Kate Hunter
"Wasting time is something I have a real gift for. But a gift is worth nothing until you work on it, so I make a point of wasting several hours every day."
The nuns at St Vincent’s Hospital in Melbourne, where my mum had been a nurse, were so horrible mum refused to have her babies there. So I was born at the Mercy Hospital. That showed those nasty nuns.
My sister Nicole is 16 months old older than me and has never forgiven me for crashing her only-child party. Things only got worse for her when my brother arrived another year and a bit later then there was another sister and another brother. We moved to Brisbane when I was five.
I loved school. I went to a smallish Catholic school that had one grade one class, one grade two class etc all the way up to grade eight where it exploded into a girls’ high school.
After Year 12, I decided journalism was the career for me and leapt into an arts degree at University of Queensland. Bad move. I was very lonely. I spent most of my time in the library reading magazines. The upside was I discovered there was one called Ad News. It’s the trade journal for the advertising industry (see how desperate I was to fill in time?). There was an ad for something called AWARD School – a course aimed at finding junior creative staff for ad agencies.
‘Wow,’ I thought, ‘that’s for me.’
The course was exactly what I had been looking for. Here was an industry that would reward me for coloring the truth, whereas it was frowned upon in journalism (unless I got a job with ‘That’s Life’).
My first job in an ad agency was as a ‘Creative Co-Ordinator,’ a flash term for ‘dogsbody’. I loved every second. Even when I had to find a fighter jet to use in a Sealy Posteurpedic mattress ad.
A number of jobs followed. These were as a copywriter –which means I wrote the words for the ads. Having ‘a number’ of jobs sounds worse than it is – people change jobs often in advertising. I think this is because it’s an industry that attracts people with short attention spans. Also people get sacked a lot.
I wrote ads in Brisbane and London and Brisbane and Sydney and Christchurch and Sydney and in Brisbane again. There were some awards and a bit of controversy – being condemned by the Country Women’s Association was particularly memorable.
Now, I spend my days now looking after my three kids, failing to keep the house tidy and writing – the second book in the Mosquito Advertising series, my kids’ school fete newsletter and the occasional ad. I am a panelist on Steve Austin’s ‘Hidden Persuaders’ segment on ABC local radio. I like gossiping with my girlfriends, fooling around on blogs and being with my family.
My sister Nicole is 16 months old older than me and has never forgiven me for crashing her only-child party. Things only got worse for her when my brother arrived another year and a bit later then there was another sister and another brother. We moved to Brisbane when I was five.
I loved school. I went to a smallish Catholic school that had one grade one class, one grade two class etc all the way up to grade eight where it exploded into a girls’ high school.
After Year 12, I decided journalism was the career for me and leapt into an arts degree at University of Queensland. Bad move. I was very lonely. I spent most of my time in the library reading magazines. The upside was I discovered there was one called Ad News. It’s the trade journal for the advertising industry (see how desperate I was to fill in time?). There was an ad for something called AWARD School – a course aimed at finding junior creative staff for ad agencies.
‘Wow,’ I thought, ‘that’s for me.’
The course was exactly what I had been looking for. Here was an industry that would reward me for coloring the truth, whereas it was frowned upon in journalism (unless I got a job with ‘That’s Life’).
My first job in an ad agency was as a ‘Creative Co-Ordinator,’ a flash term for ‘dogsbody’. I loved every second. Even when I had to find a fighter jet to use in a Sealy Posteurpedic mattress ad.
A number of jobs followed. These were as a copywriter –which means I wrote the words for the ads. Having ‘a number’ of jobs sounds worse than it is – people change jobs often in advertising. I think this is because it’s an industry that attracts people with short attention spans. Also people get sacked a lot.
I wrote ads in Brisbane and London and Brisbane and Sydney and Christchurch and Sydney and in Brisbane again. There were some awards and a bit of controversy – being condemned by the Country Women’s Association was particularly memorable.
Now, I spend my days now looking after my three kids, failing to keep the house tidy and writing – the second book in the Mosquito Advertising series, my kids’ school fete newsletter and the occasional ad. I am a panelist on Steve Austin’s ‘Hidden Persuaders’ segment on ABC local radio. I like gossiping with my girlfriends, fooling around on blogs and being with my family.