Careers in Advertising DC

Advertising

Overview

Maybe you’re an English major whose friends are all receiving job offers from consulting firms, banks, and the like, and you’re wondering just what the heck the business world has to offer you. Maybe you’re a banker, frustrated because your job doesn’t let you express creativity or take advantage of your abiding interest in popular culture and the media. Or perhaps you’re a struggling writer or artist tired of living on ramen and happy-hour buffets, and you’ve come to the conclusion that a cell phone and a steady paycheck don’t necessarily make a person a sellout. Then you turn on the television, open your Internet browser, or pick up a newspaper or magazine, and it hits you: Why not work in advertising or public relations?

Advertising

Advertising is big business. The biggest advertisers spend billions of dollars each per year to market their products and services; General Motors and Procter & Gamble, for instance, each spend about $4 billion annually on advertising, direct mail, and promotions. That translates to lots of work for advertising agencies.

In broad terms, an advertising agency is a marketing consultant. It helps the client—for example, a consumer goods manufacturer such as Nike or a service provider such as Charles Schwab—with all aspects of marketing their product or service, from strategy and concept through execution. Strategy involves helping the client make high-level business decisions, such as determining which new products to develop, or how to brand or define itself to the world.

Concept is where the agency takes the client’s strategy and turns it into specific ideas for advertisements—such as a series of ads featuring “extreme sports” athletes for a soft-drink maker with a strategy to enter the teen market. Execution is where the agency turns the concept into reality with the production of the actual ads: the print layout, the film shoot, the audio taping. Full-service agencies also handle the placement of ads in print and electronic media so that clients reach their intended audiences. Sometimes the agency works in conjunction with the client’s marketing department. In other instances—when the client doesn’t have a marketing department—the agency takes on that role.

PR

PR has long taken a backseat to advertising in terms of industry revenue and prestige, but with the proliferation of media outlets and the increasing complexity of the marketing landscape, it’s growing in size and importance. The PR industry generated $3.1 billion in revenue in 2006, according to the Advertising Age Agency Report published the following year.

Unlike advertising, which is paid media exposure, PR involves communicating the organization’s message through the news media, whose supposed objectivity lends credibility to the message and thus makes it more powerful. The goal in PR is to make your client—or your company, if you work in-house in a corporate or marketing communications position—look great.

PR professionals work primarily with members of the press to ensure that newspapers, magazines, and radio and TV outlets run stories favorable to their clients. In addition, they might speak on behalf of client organizations; arrange for clients’ presence at appropriate industry events; help mitigate harmful publicity when, for instance, the federal government sues a client for antitrust violations; or help clients come up with an overall marketing strategy for, say, a new product launch. PR professionals serve companies, government agencies, charitable organizations, and famous individuals—in short, just about anyone seeking to promote a public image, message, or product.

Requirements

Most advertising agencies prefer candidates with bachelor's degrees and a liberal arts background—preferably in advertising, journalism, public relations, literature, sociology, philosophy, or psychology. Obtaining an internship and taking courses in marketing, statistics, economics, accounting, mathematics, and creative design will give you an advantage when you enter the job market. Skills in interactive technology—such as HTML—may also make you a more marketable candidate.

For marketing and sales promotion positions, it's helpful to have a BA or MBA with a focus in marketing. Creative jobs require at least a 2-year degree from an art or design school and top-notch communications skills. For entry-level copywriting or art direction jobs, a book is essential—this means designing and producing mock advertisements.

Midcareer professionals from other industries should be prepared to start at square one. This is an industry in which people work their way up from the bottom. It's often necessary to jump from agency to agency to move ahead. People looking to jump agencies will find they're judged by the success of the campaigns on which they've worked.

Job Outlook

The decline of the dotcoms, the tech downturn, and the overall recession of the early 2000s hit the advertising and PR industries hard, but companies are spending again. The cost of a 30-second spot during the Super Bowl, for instance, which as recently as 2002 was $1.9 million, clocked in at $2.6 million in 2007.  And the 2007 PR Week Agency Business Report shows that the top 50 PR firms grew 15 percent on average, with only five of them reporting losses.  So what will happen to advertising and PR firms during the recession? BNet blogger Jon Greer predicts that the growth of the Internet will play a new and potentially positive role, as PR professionals “position themselves as gatekeepers and experts on leveraging Internet communications,” because marketing departments within corporations will do what they can to stay relevant on the web.

If you’re looking to break into these fields, things are looking up. As advertising and PR revenues increase, agencies hire. You’ll face stiff competition if you want a career in advertising or PR, as these remain attractive industries. In advertising, many writers and artists are drawn to agencies’ creative and production departments because the salaries are much higher in the ad game than in the starving-artist realm. For business types, advertising offers an exciting proximity to the creative process. For liberal arts people, PR provides opportunities that can be both lucrative and creatively fulfilling. Pros in both industries often enjoy perks like dinners, plays, and ball games with clients. And everyone in these industries gets to spend time with the hippest, most culturally aware coworkers around—and play a role in creating the stories and advertisements that shape our culture.

Career Tracks

If you work in a larger agency, you're more likely to specialize than in a small agency, where you're more likely to wear multiple hats. Most people start at the junior or assistant level and move up the ranks—if you come to advertising from another industry, you're likely to start at the bottom. The greatest numbers of entry-level positions exist in account management and media.

Account Management

At the entry level, an account coordinator, administrative assistant, or assistant account executive ensures that ads move smoothly through the execution process. Occasionally, these jobs include some competitive analysis and assistance in client meetings or on ad shoots. Past the entry level, an account executive handles all aspects of an account—from planning to implementation. Account executives determine a client’s needs and coordinate with other departments to ensure they are met. From there, you can move on to become an account manager, account supervisor, management supervisor, vice president, and eventually, director.

Media

Some agencies will start you as a media assistant, a largely clerical position. From there, you'll move to assistant media planner, where you'll analyze consumer habits and evaluate content to determine where an ad is most likely to get the target audience’s attention (think beer ads during the Super Bowl). Assistant media buyers purchase airtime and advertising space and ensure that ads appear as scheduled. From the assistant level, the career trajectory progresses to media planner or buyer, senior media planner or buyer, media supervisor, vice president, and director.

Account Planning

Most people move into account planning laterally as junior account planners or are hired from account planning departments in other agencies. Account planners try to quantify and qualify what makes people tick—and analyze mountains of data in the process—by conducting focus groups and researching things such as why teens like one kind of soft drink more than another. If you do well, you can advance rapidly to senior account planner, vice president, and director.

Creative Services

Creative career tracks require a book of sample ads. You might take an assistant position in a creative department while putting together your book. Entry-level creative positions are called junior positions: A junior copywriter assists a senior copywriter in writing copy and scripts for ads; a junior art director helps an art director develop visual concepts and designs for ads. Copywriters and art directors work together as partners to come up with strong ideas to carry out a client’s strategy.

Production

The closer you are to entry level in the production department, the more your work will consist of grunt layout tasks. As you move up, you'll have increasing say in design issues. Production generally has the most contact with account management and creative, and it can be a good path to other careers in advertising. If you're a young graphic artist, this is a good place to learn about advertising and get to know people who can advise you on getting a book together.

Compensation

In advertising industry and PR industry, compensation tends to be higher at bigger agencies and in bigger markets: For example, a copywriter at a large New York ad agency may very well make twice as much as a copywriter at a small shop in Boise, Idaho. And in advertising, according to insiders, pay is typically higher at traditional agencies than at interactive or direct ones.

Read article at WetFeet.com