Meet your tutors

Bernadette Schwerdt

Bernadette is a former senior account director and copywriter for global advertising agency Young & Rubicam Advertising and worked on campaigns for clients such as Apple, Amex, Optus and Colgate.

In 2001 she founded the Australian School of Copywriting, and has since trained over 10,000 people to become freelance copywriters.

She has a Bachelor of Business in Marketing, is an accredited MBTI and NLP practitioner and has lectured in marketing, consumer psychology and digital marketing at Melbourne University, RMIT, Swinburne and Victoria University. She was the producer and host of The Age newspaper’s online video series, ‘Secrets of Online Entrepreneurs’, which subsequently became a bestselling book of the same name.

Her second book, ‘How to Build an Online Business’ went to #1 on Amazon and her third book, ‘Catch of the Decade’, ghost-written for the billionaire brothers behind Catch.com and Menulog, was a #1 bestselling business book on Booktopia.

She has a top rating podcast on Triple M’s podcast platform Listnr, and is also the host of the popular podcast, ‘So, You Want To Be A Copywriter’. She was recently named in the Top 50 Small Business Leaders in Australia by Inside Small Business magazine and is a regular contributor to Sky News, Mamamia and Smart Company.

Mark Farrelly

Mark Farrelly began his copywriting career at Ogilvy’s, working on such brands as BMW, Shell, Kit Kat, Smarties and Minties, before moving to Samuelson & Talbot (now M&C Saatchi) as Senior Writer/Creative Group Head working on Morning Fresh, Radiant XL, Cussons Imperial Leather and Duo.

He won Retail Launch of the Year Award for his Whitman’s Chocolates campaign. His work on The Age, Sportsgirl/Sportscraft and David Lawrence brands, Colonial First State and HCF Health Insurance helped the agency win the B&T Agency of the Year Award.

Mark then joined MJW Advertising as Creative Director on Suzuki and Hungry Jacks where he wrote and created his highly regarded “Two Hands” campaign.

Since founding Mark My Words Advertising, Mark continues to write effective creative work for various clients including Homesafe Wealth Release, Vileda Household Cleaning Products, iBuildNew, True Value Solar, House of Bamboo, Table of Plenty and more.

Jason Toon

Jason Toon believes ecommerce marketing can actually be interesting, fun, and daring, while still selling loads of stuff. He's proved it for over 15 years as the voice of irreverent brands like Woot.com, Catch.com.au, and Redbubble.com.

At Woot, the world's first daily deal site, he created the brand voice that inspired Seth Godin to declare "advertising creativity is not dead", culminating in an acquisition by Amazon in 2010. He came to Australia to do the same for Catch.com.au, boosting email open rates by 18% in his first year and producing social content that saw triple-digit increases in Facebook revenue. And once again, his copywriting helped lead to an acquisition of the company, this time by Wesfarmers.

He's now the head copywriter at the global print-on-demand marketplace Redbubble.com, joining in January 2020 as the company headed into the fastest two-year growth period in its history. His journalism and pop-culture criticism has also appeared on Pitchfork, Vice News, and various papers in the Village Voice Media chain.

Born and raised in St. Louis, now living in Melbourne, Jason is a recovering punk rocker and aspiring screenwriter with a wife, three kids, and a blue heeler. When he's not writing, he can be found prowling the aisles at a used bookstore near you.