So You Want To Work In Advertising…

Advertising is a rapidly growing industry.  There are lots of different jobs within the advertising industry, and while most of those jobs involve long hours and fierce competition, they are still seen as desirable and interesting career paths for recent graduates.

Within the world of advertising, there are several different job possibilities.  If you’re creative, you can work in design, if you’re analytical, you can help with brand tracking studies and placement.  If you’re good with people, there’s plenty of work that involves liaising with clients and publications and placing ads in the right spots to get the most attention.

Do You Have What it Takes?

To succeed in the world of advertising, you have to have a passion for the industry, and an understanding of the kind of work that’s involved.  If you’re looking for a creative job, you have to accept that sometimes you’ll be coming up with creatives for products or services that simply don’t interest you.  Having a passion for advertising in general, and the ability to see things from different angles and make things that will appeal to a specific target audience (even if that audience is not you), is what will get you through those projects.

For jobs outside of the creative part of the industry, a solid understanding of media and branding is important, and a bit of statistics knowledge will help too.  Advertising related courses are usually open to recent graduates no matter what subject they studied at university; as long as you’ve shown you can excel at whatever you put your mind to, you have a chance to join an advertising and media related program.

It’s Not Just Your Reputation on The Line

While you’re studying an advertising course, you’ll learn about brand tracking, public relations, and other issues, even if your main job is on the creative side.  Pouring over endless brand tracking studies might bore you if all you want to do is come up with witty slogans, but you should pay attention.  Remember that it’s not just your reputation that’s on the line.  If your ad campaign is poorly received, distasteful, or offensive, that one slogan could destroy the brand image of the company you created it for.  When that happens, even if you’re working through an agency and several people had the chance to squash the ad before it ran, you’ll take a lot of the blame.

Some people get into advertising expecting it to be glamorous, and it’s true that advertising can open some interesting doors.  If you’re lucky, you could meet celebrities, travel to far away locations, and enjoy some other nice perks – but not every job is like this.  Sometimes, you clients may be small companies or not-for-profits.  Sometimes, you’ll spend months stuck in an office slaving over paperwork and designs for an indecisive and difficult to please client.  Advertising is just like any other job, and you’ll have to take those boring days as well as the exciting ones.

This article was written by Amy Fowler on behalf of Hall And Partners, experts in brand tracking studies. To find out more about brand tracking studies, visit their site.