audience to:

• See things as you want them to be seen.
• Accept you as a leader or authority.
• Invest emotionally in your brand.
• Want your product or service.

To do this, the copywriter helps clients refine a clearly articulated business strategy. “Is this on strategy?” the agency copywriter asks. If the answer is no, time to delete and start over.

How many times have I heard this: “I don’t need anything fancy, it’s just....” But what marketing or communication need are you addressing? If the work isn't important, why devote resources to it at all?

For any marketing or communication goal that involves words, an agency copywriter delivers the best results for your money: marketing and advertising that get noticed because they're driven by ideas that get remembered, and built on strategy that gets action.

The freelance agency copywriter applies the agency process to your business challenges, but doesn't have agency overhead. Alone or in close collaboration with other freelance agency veterans - art directors, producers, media buyers, print buyers - the freelance agency copywriter delivers agency results with a streamlined process and reduced cost.