Copywriting Portfolio for Beginners: Start With These Projects

Writers. We know them, we love them, and some of us are them. But there’s always a distinguishing factor between writers and copywriters, and they’re not as intertwined as you might think. Anyone who loves to write – be it short stories, novels, screenplays, essays, poems, or blogs – can be considered a writer.

It’s a craft just like any other art form. But copywriting, on the other hand, is a unique craft that requires not only a love of writing but also a love of problem-solving, quick wit, strategy, and creative messaging. Regardless, if you’re passionate about words, a career as a copywriter in advertising could be a smart move.

We know what you’re thinking… “How do I build a Copywriting Portfolio if I’ve never worked as a copywriter?” Well, it’s a good thing you’re reading this! 

Whether you’re writing blogs, books, poems, or plays, there’s a chance you’re already showcasing your work on a website of sorts. If you aren’t, you should!

However, if you want to break into advertising, let’s focus on building a strong website (or what we call a portfolio) that will show you’ve got the chops to be a copywriter.

In this article, we’ll break down the five types of portfolio projects that build credibility and how you can use your passion to pivot into a career in advertising.

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Why Specific Projects Matter More Than You Think

A strong portfolio isn’t about the quantity of writing examples – it’s about the quality of the right types of work. Having writing samples to show off is great, but that doesn’t mean they would get you a job as a copywriter off the bat. 

Copywriters are chameleons. It’s the copywriter's job to be the voice behind brands. When building an advertising-specific portfolio, we recommend starting with strategic projects rather than random exercises.

That way, you’ll be able to showcase intentional writing with direction and your ability to adapt tone of voice for various brands. 

Recruiters and Creative Directors in the advertising industry evaluate beginner copywriter portfolios on: 

• Strategic thinking ability, not just writing skills. 
• Range across mediums (Out of Home, Print, Social Media, Digital, Activations, etc.) 
• Cohesive campaigns rather than one-off writing samples. 

Showing lists of taglines or headlines without context is sloppy and doesn’t demonstrate that you have a grasp on what copywriting is in the advertising industry.

Sharing generic writing samples like essays or short articles doesn’t position you as a copywriter; it just proves you know how to type words onto a page.

Writing blogs, short stories, screenplays, poems, or even books as passion projects or side hustles is great – but you can show those on a separate page of your portfolio instead of making them the main event.

You don’t want to distract recruiters or creative directors from the job you’re really applying for as a copywriter.

All entry-level copywriter portfolios should focus on campaign-style projects. This is what we call “spec work” – and is primarily what students attending a portfolio school create.

If you were a student at a portfolio school, your instructor would assign the class a brief for one brand that you would then create a cohesive campaign for alongside an art director partner, with the end goal of showing a creative solution to the brand’s problem.

However, it is possible to create a campaign-focused portfolio on your own. Allow us to break down what you need.

Portfolio Structure, Why it's Important, and What it Looks Like 

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Step 1: Get a Domain 

Using a website platform like Squarespace, Wix, Adobe Portfolio, or others, you’ll need to purchase a domain. This is how hiring managers will find you! We recommend using your first & last name as your domain, or a fun/creative take on your name that’s easy to remember. 

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Step 2: Home Page 

The main page of your website should show the various brands you have created campaigns for. There are several different ways you could lay out your home page.

Maybe you use photos, graphics, or personalized illustrations that link to each campaign page. How you design your home page is up to you and your style, but ensure that the brands are clearly shown. 

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Step 3: Project Pages 

When someone clicks on one of your brand thumbnails, it should take them to that brand campaign’s page. Start with a short write-up explaining your campaign, give insight into the problem, and how the campaign you created will solve it. Then, show your work. 

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Step 4: About Me Page

More often than not, a hiring manager will look at the About Me page before even diving into your campaign pages. Your About Me page is where you can show off your personality.

Don’t write a full page autobiography about yourself. Instead, keep it tight, lighthearted, and uniquely yours. While it’s not mandatory, most people will also include a photo of themselves. 

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Step 5: Resume 

Your resume should either live on your About Me page or have its own separate page that is easily accessible. A good rule of thumb is to link your resume to a separate page so that it can be downloaded if needed. 

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Step 5: Email & Contact Info

Your email should be typed out and easy to copy & paste. We recommend including your email address on your About Me page, in your resume, and maybe even in the footer of your website.

Do not – and we repeat – DO NOT have a mail icon button that links to a mail app or a separate “contact page” that someone would have to fill out in order to reach you. That is the quickest way to not hear from a hiring manager, and a big pet peeve to many. 

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Step 6: “Extras” Page 

This page is optional, but a great opportunity to show off your passion projects. This could be photography, poetry, fanfiction, music, blogs, short stories, scripts, comedy, improv, content creation, or something else you’re proud of.

Depending on the advertising agency, many hiring managers will look to the “extras” page to see what creative endeavors you’re pursuing outside of advertising. 

Now you’re probably thinking, “I understand portfolio structure, but how do I structure a creative campaign?!” Before we break down the types of projects you should have in an entry-level portfolio, let’s talk about where to even start when developing a campaign. 

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Developing an Advertising Campaign 101 

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Step 1: Pick a brand, any brand! 

Consider this your “client.” This client theoretically came to you with a mission to sell their product to specific consumers, and it’s your job to figure out creative messaging that will resonate with the audience at hand. Once you know the brand you’re working on, start researching. 

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Step 2: Define the problem. 

After you’ve done extensive research on the brand, start asking questions that will help you define a problem to solve. What problems might the consumer be facing that the brand could potentially solve?

What are the things that are going on within the culture that the brand could lean into? What is the brand lacking, if anything? What are the consumer’s perceptions of the brand? 

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Step 3: Find the insight. 

The insight is the mitochondria of any advertising campaign. It’s the foundation your idea is built upon. It’s what drives people to recognize, resonate with, and respond to a brand or its products.

The best insights always come from an unmistakable human truth. Many times, it can be discovered throughout your research or while you’re understanding the problem. 

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Step 4: Build the solution. 

Here’s where your passion for writing comes in. The “solution” can also be considered a “concept” – it’s the big idea that will ultimately elevate the brand and get consumers to buy into it.

Think of this as if you’re building a house – if the insight is the foundation, then your big idea is the frame (or, skeleton structure of the house). 

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Step 5: Write a tagline. 

Your solution (or “concept” or “big idea”) should be summed up into one unique tagline, no more than 4 or 5 words. Most copywriters refer to Nike’s ‘Just Do It’ tagline.

It was the perfect phrase to sum up Nike’s big idea to shift the brand's focus from elite athletes to the everyday person struggling to get off the couch. Simple, ubiquitous, iconic. 

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Step 6: Tell the story. 

You have your brand, you’ve defined a problem, discovered an insight, and summed up your creative solution in a tagline. Now you get to build out a story that the group of people you’re advertising to can understand or identify with.

In a beginner copywriter’s portfolio, a great place to start is with print ads or billboards – but don’t be afraid to think bigger. 

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Step 7: Write headlines. 

Spend some time writing headlines that get the brand/product’s message across in a short, punchy way. Headlines are what take you from writer to copywriter. 

Your headlines should be written in the brand’s tone of voice. Is the brand humorous? Playful? Earnest? Purposeful? Understanding the tone of voice is vital when writing for a specific brand. 

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Step 8: Think strategically. 

Once you have a few dozen great headlines, you can begin to think about where these headlines could live. Do they live on an Out of Home billboard? Is that billboard on the side of the highway or in a specific location?

Maybe they live on the side of a bus or on a bus stop billboard. Playing with media placement when writing headlines can often inspire your writing. Plus, showing where your headlines can live proves to creative directors that you’re a strategic thinker, not just a good writer. 

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Step 9: Keep creating. 

Now that you’re getting the hang of it, you can start ideating other media for your words to live. This is where you start bringing a campaign to life. Going back to the house analogy: insight = foundation, big idea = frame, tagline = roof/walls, creative assets = interior.

Coming up with a few more extensions of your campaign – like adding social components or experiential activations is like the essential furniture that goes inside the house. Sure, you can live without it, but it makes the overall experience better.

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Step 10: Know when it’s finished. 

It’s easy to want to keep adding to a campaign, especially when the big idea is strong. It’s important for creatives to know when their campaign has enough components; adding more ideas can make the idea feel convoluted and not strategic. 

You’re one more step closer to building a portfolio and becoming a copywriter! Now you need to know what types of projects should be featured in a beginner copywriter’s portfolio. 

Projects Every Beginner Copywriter Should Include

The above steps are important to follow when creating any campaign, especially steps 1 through 4. Every campaign should encompass the problem, insight, and solution – but there are various types of advertising “campaigns” that you can create. 

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1. Integrated Brand Campaign (or “360 Campaign)

• An integrated brand campaign – or what most people consider a 360 campaign – is a campaign that features multiple executions across channels like social media, video, OOH, print, digital, activations, etc. 
• Showing creative executions across various channels shows strategic thinking, writing range, and campaign structure. 
• When laying out an integrated campaign in your portfolio, you should focus on telling the story of how the target audience will experience the campaign from awareness to action. 

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2. Social Media Campaign

• A social media campaign lives on specific social platforms – revolutionary, we know. Many advertising campaigns are transitioning to platform-first executions because that’s where most target audiences spend their time. You can think of social media campaigns as user-generated content, Influencers, or tapping into cultural moments. 
• A social media campaign is not just a single paid social advertisement that pops up on your Instagram feed. 
• This type of campaign demonstrates an understanding of modern advertising, cultural awareness, and the ability to shift tone of voice for various audiences on social media. 

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3. Product Launch Campaign

• This type of campaign introduces a new product or service. Assuming you’re creating hypothetical campaigns, you could come up with a new product to build a product launch campaign on. For inspiration, check out these recent book180 grads’ ideas for a Lego x Omega watch or a new flavor of Celsius. 
• For this type of campaign, you get to decide how this new product is positioned in culture. Get creative with your messaging!
• Having a product launch campaign in your portfolio shows your ability to sell an idea – even better, to sell an idea for a product that doesn’t even exist in the real world yet! 

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4. Cause or Purpose Campaign

• This type of campaign would show work examples for non-profits, brand partnerships with non-profits, or purpose-driven platforms that make the world a better place. 
• When creating cause or purpose campaigns, it’s important to include strategic, creative thinking around partnerships and how advertising can be more than just selling a product or service to the masses. 
• Not only is this type of campaign fulfilling to work on, but it also demonstrates emotional storytelling and the ability to connect messaging with social issues or cultural insights. 

Each of these campaign types shows all the different skills recruiters look for in an entry-level copywriter. Having range will always set you apart. On the other hand, there are common mistakes that could set you apart in a negative way. Before we wrap up, let’s cover those!

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Portfolio Mistakes to Avoid as a Beginner 

Building a portfolio is a tedious process that requires a lot of attention to detail. After staring at your work for so long, it’s easy to overlook little things like misspellings, grammatical errors, design mistakes, or funky layouts. However, the main errors most commonly seen in beginner portfolios aren’t always the small details. 

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1. Unorganized writing samples or too many small one-off projects. Like we said earlier — if you have passion projects that showcase your writing abilities, consider giving them a proper, organized place on your “Extras” page. 

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2. No cohesive campaign thinking. You might think you have a campaign example in your portfolio, but does it make sense as a real advertising campaign would? We recommend doing some research on the best integrated, social, product launch, or cause campaigns throughout the last decade to really grasp what a cohesive campaign looks like. 

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3. Projects that look like school assignments. If you have a college degree in relation to advertising, communications, or marketing, then you might have a few “school projects” you think are worth showing. Before dropping a PDF file into a portfolio page, consider how you could reinvent that project into something more tailored to a creative portfolio. 

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4. No explanation of the idea or strategy. Always give your campaign the context it deserves. Without it, the person viewing your portfolio won’t know that you have an understanding of the basic principles of creating an advertising campaign. 

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5. Showing too many pieces instead of strong ones. Earlier, we talked about how it’s important to know when to stop adding on to your campaign. Sometimes, having too many executions means you didn’t spend enough time on the executions that mattered most. Make sure the most important pieces of your campaign are strong. 

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6. Unfinished executions. Examples: 

• A radio spot or video script that is copied and pasted on your page rather than taking the time to record and edit the script yourself. 
• An activation idea that only has a write-up but no visual components to show the viewer what will be happening. 

Any and all executions in your portfolio should be finished entirely. When you have unfinished pieces, it sends a negative message to the hiring manager. 

Now it’s your time to shine, budding copywriter! Getting started might feel overwhelming, but remember that the quality of your insight, concept, and writing is more important than the quantity of executions or having each piece perfectly polished or designed. You’re a writer, not a designer, after all. 

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How a Portfolio School with Copywriting-Focused Classes Helps Beginners 

Sure, creating campaigns and building a copywriting-focused portfolio is not impossible to do totally solo. But it does make it a lot harder. That’s why most beginner copywriters and art directors choose to attend a portfolio school like book180. 

Portfolio schools offer copywriting-focused classes that will help you learn how to write like a copywriter in the advertising world, and not just a writer who enjoys writing. 

A more structured program also gives you a deeper understanding of advertising, not just the basics. Almost all portfolio schools hire real advertising professionals to teach their classes so students can learn from the creative brains behind real advertising campaigns. 

Your portfolio is only as good as the projects in it, and getting real-time feedback on your writing and campaign thinking will only make the work in your portfolio better.

Attending a portfolio school gives you real-world experience, like receiving live critiques and revisions from professionals, collaborating with art directors, understanding how to work in teams, and building confidence in pitching work as if it were in front of a client. 

book180 is a top choice for many aspiring advertising creatives because of its streamlined, 6-month program that gives you all the tools you need to build a strong portfolio. 

In conclusion, you don’t need dozens of work examples or a chaotic amalgamation of writing samples. All you need for a great entry-level copywriting portfolio is a few strong campaigns that demonstrate your thinking, creativity, and strategic structure. You got this!

Explore the book180 Copywriting Program to build real campaign projects and develop a portfolio that agencies recognize and respect. Apply today!