Slogans, jingles and headlines used to be the cornerstone of everything a copywriter lived and breathed. But the job of a copywriter today extends beyond the static page. Ads today are interactive, multi-channel, and viral, and always evolving beyond one-way messages into more engaged conversations.

Let’s face it: In a time where people are exposed to an average of 5,000 ad messages a day (and that’s a conservative estimate), marketers are finding it harder and harder to reach people. Enter today’s lorem ipsum dolor crafters – the idea writers. 

These days, when you encounter ads – which you do everywhere you go -you’re doing more than simply seeing them: You’re experiencing them. A luxury hotel’s elevator door opens and a voice tells you that your destination was brought to you by a partnering airline. A flash mob gathers in Jackson Square and dances The Chicken, touting a fast food chain. A video game rewards your record-breaking home run with a mega-sized burger coupon. Even supermarket eggs are now stamped with brand and advertising messages. The landscape has changed.

Writers are no longer tasked with penning catchy words alone. We are thinking holistically: how to attract, engage and extend the brand experience. We are the curators of brand stories. We concept flash mobs, place products in video games, and food trucks at conferences. These are all examples of finding new ways to reach audiences and creating positive favorability.

Teressa Iezzi sums it up in her book, The Idea Writers: “These new masters and mistresses of brand creativity and engagement might be writing a script for a web film, orchestrating a transmedia story or conceiving and helping to develop an app. They might be inventing a way for an automaker to contribute to the conversation on conservation by creating an application to encourage efficient driving . . . or they might be coming up with commands to give a chicken.”

The latter refers to subservientchicken.com, which, might I add, is still active and still pretty darn amusing. Iezzi’s book is a good source of knowledge and insight on the changing nature of this business, and worth your time regardless of whether you’re a soothsayer or not.

There’s an ad saying that says the worst thing you can do in advertising is to look like a commercial. I have no idea who penned it, but here’s what I think it means: When brand conversations blend into our daily lives (the best in ninja disguise), that’s when engagement works. And that’s the advertising writer’s new role in this digital and new media era.