Summary

In this episode, host Kiran Kapur sits down with Jamie to discuss his recent study analysing 230 copywriting job adverts across the UK and Europe over a six-month period. Jamie explains how he approached his research and shares his key findings: how strategic thinking and AI mentions ranked side-by-side in job specifications, and why employers view AI as a practical workflow tool rather than a replacement for human writers.

 

Key Points

  • Strategy was mentioned in 59.1% of job adverts, making it more prevalent than AI mentions at 57.8%, signalling a major shift in employer expectations for copywriters [2:38] [1:54].
  • AI is positioned as a practical tool for research, ideation, and workflow support rather than a replacement for writing itself [13:39] [14:05] [14:52].
  • Storytelling features prominently in 41% of adverts, potentially reflecting a need for human connection in response to AI-generated content [2:57] [3:24] [8:59].
  • Employers now expect copywriters to demonstrate multidisciplinary skills including stakeholder collaboration, social media, and research [6:39] [7:09].
  • The research methodology involved manual analysis of official job adverts across three 30-day periods in 2026 to create reproducible, objective data [18:03] [17:35] [18:24].

 

Transcript

Transcripts are auto-generated.

Kiran Kapur (00:05):
Hello and welcome. We are in a very interesting discussion area today. I'm delighted to welcome back Jamie Thomson, who is the founder of Brand New Copy BNC. It is an Edinburgh based copywriting agency. Jamie, you came on last year, November last year, talking about strategic copywriting and how it was important to think before you started typing, but you've been doing quite a lot of research about the sort of job applications and job adverts there are for copywriters. And there's two areas I want to talk to you about. One is how you actually did that research, because I think that in itself is very interesting. I was reading your methodology when I was looking at your research paper on it, and there's a lot of methodology. I mean, this is not just you sitting down one afternoon with a couple of newspapers. You really have researched this.

(00:56):
And then secondly, there's the whole area about what companies are looking for with copywriters. And it's eye-opening because it's not somebody who's quite good with words. The one thing nobody seems to ask for anymore is a wordsmith. So perhaps we could start with some of the things that you found and then we'll go back to your methodology if that's okay. So what did you find? What was your overall takeaway from this massive piece of research?

Jamie Thomson (01:21):
Yeah, so I think for me there were three headline takeaways. So I analysed 230 job adverts that had the word copywriter in the title over three separate 30-day periods in the first half of 2026, looking at adverts across the UK and selected countries in Europe. And I think before I conducted the research, I would've guessed that a large part of the report would've been about AI. And surprisingly, there wasn't that much mention of AI across the adverts, or at least the way that it was mentioned was surprising to me. So the first key takeaway is that 57.8% of the copywriting job adverts that I analysed mentioned AI in some way, but very few of them were requesting any sort of advanced AI skills. It was positioned in much more of a tool, much in the same way that any kind of software would be. So no one expected technical skill levels.

(02:33):
It was much more positioned as a part of a copywriter's workflow. And the other surprising finding was that strategy was mentioned in 59.1% of adverts. So strategy was actually more prevalent than AI. And I mean, that was maybe more unsurprising for me because I do specialise in the strategy side of things. But compared to say maybe three, four years ago, I don't have anything to benchmark this against, but I don't imagine strategy would've been as prominent in employer's expectations of copywriters. And yeah, the third main takeaway is that storytelling was in front and centre as well. That was referenced in 41% of copywriting job adverts. And of course, storytelling has always been a part of a copywriter's toolkit, but I sort of wonder whether it's now maybe more prominent because of the rise of AI and that real sort of need for human connection.

Kiran Kapur (03:40):
Yeah, I found it absolutely amazing. I read

Jamie Thomson (03:43):
Your

Kiran Kapur (03:44):
Report with huge interest and I went back to

Jamie Thomson (03:46):
The

Kiran Kapur (03:46):
Summary

Jamie Thomson (03:46):
And

Kiran Kapur (03:46):
I though, have I missed something? But I mean, it's right up your street, the fact that strategy is so key. But I think if I was starting my career and I was looking for roles in copywriting, and lots of people do, it's a lovely career to have, it's lovely things to do. And if you're good with words, it's a really lovely career to think, oh, I can play with words and I can do things. You do need these other aspects. So why strategy do you think,

Jamie Thomson (04:14):
And

Kiran Kapur (04:14):
What strategy do you think employers are looking for?

Jamie Thomson (04:18):
It was actually quite interesting. As part of the analysis, I was kind of looking at the semantics and the associated words. Whenever someone mentioned strategy, what were the sort of words that were associated with it? And a lot of it was framed around responsibility. So things like messaging, positioning, campaign planning, content planning. And I guess these are maybe words that you wouldn't necessarily associate with copywriting or perhaps wouldn't have a few years ago. So yeah, I think employers are looking for copywriters to essentially take more responsibility. Maybe three years ago or so, even in my own project, I was being asked to do a lot more execution focused work. And I noticed that I was actually being brought in earlier in projects and asking for my opinion about the overall marketing strategy and where copywriting fits into that. So yeah, I think for new copywriters trying to break into the market, I think strategy really is where it's at.

(05:24):
AI writing tools, ChatGPT, et cetera, has made it possible for someone to produce the output, the text, but without having insightful inputs, the final copy is not really going to meet the business outcomes. It's not going to perform in the way that employers are looking for.

Kiran Kapur (05:47):
As I said, when you came on last time, you talked very much about the strategic side of copywriting and how copywriting shouldn't just be seen as coming up with a nice little line or sentence of text. It should be within a whole context of what was going on. And evidently employers have agreed with you because this is very much where they're pushing it. And I'm with you. I don't think a few years ago, if I was employing a copywriter, I would expect them to do strategy. I would have somebody who did strategy and part of their role was briefing the copywriter. Now it seems to be a bit different.

Jamie Thomson (06:21):
Yeah, it definitely is. And when you look at the complimentary skills that employers are looking for, so just to say that the number one skill that was mentioned inevitably was strong writing skills. So it's not the case that that's completely gone out the window. I think every single advert that was analysed did mention writing and strong writing in some capacity, but the complimentary skills around that, the top three were stakeholder collaboration. So 21% of adverts mentioned stakeholder collaboration, 17% mentioned social media, and 16% mentioned research. And it's interesting because these are all roles within themselves. In any sort of given creative agency or organisation, you would get someone who is potentially responsible for research, someone who's responsible for social media, like social media management, that's a job in itself. And stakeholder collaboration, that would maybe fall under the remit of someone in accounts if it was an agency.

(07:31):
So yeah, it's interesting that these are the other skills that have been framed alongside copywriting. So yeah, that to me is evidence that employers and brands aren't just looking for copywriters to provide words. They are looking for them to be a bit more multidisciplinary.

Kiran Kapur (07:49):
And being able to fit in with your stakeholder. So I'm pleased to see the writing skills was still very important if you were a copywriter. I mean, storytelling was really interesting because this is something I've noticed more when I go to conferences and things. There's nearly always somebody telling us about storytelling and why storytelling is important. Do you think that's got new emphasis now? Is it something that's always been there, it's just employers are now mentioning it more?

Jamie Thomson (08:15):
I guess if you think back to, I guess you put old school copywriting and you think about the David Ogilvy era, storytelling was definitely more visible in print campaigns and a lot of famous adverts that were based around stories. And I think over the years a medium has changed and I think there's a sort of, especially in social media, there's that move towards short form content whereby you don't really have as much opportunity to tell a story in the traditional sense that there's a beginning, a middle, and an end and character development and that kind of stuff. So I'm surprised that that feature so prominently alongside AI. So storytelling was mentioned in 41% of the adverts and AI was mentioned in 57.8%. So there's a 10% or so, 10, 15% difference there. It's not huge. So I wonder whether dimension of storytelling has a relationship with the rise of AI, that need for human engagement.

(09:23):
As we know, everyone loves a story and it is a powerful sales tool. And yeah, I wonder whether the reason for it being so prominent is that AI is never a thing.

Kiran Kapur (09:34):
I think partly I do notice, and I get frustrated with storytelling and people will start their presentations with, let me tell you a story, or when I was walking down the street and it's like,

Jamie Thomson (09:43):
Oh.

Kiran Kapur (09:44):
Whereas traditional, I mean, you mentioned an Ogilvy, I can't remember if this is an Ogilvy campaign, but you can tell a story very, very quickly. They laughed when I sat down at the piano, but when I began to play, very, very famous strategic light. The story is there. I don't need any more than that. I certainly don't have to be told, imagine me sitting down as a keyboard and I'm very nervous and my fingers are... It was a really simple way of explaining it. So I think stories can be oversold or over suggested as being important.

Jamie Thomson (10:16):
Yeah, I agree with that. I think it's about the medium, like you said, that is a sort of classic headline and it piques your interest and it almost tells everything you need to know just from the headline. And I think there's a bit of a sort of miss. What does storytelling mean nowadays? There is a maybe temptation to think that it does mean the classic beginning, middle, and end, but I think nowadays it's much more about being able to translate meaning and to take potentially complex information and turn it into something that's digestible. There's that sort of famous copywriting book, Don't Make Me Think. That is important probably nowadays more than it ever has been. I do think storytelling is a good way to hook people from the start, but the way that it's done I think is a bit different from how it used to be.

(11:12):
I think it's more about getting messages over quickly in a way that's going to engage people's human interest.

Kiran Kapur (11:20):
So you mentioned AI several times and I think it's time we came back to that. So what I found intriguing was you, and the last time you came on, you were saying AI won't take your job if you're a strategic copywriter because you still have to do the strategy, you still have to do the human understanding. But it wasn't using AI strategy you mentioned, it was using AI as a workflow tool.

Jamie Thomson (11:42):
Yeah. And well, I'm still here. I'm still doing the job, so it hasn't replaced me yet. And yeah, I think I stand by that approach. As useful as AI is as a workflow tool, it is a technology of averages. So if all you're doing is giving a prompt and copying and pasting whatever it produces, it will read well and there won't be any grammatical errors in it, but it will be the same as everything else that's out there. That's the point. For companies to really stand out nowadays, they need to really double down on their unique selling points, the benefits to the customers and really find their points of differentiation. And that needs to be the starting point of any copywriting project. Increasingly, I'm being asked to interview people internally to extract the information that only they know. And it's across departments, it's not necessarily working with people in marketing, it's people from all corners of a business because they're the ones that have that kind of inside knowledge that essentially forms part of the company's culture and the things that make it unique.

(12:54):
And that's something that AI is never going to know. It's never going to have that level of insight. So as long as your starting point is people and conversations, then by all means you can use AI to extract messages and that kind of thing. But if you're going to AI as a starting point, then it's only ever going to give you more of the same.

Kiran Kapur (13:17):
That's AI using AI to generate some copy, but you also said workflow. It's using it as a tool. So what are the tools, rather than me just prompting in and going, "Please write me a headline that will appeal to such and such or however else I could use AI," what sort of things were you seeing from the adverts that employers were expecting you to use AI for as a copywriter?

Jamie Thomson (13:39):
It was mainly positioned as a practical tool for research, ideation, workflow support, and optimisation. And that's one of those words that are a bit sort of vague, but even just the language around it, none of the adverts were implying that AI should be used to replace the writing itself. It was very much positioned as a supplementary tool. So I mean, in my own workflow, I do find that AI in many cases is more effective for research than what the alternative would've been, which would've been Google, I guess. It's just faster and you're able to be more specific with it. It's much better at finding evidence, data, statistics to strengthen a particular point. Whereas before, if you only had Google, you would be spending hours reading through reports and trying to find something that fits the narrative that you're trying to tell. So in that sense, it's more efficient and it's more effective, but of course it can hallucinate, although it does seem to be doing it less nowadays.

(14:49):
And you need to double check absolutely everything because you can't trust it. And there's obviously been a lot of cases, especially with lawyers using evidence that doesn't exist and that kind of thing. So you always have to have the human in the loop. But I think as a workflow tool, it's definitely more effective than potentially what we had before. And I personally find it great for analysis as well. For example, for this report, I used AI as part of the process for extracting the words that were used around the adverts. For me to have done that on my own, it would've taken me the best part of a year or I would've needed a team of three or four. I could have worked on it over a period of three months, but thanks to AI and its power of analysis, I was able to lean on that for the more quantitative part of the research.

Kiran Kapur (15:40):
Your methodology really intrigued me because you could have just gone, "I'm going to sit down on Monday the 17th of January and just look at what adverts are there." And that would've been one way of doing it. But your methodology was much more complex and therefore much more interesting than that. So how did you approach it? First of all, why did you decide to do this and then how did you approach it?

Jamie Thomson (16:02):
Yeah, I mean, I think what prompted me to do it in the first place was the fact that I was noticing in my own work client requests that I was being asked to be part of the project much earlier on and I was being asked to do less execution and more of the strategy stuff that I've always done, but never really framed my positioning around that. And it got me thinking, is this a universal thing across the industry? Are other copywriters being brought in earlier as well? Or with the rise of AI a few years ago, I wanted to get a bit of a temperature on the industry and what were other people's experiences of it? How is the copyright industry changing? I'm not a massive social media user, but I was scrolling through LinkedIn to see if I could find any sort of evidence and data on it.

(16:54):
And there was surprisingly nothing really. It was mostly opinions and the headline adverts were the sensationalist media reports of companies getting rid of all the copywriters, replacing them with AI. And of course that has happened in a lot of cases and a lot of copywriters have lost positions, but there wasn't really any evidence around it. There was a lot of opinions that AI was going to replace copywriting, but no one really seemed to have any data. So that's the reason that I decided to actually dig into job adverts. And I though, what better way to get a temperature than to see what employers are looking for from copywriters? How often is AI mentioned in adverts and how is it positioned? And so that was the reason behind conducting the research in the first place to have a bit of a data set. And yet in terms of the methodology behind it, I was very aware that I wanted to create a repeatable process so that in a couple of years time I can run the same report, do the same analysis and see how it compares to see if the industry has changed or if employer expectations have changed.

(18:03):
And yeah, there was two parts to it. There was the quantitative part which involved copying and pasting 230 job adverts manually over three separate 30-day periods. I was very aware that I wanted to use as broad a number of job sites as possible, and I only used official job adverts. So that didn't include companies putting a message on LinkedIn saying, "Do you know anyone who might be interested?" So unless it was an official job advert, I didn't use it. And I only chose adverts that had the word copywriter specifically in the title. So anything that was writing adjacent, unless it had the word copywriter in it, I sort of dismissed it for the purposes of the report. And yeah, I chose three separate periods in the first half of 2026 to make it as broad as possible. And yeah, 230 was the number that I landed on.

(19:01):
And AI was very useful at extracting information I needed. So I spent quite a bit of time creating prompts and testing them to make sure that what it was giving me back was accurate, and I was able to reverse engineer it to make sure that actually everything did add up as it should. And then the second part was more the qualitative part, which was more reading between the lines, I guess, and connecting the dots between the findings and maybe the expectations. And saying that, I was very aware of, I wanted this to be as objective as possible. I didn't want this to be a comment on hiring trends or the state of the industry. I wanted to be as objective as possible and just present the data and I guess let other people connect the dots and make their own, I guess, opinions on it.

(19:58):
I think it would be useful for cooperators just to see what employers are looking for. I think it'd be useful for marketers, brands and employers to, I guess, to benchmark themselves against competitors and what their expectations are for copywriters.

Kiran Kapur (20:12):
It's interesting how rigorous you were, the fact that you did it over three separate three-month periods, which gave you the overall six months of the research. The other things you said, and we've talked about using AI as a tool, you said, "I spent time prompting." And if there's one message we keep having to get across to certainly our students is you can't just stick a single line prompting and expect to get the perfect answer. I spent time prompting, I spent time testing it, you said. And you also said, "I reverse engineered to make certain it was accurate." And again, those are two, if you're going to use AI, those are two very important messages.

Jamie Thomson (20:48):
Yeah, it's interesting. I have had quite a few conversations with mostly creative agencies who employ junior copywriters, and they are finding that a lot of junior writers are too dependent on AI as a starting point. And I do empathise with them because it's a technology that can be really powerful and it can give you a good start. But I do empathise that they're in that sort of situation that in order to learn the craft, you almost need to learn how to do it without the technology. I also see how that could lead to imposter syndrome as well for junior copywriters or for anyone trying to get into the industry at this particular time. Whereas I think I have that advantage and maybe other mid-level or senior cooperators have that advantage of having done this job before AI was a thing. I am confident that if AI was to disappear tomorrow, not that it will, that I would still be able to do the job.

(21:47):
But yeah, I think for someone who's maybe in a junior position who hasn't really known the industry without AI, it's tricky. It's kind of ironic that there's so much information out there about how to learn copywriting, how to become a copywriter. But the reality of it is that you do just need to practise the craft and AI can sometimes be a shortcut to that. And I don't necessarily think that's a good thing.

Kiran Kapur (22:13):
Yeah. I mean, AI can teach you how to play the piano, but ultimately you still have to be able to sit at a keyboard and play to go back to my analogy earlier. Yes, it is something that you learn over time, and I think sometimes we forget that you still have to learn craft, you still have to learn the ability to do things. So as we finish, Jamie, was there one thing that you really took away, one thing that really surprised you from what you did?

Jamie Thomson (22:39):
I think that the biggest surprise for me was the way that AI was positioned. I know we've spoken about AI quite a lot, but before I did the report, I was expecting the main headline to be around AI, potentially replacing jobs or for there to be a slightly more surprising or shocking revelation. But actually the surprising thing for me is that employers are expecting cooperators to have a working knowledge of AI, but they're not expecting AI to automate the writing and they're not expecting it to replace the job or the skill of having strong rating. Just looking at the word choice around the technology, it was very much focused on the workflow and yeah, optimisation really. I've always been of the opinion that it is all about the end result, about the performance. If you're AB testing two different messages, you always have to go with the one that performs best.

Kiran Kapur (23:40):
And if people want to get hold of your report, where do they go and find it?

Jamie Thomson (23:44):
Yeah, so it's available on my website, brandnewcopy.com, and the report is called The Modern Copywriter. It's available to download for free as a PDF.

Kiran Kapur (23:54):
And it's certainly a very interesting read. Jamie, if you do decide to run it again in a couple of years, let me know and we'll have you back and we can see what's changed over that time, which I think would be a very interesting conversation. Jamie Thomson, founder of Brand New Copy. Thank you so much for your time.

Jamie Thomson (24:09):
Thanks for having me on, Kiran.