The first cut is the bleedest.

My first piece as a paid copywriter was born in mid-1999 for the launch of the BMW 740d. Back then, there was something called the “BMW Driver Circle” – a closed forum for BMW 7 Series drivers. I wrote an article on the 245-hp, 3.9-litre V8 biturbo diesel engine with common-rail direct injection. My first, but not my last, ode to the combustion engine. Mea culpa.

After that came new car launches, lifecycle updates, relaunches, pitch defences, roll-outs, the dawn of social media, the rise and fall of Second Life… a slew of projects big and small, and all the artificial buzz that came with them. Looking back, not a single one was unique, but each held something unique within it. Mostly, it was the people I got to work with.

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A funny old bird called nostalgia.

To look back nostalgically at digital advertising, long since devoured by the Great Bit-Eater. It’s a bit like standing over the toilet bowl after closing a big deal and playing ‘The Good Comrade’ on a trumpet. The details of any single job are rarely that interesting anyway.

Far more fascinating is the constant mutation of the work itself on the digital timeline. First, it was hand-coded teasers for websites that looked like Windows 95. Every teaser and every site that went live in the late 90s was christened with endless pints of beer. When Flash arrived, our eyes went wide. A site called Facebook went online. N00bs became influencers. HTML5 blew our socks off. Now, content is artificial. And if they haven’t died yet, they’re living still… let’s see what’s next.

This job isn’t about the projects. It’s not about the awards either, even if many see it differently and have built entire careers on them. It’s about change, and the experience you gain from reflecting on it. And, of course, at the end of the day, it’s about the rent, food, and paying the necessary tributes.

The automotive drive.

Every project demands new skills. Storyboards, music selection, 3D rendering, file compression, the right codec, acceptable loading times, SEO, colour grading, post-production, responsive UX/UI, social cutdowns… I didn’t do all of that myself, but I was there to guide, contribute, or make the call. The skills grew out of the sheer variety of the work. And sometimes, that work resulted in bizarre videos where we weren’t even allowed to show the car.

A chapter in itself: the configurator.

The configurator is the heart of any car website. The one for BMW was, above all, meant to be fun. Not an easy task when you’re running a feasibility check with over a million variables. The logic for the automated responses alone cost us weeks and our sanity. We deployed vast amounts of 3D assets and, new at the time, features like a slider to directly compare leathers and upholstery, or the night mode to stage the lighting and paintwork. And always breathing down our necks: the loading time.