James Othmer, ex-Young & Rubicam art director and also a novelist has some additional advice for copywriters aiming to build a nice portfolio. "The sad truth is that having a great book means that sooner or later you will need to collaborate with another human being. This will probably involve talking, possibly being in the same room together, often listening to ideas and disturbing personal issues not entirely your own and maybe even liking some of them.
"I used to be fairly open to crudely drawn ads by a writer if the concepts were strong enough (probably because I did the same thing with humiliating results many many years ago). But today even entry level, just out of fancy ad school books contain nothing like the (soon to be obsolete word) 'comps' that were once acceptable. Everything looks ready to run.
"However, there are several ways, I think, for a writer to dimensionalize an otherwise tasty looking book -- but only if it makes total sense for the product. For instance, you can't hide a flawed strategy with small space print-driven ads or teasers or web-specific concepts, from banners. If someone makes me laugh and see a strategic thought there, I'm usually impressed. Also the awards books are filled great headline driven outdoor or guerilla stuff. Also, if a copywriter's book was filled with phenomenal visuals I would often suggest that she think about doing a long copy or headline driven campaign, just to prove that she has some conceptual versatility and can really, really write (and that her partner wasn't doing all the heavy conceptual lifting). Body copy, long copy and radio (which still eats up almost half of most media budgets yet for some reason remains a portfolio no-no) are often an afterthought in books, but there are a lot of big agencies today with tons of talented creatives yet only a handful who can craft the provocative, funny, informative and compelling longer copy ads their clients need.
"Finally, and maybe this is a horrible idea for a book piece, but since everyone is trying to figure out how to do long format or episodic webisodes that actually make people want to buy or know more about a product, why not give it a shot? If you can come up with a short treatment (not sure if I'd lead with this, but if it's breakthrough enough and the recruiter/cd is looking for more...) it could only help.
"Of course a nice biproduct of doing all this copy intensive work is that if any of it is good enough there's a good chance it will catch the eye of some smart art director who suddenly may find the time to make it look like a real advertising."