John Benedict

Award-winning copywriter and leader whose work spans all media, all budgets, and most categories.

I started my career out of the top branding program in the country (having graduated among the top 3 writers) at a small shop in North County San Diego, where I made work for a local auto row, a local newpaper, a local planned community, local tourism, and a local casino. Plus Adidas. Though, it was those thoroughly unsexy, local accounts that bought the work that landed me my second job at the Agency of the Decade, where I go to work on massive, global campaigns for brands like Burger King, Microsoft, Coke, Domino’s, vitaminwater, and Triscuit. From there, I took leadership roles at giant creative agencies, small boutiques, and multiple in-house departments, cultivating talent the same way I do when I teach branding: by championing the idea above all, regardless of source. In recent years, I’ve incorporated AI in a way I think strikes a potent balance between humanity and efficiency, which is to lean on its weaknesses for unintended gold. Prompting for this is exactly as tricky as it sounds, but I’ve built it into a discipline.