I was supposed to work in hospitality. Then I found advertising.

Hi, I’m Anas.

I’m a copywriter who became a digital strategist, who somehow ended up building websites, apps, and things I couldn’t have imagined making a few years ago.

I studied hospitality at an Australian university. The plan, I suppose, was to manage a hotel somewhere. Instead, I found myself writing advertising copy. And something clicked.

You could arrange a few words, put them in front of complete strangers, and make them think, laugh, feel something, or even buy something.

And people got paid to do this? Even better.

I still think advertising is one of the few jobs where you get paid to be curious, have ideas, and occasionally be ridiculous.

A few words can do an awful lot.

Take Burger King:

Six words. One competitor insulted. An entire positioning strategy communicated.

Or The Economist:

No long explanation. No paragraph about why you should subscribe. Just a clever thought that makes you think.

That’s what I love about good advertising. It doesn’t always need to shout. Sometimes it just needs to say the right thing.

I see it almost like a sport. Brands competing for attention. Copywriters competing for the cleverest line. Strategists hunting for an advantage nobody else has noticed. Except the scoreboard isn’t who gets the applause. It’s who gets the customer.

Somewhere along the way, words turned into numbers.

My path ran through agencies like GroupM and dentsu, working alongside teams connected to Saatchi & Saatchi, Ogilvy, Leo Burnett, and JWT.

I started with copy. Then came content strategy, creative direction, video scripts, social, websites, SEO, and paid ads on Meta, Google, TikTok, LinkedIn, and just about anywhere else a customer might be paying attention.

I’ve worked across luxury hospitality, finance, real estate, healthcare, fitness, education, and professional services. Different industries, customers, and budgets. But one thing kept showing up.

Most businesses are too busy talking about what they sell to understand why someone would buy it.

That’s where the interesting work begins.

I like working backwards.

Before I write an ad or build a landing page, I want to know a few things. Who are we selling to? What do they want? What’s in their way? What have they already tried? And why should they choose us over the dozen others promising the same thing?

Sometimes people are buying their way out of a problem. Sometimes they’re buying their way into a better life. Usually it’s a bit of both.

Once you understand that, the work gets clearer. The offer, the message, the website, the content, the ads, the follow-up. They should all feel like parts of the same conversation.

I’ve managed six figures in ad spend, written more ads than I care to count, and spent plenty of time figuring out why something that looked brilliant in a meeting flopped in the real world.

Advertising has a funny way of humbling you. The customer doesn’t care how clever you think you are. They either respond or they don’t. I rather like that.

Not everyone needs another ad.

Sometimes a business needs better positioning. Sometimes the offer is confusing. Sometimes the website makes people work too hard. Sometimes the sales team takes three days to reply to someone who was ready to buy three minutes ago.

And sometimes, yes, you just need a better ad.

I borrow a lot from psychology, behavioural economics, and direct-response advertising. One idea I keep coming back to: people buy at different stages of awareness. Some don’t realise they have a problem. Some know the problem but not the solution. Some are comparing options. A few are ready to buy right now.

You wouldn’t have the same conversation with each of them. So why show them all the same marketing? That’s the kind of question I enjoy spending time on.

These days, I build things too.

I’ve always been curious about how things work. That curiosity took me from writing headlines to designing landing pages, building booking systems, making little apps, experimenting with AI, and building quizzes and games just to see if I could.

It’s an interesting time. An idea that once needed a designer, a developer, a copywriter, and a budget can become a working prototype in an afternoon. Not always a good prototype, mind you. But a prototype. I love that.

Outside of work, I’m usually reading nonfiction about strategy, psychology, behavioural economics, or someone who changed how the world thinks. I also write poetry, which probably explains why I spend an unreasonable amount of time deciding whether a sentence needs one more word or one less.

So, what am I exactly?

A copywriter? Yes. A strategist? Certainly. A marketer, designer, and builder? Those too. But I don’t much enjoy living in one box.

I like understanding people, finding interesting problems, coming up with ideas, and making them real.

Sometimes that’s an ad. Sometimes it’s a website. Sometimes it’s an entirely new business.

This site is where I share what I’m learning, building, and testing, and occasionally what I got completely wrong. Ideas about advertising, business, creativity, technology, and human behaviour. Some will be useful. Some might make you think. A few might make you disagree. That’s fine too.

Good ideas start good conversations. That’s what I’m here for.

Say hello on LinkedIn, WhatsApp, or at anasakram.connect@gmail.com.

-Anas