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Advertising Career
Challenges and Prospects in Advertising
Surely, when marketing organizations spend large amount of money year after year on advertising, they would expect the most effective returns in terms of the quality of sales. It is true, as we shall see later, that advertising is only one component of a whole diverse range of activities that combine to effect a sale of product or service. Nevertheless, it is possible to measure today the effectiveness of advertising as an information and persuasion link between a product or service and the consumer. It is not merely a question of a number of competing brands. There is also the problem of proliferating media, through which advertisements reach the consumer. Here again is a challenge to the creativity and innovativeness of an advertising professional - how to choose between radio and television, between one television channel and another, between the electronic media and the newspapers or different periodicals. The point is that, considering the problems faced, the money available is always limited. How do you make the best use of every pie spent?
An advertising practitioner does not have to face such challenges unaided. One does not exercise one's imagination in a vacuum. Imagination, innovativeness, creativity are all guided and tempered by facts. This brings us to another interesting area of activity related to advertising and this is research. This is an area, where there is a combination of different disciplines of social science economics, statistics, psychology and social anthropology; even an understanding of the political environment is required to anticipate policy changes that might have an impact on the market for particular goods and services.
Such research would cover a wide range of subjects: product research to test acceptability of a product; advertising research to test the effectiveness of the advertising communication or marketing communication to use a more scientific expression; consumer purchase patterns; reading or listening habits; and so on. It is in this context that one might mention market research and marketing research. The former is concerned with the character and needs of the market itself, covering competitive brands or products and the potential for a new brand or product or service. The latter comes next as to how to go about marketing the product, the entire range of activities from production to reaching the consumer. Working in this area of research itself can be a fascinating experience of life, human behavior patterns and even the life cycle of a product or service, and their behavior on the market. At times they seem to behave as autonomous components of society and the economy.
There are other areas of advertising which are concerned with the production of advertising material and their distribution and finally their evaluation, which again is a part of research. Thus an advertising practitioner would have to deal with printers, makers of films and audio visuals, including video programmes, contractors and makers of hoardings or bill boards, distributors of advertising films, models and modeling agencies and a host of other activities.
There is a whole range of organizations providing these different services closely related to advertising. There are research organizations as well, concerned exclusively with practically every information necessary for an understanding of the market in all its dimensions. There is considerable mechanization in advertising these days, including the use of computers. Apart form the wide variety of professional possibilities, this proliferation of information and mechanization itself provides a challenge. After all, the computers are fed with the same data and provide the same solutions or answers to problems raised. It is here that human ingenuity, innovativeness and imagination come into play.
We have so far discussed advertising or marketing communication, media, marketing, research and production and distribution of advertising material. There is another related area of activity, which is equally interesting and challenging public relations, which too uses advertising as an instrument of communication. In the face of fierce competition, in the process of creating brand loyalties, it becomes useful to create confidence in the manufacturer, as producer of quality goods or of a service organization for providing efficient and customer-friendly service, rubs off on the product or service concerned and ensures continued loyalty from the consumer. There are other aspects to this question of the credibility and social acceptability of a manufacturer or a service organization as an integral part of society and the economy. These are also concerns of public relations. Hence the areas of interest are very wide indeed, providing challenges of different types in communication. Journalistic skills play a major role in public relations.
The above background to the advertising profession and its allied activities should provide one with a general idea about the diverse job and career opportunities that exist, calling for different types of talent, skills, educational background and even personalities. First, there is the room for the manager and administrator, who might be responsible for the advertising of a particular product or service. He could be working with the marketing or manufacturing or service organization concerned. He could also be working with an advertising agency. This would demand an overall knowledge and understanding of every aspect of advertising and its associated activities. Such as assignment would also call for management and administrative capabilities and above all, the ability to provide leadership to a team of professionals and specialists on the hand and to evaluate the effectiveness of the advertising material produced and its distribution and reach as a communication link between the product or service and the consumer, on the other. This job requires not only clarity of understanding but also the facility of clear presentation to different types of audiences responsible for or involved with the different activities related to advertising and its associated activities. If one is playing this role in an advertising agency, this same facility would be necessary to secure the confidence of the advertiser in the creative and other very nitty-gritty services provided by the advertising agency.
Secondly in the advertising agency itself there are a whole range of specialization from the planning of advertisement to their creation, media selection and distribution, supervision of production of advertising materials, and of course, general management and administration and accounts and billing, and so on. It would seem that these activities are common to all business organizations. The specific situation and problems even in these areas are somewhat different in the advertising business. The advertising agency is a buyer and seller of products and services of a special kind and involving a particular type of creativity. Even the accounting and billing systems are somewhat different.
Thirdly, there is the whole world of associated services, which provide services and products to the advertising business. In each of these there is room for a career related to advertising. It is even possible for someone to set up one's own shop, particularly in the electronic media, producing audio-visual advertising material, or providing photographic services or even as freelance writers and commercial artists or translators into different languages. The scope seems unlimited and the variety infinite.
It is this diversity of activities and hence job and career opportunities that also makes advertising a highly talent intensive industry. Every single activity related to advertising demands a particular type of talent. Thus there is scope for different types of people, with different interests to work in advertising. At the same time one cannot depend merely on one's talent. A great deal of hard work is involved. A great deal of continuing study is necessary. The creativity required is a new type. It calls for imagination moderated by a very deep sense of social reality. Talent has to be tempered by a balance between specialization and a broader understanding of social reality.
Advertising does not offer a career to those who are looking for fun and glamour. It is not just playing with words or pretty pictures, the world of lovely models or even film stars, and dining and wining. A career in advertising demands long hours of work, high energy, imagination and ambition. Gone are the days when smart appearance, a convent education and the gift of the gab were enough to find an entry into advertising. Today, it is a highly demanding profession. In the general management and administrative area the demand usually is for MBAs. To enter the studio you need to have a degree in commercial art. For the other specialized areas, you have to have training in the particular specialization, wherever such training facilities exit. Today, training in advertising is available in various institutions. With all the available training, it is seldom that one can expect to be taken on directly in a particular job. Every well known advertising agency, the main source of entry into the profession, has its own in-house training programme. The minimum qualification required is an arts, science or commerce degree, apart from whatever other training one might have been able to obtain. Even an MBA has to undergo training after joining an advertising agency.
As advertising is becoming more scientific, more mechanized more talent and skill intensive, the range of remuneration is also rising higher. In the new era of globalization, advertising too is becoming global both in character and institutionally. Hence, a good advertising professional has the global market as his or her area of operations and remunerations too at that level.
Now, if you are interested and believe that you can fit the bill in terms of education, talent, creativity, drive, ambition and a love for hard work and motivating people, then there are many options open to you in advertising.
