Meet Jiwon Yang, a young copywriter at Cheil USA whose unconventional path into advertising is every bit as interesting as the perspective she brings to the industry!
A self-described “Third Culture Kid” (TCK) who grew up between Korea and the United States, Jiwon has experienced firsthand how media can connect people across cultures. Her curiosity has led her from business school to portfolio school, earning a scholarship, building a LinkedIn following of more than 7,000, generating millions of social media views, moving across countries, and ultimately landing her first professional creative role.
In her Featured Creative Q&A, Jiwon talks about finding her place in advertising, researching beyond what’s obvious, learning from others, and why, in an increasingly AI-driven industry, human taste, opinions, and feelings still matter.
Tell us a little bit about yourself. What do you do? Where do you work? How long have you been working as a creative professional?
I am currently a copywriter at Cheil USA working on accounts like Samsung and helping with new business pitches. Excluding my portfolio school education, I would say I’m close to a year of being a copywriter.
As a professional Copy Writer working for one of the top creative agencies in the world, what does a typical day look like for you?
It depends on what the workload is since every day it’s different, but I start with checking my teams to see if anyone is OOO and then I go to my dashboard to see if there were any hot asks that came through that I missed or if any of the projects I worked on that were went for review came back.
I would say a typical day when I’m working on a project is having lots of meetings with account and my creative director. I get feedback from internal creative team but have to update the deck / copy after while still making it in time for internal meetings with account so that my copy is also approved by them too. It’s a lot considering you really have to satisfy basically everyone while still trying to make it as creative as possible and meet their ask, but I try not to skip and meals or panic!
What drew or motivated you to do the work that you do now?
I always grew up being obsessed with social media. When I was living in the United States, it was the only way I could watch K-Pop music videos and vice versa when I was living in Korea.
I’ve also loved books – that’s actually how I picked up English so fast when I was young and had just came to the U.S. with my family for my dad’s job! I’ve always wanted to be a fiction writer because I was such a curious kid, but I wasn’t really sure as I grew older and reality started kicking in.
I went to college as a business major because I liked interacting with people and had a mind that was, in a sense, ‘salesy’! But when I became a sophomore in college, I realized I didn’t want to do business analytics and health insurance for the rest of my life. As I went through ‘senioritis’, I started dm-ing tons of people on Linkedin and learned that you didn’t have to be great at art to work in advertising as I can draw as much as a stick figure! The fact that there was a separate role for you to write for brands blew my mind and it felt like a glass slipper Cinderella moment.
I was lucky enough to get a scholarship to an online portfolio school called book180 as their first international student and I learned from Creative Directors around the world with students based in the United States. I woke up at 7am before my Korean college classes to take classes in EST and worked in the AM to partner up with my art directors. Getting ‘mock briefs’ related to American brands made me interested in learning about the US advertising market, so I decided to change my major, school, and country – all while still attending portfolio school.
Tell us about some creative work that inspire you? Whose work do you admire?
I think it changes all the time as the things that I value in advertising change. It’s such a fast paced industry and inspiration definitely comes from not just ads, but culture in general, especially music. One thing hasn’t changed since I started to dip my toes in the industry though – my favorite ad.
A British Original by Uncommon Creative Studio, London really moved me because it showed how a single line of copy could portray so many emotions related to travel. I’ve traveled my whole life as my father works internationally, so I genuinely admired how Uncommon was able to remind us travel isn’t just simply for business or leisure, but something deeper than that.
You were born in Korea, grew up in California and studied in Texas, which you claim made you a ‘3rd culture kid.’ What do you mean by this? Do you think this influenced the kind of work you have gravitated towards now?
TCK or ‘Third culture kid’ refers to a person raised in a culture outside of their parents’ passport culture for a significant part of their childhood. In my case, I was raised in both the US and Korea during my early development stages, so in a sense it kind of made me the person I am today.
I definitely think this influences the kind of work I gravitate towards because I’m so passionate about showing people how different cultures think, act, and live. Before I came to the States, I didn’t know how car dependent this country was. Now I’m a pro driver! In Korea, I had a hard time adjusting because I was too “Americanized”, as I grew up listening to Beyonce and Brittany Spears, not BTS.
At the end of the day, people aren’t able to understand each other because everyone is different and I think that’s where media and communication comes in. That’s one of the reasons and probably the main reason why I’m so passionate about doing the work I do right now, because it gives me a chance to help create the bridge between the two countries that I’m so intertwined with, especially through mediums I understand well (blogs, snapchat, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, podcasts, etc…).
I think media gives people the ‘third space’ to connect, regardless of which country you are physically located in.
What’s the biggest creative challenge and/or accomplishment in your career to date?
I think the biggest creative challenge I had was when I was working on a brief for Walt Disney World and the 4As. The target audience was Hispanic families, something that I personally haven’t experienced or been part of before. Of course we started with research, articles, social listening, the whole 9 yards but every person had a different opinion about so many topics, it was hard to figure out what was actually relatable to the target audience.
My art director partner at the time was also Korean, so we decided to call my Mexican college friends and ask for their experience. But we soon learned that because they were childless and in their early 20s, they didn’t really know much about creating budgets for family trips and handling kids!
I wanted to give up and just go with the insight that our team had already chose, but I felt something was still off and unsure. I eventually went into the office and started interviewing every Hispanic colleague I could find at the agency during happy hour. I asked them a bunch of questions on how they grew up, what Disney was like for them, what their parents thought of amusement parks and what was ‘fun’.
I stared at that page all day and finally came to an insight that was able to resonate with the people I had talked to, which was that a lot of people grew up with Disney being a ‘concept’ or something that they interact with passively. Walt Disney World is an amusement park, related to action and movement, but growing up listening to Disney and reading books means a lot of folks don’t really see Disney as something that they ‘do’ or interact with physically.
In the end, I think being able to put yourself in other people’s shoes is one thing, but actually reaching out to people and getting to know the whole picture and culture is another. As a copywriter, ideating and research takes forever, but I think it’s important to have the courage to start from scratch when you feel like you need to.
What most excites you about working in your industry?
This might be an obvious answer, but being able to see how we’ll be able to communicate with people in different ways. When I grew up, it was emails, international calls, and glitchy internet. Especially being on a major tech account makes me realize how technology can create so many ways to connect with people. I know AI and advanced technology is scaring a lot of people, but in a way I feel like it helps people feel like they aren’t alone and so different. Growing up ‘different’ made me feel like I never belonged anywhere, and I still feel that way to this day. But as we bring different forms of advertising to different audiences, I think the industry has the power to help people feel seen and heard through different brand campaigns.
You have a particularly humorous approach to your website and social media posts, which is quite unique for young advertising professionals. Is humor an important part of your professional work life?
Humor is honestly a part of my coping mechanism haha. I tend to feel things deeply a lot, as do a lot of creatives and when I get too deep into it, it reminds me that sometimes things aren’t that serious! I guess I’ve never thought about me using it for work because I’m not able to get on ‘humor forward’ clients that often, but looking back I think it definitely plays a part when I’m writing copy.
Sometimes you’re overwhelmed with all the information you have to say and technical details that you end up writing stuff that’s as stiff as a paddle board. Or you research so much that you kind of get lost in perfectionism. Reminding myself that even though I take work seriously, my work doesn’t have to be serious and I think that’s how you go from ‘I have nothing’ to ideas clients and consumers like. It also reminds me that people aren’t so different sometimes. A lot of people mention generational differences, but there are so many similarities as well. I mean, my grandpa and I laugh at the same jokes and feel similar things!
You have 7K followers on LinkedIn and noted you get 4 million views on your social media posts. What is your goal with building out your social media reach?
I actually have 3 different social media channels I run that reach millions of views sometimes but I think it’s a bit different since they are my personal channels and there’s no client behind them. However, I do feel like just running them from A to Z on my own teaches me how trends are created, what people like to see, what’s the newest features, etc… that I can use when ideating for social ideas as a copywriter.
For me, I’d like to grow my account so I can see things from an influencer perspective as well, especially when we need to choose who to collab with or what kind of content to create on social media. I think what I do is the macro part of social media – ideating, writing for tone of voice, and creating content is the micro part, so I do actually want to try to incorporate things I’ve learned as a copywriter and vice versa.
Everyone needs time out. What do you do in your spare time to help re-energize your creative side?
I’m an extrovert so I love to talk to other people, including friends who work in completely different fields and my 83 year old grandpa who is my best friend. I like to cook and get a cute little drink at cafes and bars or watch movies and TV shows, as does any person I guess haha. Oh, and I’m also chronically online scrolling on social media. But I have no scientific evidence to show that it re-energizes my creative side, LOL!
What’s the best piece of advice you’d give your younger self?
I would say to have more confidence. As many people know, sometimes life doesn’t work out the way you want and so do campaigns. Your ideas get killed, reworked, pushed back a million times and I used to get super insecure and want to give up all the time. I tried to focus on things I could control and study harder, talk to more people, try more briefs. I definitely think that is one of the things that makes you a great creative, but even defining what a ‘perfect copywriter’ is or a ‘perfect ad’ is subjective. I’d tell myself that just because I’m young doesn’t mean that I know any less, and that sometimes you need to believe in yourself before anyone else will.
There is a lot of talk about Artificial Intelligence (AI) and how it will shape future creativity? What are your thoughts on the future of being a professional creative in a possibly AI-driven world?
I feel like every conversation in our field leads to this and honestly I really can’t stand the apocalypse of AI generated ads where they bullet point every information possible and make it hard to read with bad design. It’s not even about creativity at that point, because we’re still all human at the end of the day, and nobody’s going to read a whole essay on Linkedin while they’re already overstimulated with short attention spans – even if you put a bajillion emojis. But at the same time, AI is helping creatives envision vague concepts into actual visuals and finding more ways to research and write.
As I mentioned before, I think AI has the power to reach the right audience at the right time, connecting to more people in different ways. I think it’s too early to speak on what AI can be as a creative as I know it’s developing even more.
But one thing AI doesn’t have is taste, opinions, and feelings. Okay, that’s actually 3 things!
I don’t know if you’ve asked AI for perfume recommendations or outfit choices, but it’s actually horrible. It doesn’t have taste, which is something personal. If I liked vanilla ice cream but it recommended me chocolate, I wouldn’t like it. I would need to figure out for myself that I like vanilla ice cream and tell AI that. It could help me figure out if I like vanilla or not, but I would need to taste it for myself to see if I actually like it or not. Maybe I like vanilla but only if it’s on a cone not a cup, who knows. Same with feelings. I’m sure any parent would jump into the ocean to save their child but to AI, that would seem illogical and I’m pretty sure unless you program it to, it wouldn’t recommend it. For AI, the consequences wouldn’t affect it because it doesn’t have feelings and responsibilities. For the parent, their whole lives would change.
What are your goals in the next five years? Where do you hope to be professionally?
I hope to be a creative director as does any copywriter, but my goal right now is to just learn as much as I can from other people and experience different work. I’ve worked at small agencies, big agencies, mid-size agencies, and I’m still trying to navigate what I value as a young professional. I love the work that I do right now, but my goals are to work on different brands of different sizes and connect people one headline at a time.
How can others see more of your work or connect with you?
Linkedin is the fastest way to reach me and my random thoughts, but my website is www.xoxojiwon.com and my email is also always open!
