Jon Kerswell

WORK HISTORY

EDUCATION

SKILLS

ABOUT JON KERSWELL

I once heard someone say that marketers are great at communicating products, but not so great at communicating anything about themselves. Well, here goes anyway.I’m a marketer with a mess of experience. I say ‘mess’ because I’ve been lucky enough to work across a broad range of disciplines.After finishing my degree in English Literature, the only thing I was really qualified for (it seemed to me) was writing. But just try getting a job as a copywriter with zero experience. So, I got in by stealth. I started working in any freelance roles I could. And every time I got near a marketing team I chipped in with ideas and thoughts, or I did the jobs no one else wanted. Boom, role one arrived as an internal comms assistant.From internal comms (aka shouting into a cupboard), I moved into marketing comms. I loved this role because it had a smattering of everything: a bit of strategy and planning, a bit of budgeting and people management, a bit of the creative and campaign side of things. I also got to work with lots of creative marketing and advertising agencies.Around this point, I also did a Masters degree that enabled me to focus on how advertising works - the semiotic relationships that are the difference between what’s successful and what’s, well, meh.All of which led to my next stint - being a freelance copywriter. My lesson from working with agencies was that they often fell down in delivery, not supporting the creative with commercial rationale (i.e. selling stuff). Filling that gap was how I decided to be distinctive. And it worked. I got to work for clients like English Heritage, L&G, NHS England and Ford. Good times.Naturally, I then ended up working for one of the agencies I freelanced for. That gave me a stint of being at the beating heart of a creative and strategic team, working on clients like Ginsters, Warburtons, Visa and Macmillan Cancer Support.I then did another bout of freelancing, going beyond copywriting into creative strategy before once again joining an agency that I’d been working for.My role today is about developing creative strategies for clients. I work with them to understand their company, their competitors and their customers to build distinctive strategic ideas that can be used to brief creative teams. It’s great because I’m involved from the foundation thinking behind launching (or relaunching) brands, products and companies all they way through to engaging staff and delivering customer campaigns. And the other great thing is the range of clients I work on - startups, FTSE companies and charities. Not bad, huh?