Sue Batterton Teaches Narrative Through Advertising

At the 2020 Literary Festival Sue Batterton came to speak to students about her career as a creative writer for advertisements.

During first, second and third period Batterton presented her workshop, titled “Poetry in Advertising”. In her presentation, Batterton talked about the details of her career and shared advice about the advertising business. 

After earning a Master of Fine Arts in fiction and poetry and the University of Texas, Batterton worked her way to a job at The Richards Group advertising firm. Among her more notable clients are Ram, Chrysler and Chick-fil-A. One of the advertisements presented at the workshop was an Alfa Romeo commercial, which showcased the shade of red the car is available in. Oftentimes the final product of these advertisements can have a rather high production cost. 

“She told us it probably cost roughly the same as the movie ‘Parasite,’” junior Michael Ngo said.

As a creative writer at The Richards Group, much of Batterton’s time is spent making drafts of advertisements. The rest is largely spent working with advertising teams as they work with brands, or produce the final version of an advertisement. In addition to her work in the advertisement industry, Batterton has also done some creative writing without corporate sponsorship. Included among these works are three television pilot scripts.

“I would say half of my time is spent writing, it depends if I am on production or not, but I would say I spend at least three hours a day at my desk writing,” Batterton said.

Because many modern advertisements take the form of a video, the majority of the presentation was spent watching, going through and discussing different advertisements. The advertisements shown were from a varied group of industries and brands, including Ram and Johnnie Walker. Several sports advertisements made for an Under Armour campaign, written by notable modern poets. 

Batterton showed these different advertisements to point out how writing one takes a lot more than people would assume at first glance. Most will have deeper importance then just the product being displayed.

“[I had never noticed] the metaphors within commercials, and it opened my eyes to other commercials,” senior Sam Hinkhouse said.