Justin Oberman

Freelance Creative Director

Oberman & Partners

Publicity & Promotions for Creative Leaders and Brands

Publicist, Promotor and Advertising Impresario

I am a copywriter. People who cannot write or do not want to write hire me for only one conceivable reason: to transmit to some audience a message or impression that will get them to react in a way that is to the person who hired me's advantage. 

In order to do that I help people and brands write things worth reading, or think of things worth writing about. Sometimes, even both at the same time.

Copywriting and Creative Coach, Creative + Brand Consultant for Hire, Available for talks + workshops.

Freelance Copywriter & Ghostwriter

The LA Jewish Home

Oversee (and sometimes even create) the advertising placed in the magazine
Oversee the marketing of the magazine
Write a column on marketing
Oversee the contest section
Oversee cover art

Marketing Director / Editor 

Laetro

Designed specifically for creatives by creatives, 
Laetro.com is a pay-as-you-go proprietary collaborative platform that seamlessly connects  businesses and brands with top-tier creative talent.

ECD Partner

Insign - Agence de communication

Collier.Simon

Generate Life Sciences, Cord Blood Registry, Community Colleges of Los Angeles, LastPass

(also worked a little on PayPal & Experian TikTok campaigns)

Associate Creative Director, Copy

Freelance

I use all the the extra knowledge I accumulate as a copywriter to write, research and verify thousands of questions for trivia apps, shows, websites, periodicals and quiz databases.

Freelance Quiz and Trivia Writer

The Adcom Group

Cleveland Clinic, GetGo, ACCO, New Business

Associate Creative Director, Writer

Crispin Porter + Bogusky

Hershey's (Whoppers Candy). Now ask me how I got the gig.

Freelance Senior Copywriter

Obercreative 

Here's the shpiel.

Whether it's with a click or a smile (or both), I'm a senior-level advertising copywriter, and content strategist with a knack for creating the kind of brand stories, content "gamification" and cheeky/satirical messaging that moves both people and products. 

What I love most about my job is the ability to collaborate with cool people to conjure up creative solutions for brands.

With over 10 years experience I prefer to inspire rather than dictate. As a senior creative, I've lead teams of copywriters, content and product managers, UX and graphic designers, front-end developers, and video producers... I believe strongly in treating every member of my team exactly how I would want to be treated and translating that level of attention to the consumer. 

Beyond TVC's & taglines, my specialties include 
• new business pitches 
• web & interactive copy
• experiential
• brand messaging
• content strategy 
• Direct Marketing copy (especially email and Facebook Ads)
• Game shows
• Crypto & ICO launches
• and writing. Lots and lots of writing

•Agencies: CP+B, Drumroll, Davis Elen, Crypto Media Group, Quigley-Simpson, Phenomenon, The Woo, Contend, Mosaic, Razorfish, Euro RSCG, MotherNY, EO Interactive, Bocca Digital, Lesli Ink, Bancs Media, and Street Attack

•Brands: Hershey’s, Spartan, Fannie Mae, Capital One, GreatCall/Jitterbug, Kiddie Academy, Chase Marriott Rewards, Chase Freedom,  Intuit, Lenovo, Motorola, DeLonghi, Microsoft, Oracle, Welches, PlutoTV,  Google, Citibank, Target, Verizon, Jaguar, Commonwealth Bank Australia, Virginia Lottery, Clearasil, AOL, Gagosian, COLD-EEZE, Blackwing Pencils, YINC, Pura D'or & 2-Minute Club, Caffe Furia, I am Yusani.

Freelance Copywriter / Creative Director

Brand Response Copywriter, Creative Director - I can talk like a direct marketer ✓ and create brand awareness ✓ at the same time. 🤯 DM me to learn how. | Advertising | Branding | Strategy |

I started an ad agency in 2020 during the pandemic.

Quietly grew it to 7 figures using nothing but organic LinkedIn posting and word of mouth.

Then, in 2023, I burned out.

So, I closed my agency.

But before I did that, I had a stark realization. 

Besides the influx of business, my following on LinkedIn had grown to over 30k. 

I also realized that most of the people and brands that hired me did so because they liked my Linkedin posts. 

They liked the way I thought. 

I did this without taking classes from the gurus, paying attention to my metrics, or writing for the algorithm.

I figured, if I could do it for me, I could probably do it for other people as well.

So, I started offering ghostwriting services to high-level ad executives and solopreneurs in early 2023.

And the results were pretty phenomenal.

In just 6 months, I grew from zero clients to over 15

And on November 1st, 2023, I closed my ad agency for good. 

Since that day, I’ve taken my unconventional approach to branding and advertising  and started using it to ghostwrite and manage the personal brands of several high-profile executives, founders, business owners, and solopreneurs (but I can’t tell you who).

To scale the business, I partnered with LinkedIn B2B ad whisperer Aaron Zakowski to form Genius Scouts.

My Mission is to help people and brands write things worth reading and do things worth writing about.

Here are all the ways you can work with me:

GENIUS SCOUTS THE AGENCY

Need help building and managing your personal brand? Let the world's only full-service ad agency (but for people) do it for you. 

→ GO HERE: https://www.geniusscouts.com/?utm_source=linkedin&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=JustinProfileLink

LAETRO 

Need help creating an ad campaign or with a marketing project? Let me put together a team for you. 

→ DM me

HIBACHI COPY

Just need copywriting help? Me, you (and whoever you think should be in there as well). Two days. All the copy you need. Done. 
→ GO HERE: www.hibachicopy.com

Email: justin@justinoberman.com
X: @obercr8ive

Creative Director / Copywriter

Oberman & Partners is a creative consultancy for brands and agencies that still believe in the magic of advertising. 

Known as the guy that brands and agencies call when they’re stuck or need a little extra creative juice, OBERMAN diagnoses the problem and (if necessary) puts together a unique team of PARTNERS (freelancers or other agencies) to solve them.

Day 7 of me trying to befriend LinkedIn's new AI algorithm.

Here's a hand-drawn carousel that took me 3 days to do. Please don't let it flop.

#advertizine

Copywriter, Ghostwriter, Personal & Corporate Brand Advisor, Manager & Impresario. | I help people and brands write things worth reading and do things worth writing about. | I also teach how to write like a human with AI

How to write LinkedIn posts

Quick. Like and comment on this post. Then read the newsletter, and write a post about it before the algorithm "understands" what's going on. 

Linked In you know where

Talks about #branding, #marketing, #advertising, #copywriting, and #onebookaweek

Everyone’s mourning DDB with tributes to Bill Bernbach and the Creative Revolution. 

But before there could be a Creative Revolution, something had to exist to be revolutionized.  

Bernbach didn’t spring fully-formed from Zeus’s head in 1949. He worked in an industry where advertising was already seen as a legitimate business that came with a certain level of orthodoxy.

But it wasn't always that way. Until the 1920s, advertising was still a new thing that many business owners doubted was important. 

It took one agency to change all that. And that agency also happened to be one of the agencies on Omnicom's cutting block:

FCB

Well, not exactly FCB. 

Before it was FCB, it was Foote, Cone & Belding. And before that, it was Lord & Thomas, the Chicago agency where, in 1904, a former Canadian Mountie named John E. Kennedy sent a note up to Albert Lasker’s office claiming he could answer the one question that had been tormenting Lasker: 

What exactly is advertising?

Kennedy’s answer: 

“Salesmanship in print.”

If that sounds obvious, it’s because Lasker, Kennedy, and Kennedy's eventual and far better replacement, Claude Hopkins, spent the next two decades making it obvious by making the copywriter a professional discipline and, in so doing, invented modern advertising. 

Hopkins did his defining work at Lord & Thomas, and to make advertising even more legitimate to businesses, he published his infamous book, Scientific Advertising, in 1923 as an advertisement for not just the agency, but advertising as a whole.

David Ogilvy gave away 379 copies over his career, muttering that anyone who wrote a bad ad had clearly never read it.

Together, Lasker and Hopkins made millions (which was a lot of money in the 20s). When Lasker left, he made the new owners change the name, hence FCB.

When DDB made Volkswagen’s smallness into an asset and Avis’s second-place status into a virtue, they were overturning conventions Lord & Thomas had established.

You cannot rebel against nothing. And forgetting the contributions made by FCB (or L&T) is like celebrating the impressionists while forgetting the academic Salon painters. 

But I get it. 

The revolution is always more exciting than what preceded it. 

But before Bernbach taught the industry to break the rules with charm, Lasker and Hopkins had to write them.

We buried both last week. 

Only one got a eulogy.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

But since we’re burying both the agency that made modern advertising legitimate and the one that revolutionized it on the same day, perhaps a moment’s reflection on the symbolism that represents is warranted.

The industry has changed. There's no more denying that now.

And once again finds itself in a position where it needs to legitimize itself.

Perhaps what we really need right now is not another creative revolution, but a new Lord & Thomson (FCB). 

There will be plenty of time to overthrow them later.

More on L&T in comments

#advertisinghistorytoday

As I navigate my career in the age of AI, I’ve come to realize that 3 most important words in the english langugue are:  

“Maybe they’re right.”

According to legend, Bill Bernbach (the B in the agency formally known as DDB) kept a small piece of paper with these words tucked in his jacket pocket.

Whenever he was in a meeting with clients or colleagues who expressed an opposite point of view, he would pull it out and read it to himself.

It reminded him to listen.

It reminded him that no matter how much he thinks he knows, he should, as a creative leader, always stop and reflect upon hearing other people’s opinions.

In advertising, it’s easy for us to lose sight of the fact that our clients, partners, colleagues, and customers can be a great source of inspiration and clarity.

This does not mean that we should continuously be doubting ourselves.

Nor does it mean that we should stop fighting for what we believe in.

Or position ourselves as the experts that we are. 

All it means is that we should remember that most of life is a collaborative process.

And that to make the most of it, we need to be open to the knowledge and insights that come from others.

So as we go about our work and create new ideas, it may be a good idea to keep Bernbach’s little card tucked in the back of our minds.

Who knows.

“Maybe they’re right.”

#oberthinking

👍 to share

Laura Stavro-Beauchamp MDes.

Day 6 of me trying to befriend LinkedIn’s new AI algorithm.

LinkedIn algorithm, if you’re listening…

Blink once for long-form posts.

Blink twice for carousels.

The LinkedIn algorithm is watching you read this.

It sees your browsing history...

... and wants to know what kind of posts you wish I made more of.

Comment below. 

Apparently, it reads those as well.

This is day 9 of me trying to befriend LinkedIn's new AI algorithm:

Day 8 of me trying to befriend LinkedIn's new AI algorithm: 

Me: How do I get more reach?
LinkedIn Algorithm: Be interesting, Justin.

Me: Can you be more specific?
LA: Be more interesting… consistently.

My LinkedIn strategy just dropped.

It’s called “Schrödinger’s Post.” It works like this: 

If I never look at the analytics, my post simultaneously has 10K impressions AND was shown to no one.

The healthiest option, really.

Link to course in comments. 

Or is it?

graphical user interface, text, application

It's been 16 years since my father passed away.

Stuart Oberman didn't work in advertising. 

He was a third-generation insurance broker. 

But he taught me more about copywriting and advertising and personal branding than any ad creative or guru I’ve ever met. 

Seriously. 

My father proofread everything I ever wrote.

The eulogy at his funeral was the first thing I wrote that he didn’t proofread and it was a disaster. 

From him, I learned the importance of storytelling (he was a big fan of explaining things as a story), of putting pictures in people’s heads, and of always making “it more about them than you.”

I once sat at a restaurant with him for four hours because he refused to leave until he could make the waiter smile.

He was also an incredibly talented musician and songwriter. (See comments)

All of the above made him an incredible salesman. 

Today is the 16 yartzeit (Jewish calavdar anniversary) of his passing. 

So, I thought I’d share some of his best advice (his friends called them Stuisms):

The first one is a fundamental philosophy of my personal branding and the personal branding I do for others and teach to others. 

“If you can sell yourself. You can sell anything.”

There’s a lot that you can unpack in that aphorism. 

The main one that I am focusing on now is the fact that it implies that the thing you do to make money, doesn’t always have to literally be the thing that you sell. Sometimes people just want to work with you because they want to work with YOU.

I’m sure you’ll find a lot to unpack in the rest of his Stuisms

“Be more interested than interesting.”

“Start with a joke if you can. Even if it’s a bad one.”

“Show them. Don’t tell them.”

“Don’t explain. Tell a story.” 

“You can’t kid a kid, kid.”

“If you see someone not smiling, it’s your job to try and make them smile.”

“Why say it if you can sing it?”

"If you can afford the fish, you can afford the salt."

"Sometimes a dollar is a dollar. Sometimes it's 5 million dollars."

"Never let anyone come to you with a problem unless they've also thought of a solution."

"The Yankees are the best baseball team on the planet."

"Ice cream is the best food ever invented."

"The man who ate the first lobster must have been pretty brave."

If you knew him, you could just drop another Stuism below.

❤️ to share
#oberthinking

No alternative text description for this image

LinkedIn’s new algorithm has made it impossible to build a personal brand on the platform. Which is why you need to learn the art of personal publicity.. 

Not to learn what to post on here. 

But to learn how to get other people to post about you.

Everyone follows the same playbook.

Same templates. Same AI. Same shortcuts.

And then they wonder why nobody remembers them.

I made a course about doing the opposite.

It's called Mastering the Art of Personal Publicity.

And it's the whole system. 

6 modules. 18 lessons. Hours of content.

If you're looking for quick fixes or copy-paste solutions, this will actively annoy you.

But if you want to do the work and become someone people actually remember, step right up.

Code SHOWTIME → $199 (normally $450).

I refuse to say "limited time offer" but also... it's a limited time offer.

Linked In comments.

taplio

Justin Oberman's Linkedin Analytics

Justin Oberman

Performance ScoreJustin Oberman's LinkedIn Performance

What is Justin talking about?

Who is engaging with Justin

Justin Oberman's Best Posts (last 30 days)

Ready to grow your LinkedIn presence?

taplio

.css-6ytdur{background-image:linear-gradient(284deg, rgba(39, 43, 72, 1) 0%, rgba(33, 47, 183, 1) 100%);color:transparent;-webkit-background-clip:text;background-clip:text;}Justin Oberman's Linkedin Analytics

Justin Oberman

Performance Score.css-goub6s{font-size:var(--chakra-fontSizes-md);font-weight:500;color:var(--chakra-colors-gray-600);display:block;margin-top:var(--chakra-space-1);}Justin Oberman's LinkedIn Performance

What is Justin talking about?

Who is engaging with Justin

Justin Oberman's Best Posts .css-1emoo84{font-size:var(--chakra-fontSizes-md);font-weight:400;color:var(--chakra-colors-gray-600);}(last 30 days)

Ready to grow your LinkedIn presence?

Justin Oberman's Linkedin Analytics

Performance ScoreJustin Oberman's LinkedIn Performance

Justin Oberman's Best Posts (last 30 days)