About Me — Nihan Küçükural. I’ve been lucky all my life!
By: Nihan Kucukural
Tags: Life, About Me, Luck, Baby, This Happened To Me

Flying into advertising

In 1993 I watched Red’s Nightmare and immediately fell in love with 3D animations.

After graduation, I began to look for a job with zero experience. The only animation company in Istanbul that allowed me to work there (for free) told me that they didn’t write stories or design characters. They were subcontractors who modeled the characters and rendered the animations. But scripts and storyboards came from advertising agencies.

I visited a friend of a friend who was the head of account executives at a major ad agency for advice. He told me to forget about getting a creative job in advertising. It took an exceptional talent to be an art director or copywriter! Had I studied fine arts? Was I a poet? Did I have a sharp wit? Had I published any novels?

I was speechless. I wasn’t any of that. I also hadn’t written much of anything other than silly letters and journal entries since The Jumpy Wobbly Person. But, the guy said, I could be an account executive. He even offered me a job. I was devastated.

Then, on Sunday, I stroke lucky! I picked a newspaper by chance and saw an ad for a tiny agency that said: “Wanted: Advertising Copywriter Who Likes to Fly!”

I was astounded. They might as well have written, “Wanted: Advertising Copywriter Named Nihan Küçükural.” Also, in Turkish, “to fly” is slang for making up stuff, lying. I couldn’t even breathe. I sat down right away and wrote a letter claiming that I could fly before I had learned to walk. I was shaking with excitement, and I didn’t feel how time passed while writing it. I faxed my letter first thing on Monday.

The agency called me right away and interviewed me. They offered me the job, but again, they weren’t planning to pay. So, thanks to the encouragement from my then-boyfriend, I sent my ‘resume’ to all the top agencies in Istanbul and ended up working at DDB Turkey (Doyle Dane Bernbach- one of the top international advertising networks) for three years.

Welcome, impostor syndrome

I was actually quite surprised when they called me from DDB. I knew my letter was lovely but didn’t they want a little more than that? Some experience that wasn’t city planning? But I took the job, of course.

Working at DDB was exciting but also extremely stressful. I had a wonderful senior copywriter who held my hand at every step, but I witnessed people from other teams getting fired. Every time I had to write a headline, a brochure, or a copy for an ad, I was afraid that I wouldn’t be able to come up with a creative idea this time, and I would get fired. Every few days, I would go to the bathroom to cry. But I got lucky every time, and something came up at the last minute!

At a moment of honesty, I told my senior writer about this. I said, “I don’t really deserve to be here.” I love remembering that moment because she said, “That’s funny because we all feel that way sometimes. Even our boss (who was one of the biggest names of Turkey) isn’t a hundred percent confident about his ideas all of the time.”

Can you see how lucky I was?

I wasn’t fired from DDB. After three years, I moved on to work at a few other international agencies in senior positions. Eventually, I got fired from Euro RSCG.