I make advertising feel less like advertising.

Hi there. I’ve spent over a decade trying to make advertising feel less like advertising.

I write fast, and I am constitutionally incapable of underdelivering. The client asked for two ideas? We’re going to be talking about ten. Kill your darlings, they say. Sure. But first, have a lot of darlings. And when one of them is “The One,” do everything in your power to care for it through production, legal, and the media plan, to make sure it arrives in the world as wonderful as you imagined it could be.

Here’s my unfair advantage. I used to be a lawyer. Went to UVA law school, then practiced in the years right after the Great Recession. I loved law school. I did not love being a lawyer. And when I’d come home, tired, overworked, and trying not to think about the new gas bill, I would turn on the TV. And I started wondering, as I watched anonymous ads outlining the awesome benefits of drinking brown water, what could appeal to me? I think about that version of me every time a new brief crosses my desk.

So I like the part of the job most people find tedious. Reading the brief in and out. Probing it. Learning how the product actually works, all the way down. Most of what’s above came out of a fact somebody nearly skipped.

The best part of the last few years has been other writers. Junior teams at three agencies whose work I took through to CD review, and a writers room I built at VaynerMedia out of juniors and a few strategists who wanted to write. Watching someone hear their own line land for the first time is one of the most fun things this job has to offer. I’d like to be doing more of it.

Outside of that I’m a husband and a father, I draw in pen and ink (that’s my table up there, and there’s more at instagram.com/davidsatterfield). I watch more foreign and independent film than is strictly reasonable, and I have an unembarrassed fondness for ultra-low-budget found footage horror movies. And there’s a novel.