| The Pros and Cons of Working in Advertising What’s Great It's a variety show. No matter what your job is at an advertising agency, you’ll have quite a bit of variety in your work. Your accounts may range from computer software to sporting goods companies. One account management insider says, “It’s never dull. You’re always working on a bunch of different things. If you thrive on variety, you’ll probably like advertising.” A creative agrees: “Your job is constantly changing. It’s a dynamic job description.” Many people enjoy the interaction between creatives and management. “You get to use one side of your brain for the business details, while using the other side for helping develop the creative work,” says an account management insider. Hey, good-lookin’. Advertising is notorious for drawing attractive, well-dressed young people who go to the hippest restaurants and bars. One insider says, “As much as we joke about it, there is a glamorous element to the industry. You get to stay at good hotels and go to cool restaurants and work with cool directors. The parties are just full of great-looking people.” Of course, young people create a young environment.A creative insider agrees: “For a corporate environment, it’s about the most relaxed you can get. The dress is casual, you can joke around with people, and there may be a pool table or a Ping-Pong table….” Changing the world. Joe Isuzu. “Just Do It." Joe Camel. In advertising, you’re involved in a world of high visibility and great cultural power. “At its best, you can do something that contributes to popular culture,” says an insider. “You can do a spot that enters the zeitgeist.” And even if the result is not quite so culturally pervasive, people in advertising consider it a compelling industry. “You get to see what you’ve created on national TV, and advertising is a topic that everyone has an opinion about." What’s to Hate Changing the world? Not! No matter how much some people would like to believe good advertising is the same thing as art, it's not. “It’s probably as base a consumer-oriented thing as you can do,” says one insider. Many feel that advertising offers no great benefit to society. One insider says, “Sometimes, I think of all the smart, talented people I work with, who work really hard solving problems together all day, and I have to think there are better ways their energy could be directed, instead of selling a bunch of crap to people who don’t need it.” Ego a go-go. Working with the “in” crowd can, for some, become unreal and superficial. Maybe that’s why advertising is an industry full of many people with quirky, intrusive habits and bloated egos. There’s the copywriter who won’t go into creative presentations without his parrot perched on his shoulder, or the commercial director who calls his ads “films.” “My bosses are the most arrogant people I’ve ever met,” says an insider. “I’ve never worked with so many rich idiots before,” says another. Yet another adds, “There are a lot of difficult people in the industry. As an account person, you have to kiss butts, and that can get frustrating.” Kissing butt. Almost everyone in the industry has been frustrated at some point by their dealings with clients. One insider says, “We had a bagel client who insisted that we not have any punctuation in the ad copy. It was the most absurd client demand I’d ever heard.” Another says, “You can spend six months working on a project that just suddenly dies [because the client changes its mind].” An account management insider adds, “I hate having to baby-sit the client.” However, another insider notes: “You need the client, so you have to compromise your integrity sometimes.” Capsizing careers. The industry is notoriously unstable. An agency might lose a big account, and suddenly 20 percent of its staff is laid off. A creative might find herself assigned to a partner or a creative director she can’t work with and—boom!—she’s fired. Or a junior account person might rub a big, important client the wrong way, and suddenly he’s reassigned to the direct response unit of the agency. |
| The Definitive Ad Industry Overview Maybe you’re an English major whose friends are all getting job offers from consulting firms and insurance companies, and you’re wondering just what the heck the business world has to offer you. Maybe you’re a banker, frustrated with the lack of creativity and popular culture in your job. Then one day you flip on the television, pick up a newspaper or magazine, or turn on the radio, and suddenly it hits you: Why not work in advertising? What Ad Agencies Do An advertising agency is a marketing consultant that requires both creative and business-oriented people. It helps the client with all aspects of its marketing efforts—from strategy to concept to execution. Strategy involves helping the client make high-level business decisions, like what new products the client should develop or how the client should define, or “brand,” itself to the world. Concept is how the agency takes the client’s strategy and turns it into specific ideas for advertisements—such as a series of ads featuring extreme athletes for a soft drink maker whose strategy is to make inroads in the teen market. Execution is how the agency turns the concept into reality—the production of the actual ads: the print layout, the film shoot, the audio taping. Full-service agencies handle the placement of the ads in newspapers, magazines, and radio; they may also perform the duties of a marketing department. The industry as a whole includes everything from PR agencies (which try to place news items about clients in the media) and direct marketers (who send out all that annoying junk mail) to Internet advertising and design firms (which design websites or logos for clients). Many of the biggest and most successful agencies have units that focus on each area. Who Works in Advertising? Advertising attracts all types. Many writers and artists are drawn to creative and production departments because the salaries are higher in the ad game than in freelance marketplace. For business types, advertising offers exciting proximity to the creative process. Most importantly, everyone in the industry gets to spend their days with hip, culturally aware coworkers—and play a role in shaping the ads that shape our culture. The Job Market Hard times for advertising clients mean hard times for ad agencies. Competition for jobs is stiffer than ever these days. Additionally, it’s exceedingly difficult to start in the industry at anything but an entry-level position, which means a lot of competition for relatively few low-paying jobs. If you’re a creative, you can’t get a job in advertising without a book of your work, which may mean designing and producing mock advertisements. While a few of the bigger agencies do recruit on campus for entry-level account-management hires, be prepared to start at the bottom and use your contacts to work your way up. |
| Current Trends in Advertising Bigger Is Better Like so many other industries, advertising has experienced much consolidation in recent years as companies join forces to lower costs and stay competitive in the global marketplace. In advertising, bigger size means more clout with media outlets, and therefore lowers advertising costs. This trend is also a result of the fact that by owning several different advertising agencies, a single holding company can control several competing accounts without conflict of interest. Take It from the Brits Account planning—also known as strategic planning—was developed in British ad agencies in the 1960s and 1970s. It took a while, but in recent years the American advertising industry has discovered account planning in a big way. The discipline seeks a better understanding of the consumer through quantitative and qualitative research. The quantitative portion requires the compilation of buyer statistics, while the qualitative research focuses on the "whys," and requires agencies to conduct focus groups with a client's target consumers. Today, account planning is such an integral part of many American ad agencies that it’s the account planners, rather than the account management staff, who do most of the strategizing on behalf of clients. Signs, Signs, Everywhere a Sign The Internet is not the only new medium when it comes to advertising. It seems that people are jaded by the overload of ads in traditional media, like TV or newspapers, and often don’t pay attention to them. As a result, advertisers are now trying to get your attention through nontraditional advertising media, like movies, where product placement has become a permanent part of business. Other nifty places where you can now see ads: on bus rooftops (ads atop buses apparently reach the professional market that works in office towers) and at the bottom of golf holes. Beer ads have even begun to show up on disinfectant cakes in men’s room urinals. |
| Advertising: the Glitz, the Glamour, the Stress People think of advertising as glamorous—and it can be. There are extravagant Christmas parties at the big agencies, ballgames with clients, client dinners at excellent restaurants, two-hour lunches courtesy of the magazine rep, trips to film on location in Fiji or Rio de Janeiro, and opportunities to befriend the famous people who star in the ads. But behind the bright lights and the glitz are thousands and thousands of hours of hard work. While most people in advertising work the kind of hours that get you home in time for dinner, when a deadline is approaching the hours can skyrocket. We’re talking 90 hours a week during crunch times. And what happens when the client makes a request for some information or a revision to an ad? Well, you can kiss your dinner-and-a-movie date good-bye—and your weekend trip to the beach, too. Even the creatives, who can really slack off when they’re not under the gun, can be at the office until late at night when there’s a deadline approaching. “I work between 35 and 90 hours a week,” one creative says. “It’s all project-based work, so it’s feast or famine in terms of the hours.” Along with the hard work comes occasional high stress. You might be in account management, and freaking out because a mechanical that had to go out at 5:00 isn’t ready at 5:15. You might be in production and freaking out because the account executive who’s waiting for you to finish that mechanical is standing over your shoulder, freaking out herself. And there’s a lot of money riding on your work in an advertising agency, so you don’t want to make mistakes. “You have to be able to handle pressure,” says one creative. If you screw up—or even if you don’t, but some bigwig at your agency or the client thinks you have—you can end up out of a job in a hurry. And if your agency loses a key account, you might be out of a job no matter how well you do your work. So why do people go into advertising? Again and again, insiders tell us the same thing: It’s a lot of fun. People who are drawn to advertising are either creative themselves or have a great appreciation for creative work. They’re also young—one insider estimates that the average age at his agency, including senior management, is 28. And of course they’re smart, curious, and into popular culture. People in advertising also tend to congregate outside of work. They go to happy hour together on Friday evenings, invite each other to parties, date, and sometimes even marry. Which means that in the bigger advertising cities, if you get a job you’re likely to get a social life as well. All of this creates a looseness and sense of humor that you might not find in companies with more rigid processes or older, more conservative staffs. This might not be an absolute rule throughout the industry—things can be more uptight at the bigger, account-driven agencies—but it’s fairly safe to say that those that work in advertising enjoy the ride. |
| Advertising Lingo 15, 30, 60: Different-length TV spots. As in: “The client wants two 30s and a 60.” Book: A portfolio of a creative’s ad samples. For aspiring copywriters and art directors, a book will consist of mock ads. For someone already in the business, it will consist of actual ads that person helped create. Brief: The creative brief; a formal memo written by account management or account planning, detailing the agency’s creative strategy for an account. Broadcast advertising: Television and radio advertising. CPM: Cost per thousand; a measure of a media plan’s cost versus its reach. Campaign: An advertising effort on behalf of a brand. Some campaigns consist of just one advertisement; while others consist of a series of ads linked by the way they address a single strategy for the brand. Comp: A near-final quality representation of a print ad. Concerns: The client always seems to have some of these, and they always seem to add up to more work for the agency. Creative: Artists, writers, musicians, and designers responsible for developing advertising concepts. Cut: An edited version of a commercial. As in “The client didn’t like the latest cut.” Flighting: A media plan’s scheduling of TV ads. Frequency: A measure of how frequently an ad reaches its target audience. Along with reach, frequency gives advertisers a feel for the effectiveness of a media plan. GRP: Gross rating points; a measure of an ad’s reach among TV viewers. Mechanical: Completed production department version of a print ad, ready to be sent out for printing. Network: A collection of advertising agencies all sharing resources under the same corporate umbrella. Outdoor advertising: This has nothing to do with the spate of SUV ads depicting smiling yuppies on their way to the great outdoors. It refers to outdoor locations for advertisement placement, such as billboards, kiosks, and buses. PSA: Public service announcement. These are ads for good causes (“This is your brain. This is your brain on drugs.”) Ad agencies usually do them for little compensation. PSAs give agencies a chance to enhance their public image and do good creative work. Pitch: An attempt to win new business or sell the agency to the client. Pre-pro: Pre-production meeting, a meeting that takes place before a shoot. Reach: A measure of how much of its targeted audience an ad reaches. Along with frequency, reach gives advertisers a feel for how effective a media plan is. Reel: A collection of a creative’s TV ad samples, or a collection of a commercial director’s ads that the agency and the client will use to select a director to shoot their ad. Reprint: Reproduction of a print ad, usually used as an entry in awards shows or in a creative’s book. Ride the boards: Go out into the field to check out outdoor ad locations. Shoot: The filming of a TV ad. The Shows: The advertising awards shows. Spot: TV or radio commercial. Spot market: Local media market. Suits: The creatives’ moniker for people who work on the business side of the agency. TRP: Targeted rating points; a measure of an ad’s reach among TV viewers. Talent: Actor or voiceover professional. Target: The people the advertiser is trying to sell to. Tissue: Very rough expression of a creative idea, often in magic marker on tissue paper. |
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