Your teachers
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 9000 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 began his copywriting career at Ogilvy’s, working on such brands as BMW, Shell, Kit Kat, Smarties & 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 & Duo.
He won Retail Launch of the Year Award for his Whitman’s Chocolates campaign. His work on The Age, Sportsgirl/Sportscraft & David Lawrence brands, Colonial First State & 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.
Mark has always enjoyed mentoring young copywriters in his role as Creative Director and has been a guest lecturer to copywriting students several times, including with the Melbourne Copyschool. Having trained at the original Copyschool, he has a great understanding of the value of this training for young copywriters.
Jason Toon is the lead copywriter at Redbubble. He's a true-blue Melbourne success story and the man behind the awesome copy that has made the Redbubble website such a success.
With over 450,000 active artists on the site creating original artwork, 10 million site visits per month, and over 7,000,000 people buying from the site, Jason is the man who writes the copy that makes people buy.