CAREER SCOPE IN ADVERTISING INDUSTRY

Advertising world has led to the emergence of many new roles within the advertising profession. In the new edge of ad world, advertising goes beyond its conventional approach. For the non-conventional and conventional advertising approach, Industry requires well groomed people who can develop innovative and creative new idea. Flexibility and competence is must for the industry as the Ad World is highly creative as well as dynamic.

Advertising careers are diverse and can run across a variety of departments, offering positions in the fields of creative departments, production, media, and research. The ultimate goal is to meet the client’s goals of increasing sales as much as possible. Public relations services are often involved with businesses, governments, and institutions and can help them make effective decisions. Students of an advertising school may choose to pursue a career as a:

• Advertising Media Planner
• Media Researcher
• Copywriter/Illustrator
• Account Planning
• Creative Department
• Production Manager
• Director of Advertising
• Director of Public Relations
• Public Relations Specialist
• Artists

ADVERTISING MEDIA PLANNER

Media Planners help ad agencies choose the best outlet or medium to reach the customer they want. They plan, schedule, book and purchase space in the print media (newspapers, magazines) or outdoors (billboards, kiosks and bus panels) and time (TV & radio, internet). The media planning exercise may also involve conducting some targeted brand or need-specific research to assess recall and viewership/readership of a campaign. They must be good with numbers but also skilled negotiators. They will be working with budgets and responsible for spending their client’s money wisely.

MARKET/MEDIA RESEARCHER

The Research department tries to measure the effectiveness of the ad campaign. It is research that provides the media planner and creative a scientific and measurable basis to sharp-focus their strategy. These professionals are from a variety of disciplines, but share a common comfort level with mathematical or statistical modeling, sampling techniques and psychographics. Job titles include public opinion researcher, research supervisor, project director, associate research director, research director, and executive research director. 

CREATIVE DEPARTMENT

The Creative department designs and conceptualizes the advertisement. This consists of copywriting department and art department. Copywriting department works on text for the ad and themes for campaign. Art department visualizes the campaign.

COPYWRITER/ILLUSTRATOR

Copywriter writes down the entire written words of a campaign. Making a story boards (Layout of Ad) on paper for Television ad and in case of Radio ad they prepare theme and jingle. Person will be responsible for entire texts/words which are used in Advertisements.

ACCOUNTS PLANNING

This is a senior-level position in the Servicing Department. It involves evolving the overall strategic plan including the budget, selecting the right media and zeroing-in on the communication message after interacting with the client and internally with the creative team, the media planning department and if necessary, the market research agency. The various elements of the communication package are integrated into a logical whole in the context of the brand and its desired positioning in the market.

ACCOUNT EXECUTIVE

An Accounts executive who works in the client servicing department takes care of all the monitory dealings. He should know the most effective way to advertise client’s product or service i.e. the media and their cost effectiveness. Account executives should also have an idea about market research and target audiences. The career ladder of position titles in account services is assistant account executive, account executive, senior account executive, and accounts supervisor or accounts manager.

VISUALIZERS

The Visualizers work on the visual concepts and decide how the ad shall eventually look. They do the overall layout of message including graphics, sketching etc. Visualizers must be artistic.

KEY SKILLS NEEDED FOR A SUCCESSFUL ADVERTISING CAREER

A successful advertising career is possible for candidates who are naturally driven, optimistic, creative, and can handle multiple projects at a time. Human skills are essential because the work requires understanding what a client needs and making effective decisions as a result. An advertising school/Institute can help in training and development of students/professionals to learn skills such as:

• Strong communications
• Creativity Competitiveness
• Working under stress and pressure
• Presentation management
• Persuasiveness
• Confidence
• Being a team player
• Learning effective online communications
• Highly flexible

STRUCTURE OF AN ORGANIZATION

In the first part of this article, you can get an idea about various job profiles especially in Advertising firm. But the job profile in Ad firm may vary as the size and/or nature of business vary in Advertising firm. Let us understand the different types of advertising agencies, which are discussed in the following way:

• Full Service Agencies
• Specialty Services
• Creative Services
• Media Buying Agency
• In-house Agency

FULL SERVICE AGENCIES

A full service agency is one that provides a range of marketing services i.e. copywriting, creative writing, hiring and purchasing Media time, Actors and producers for ad making, Account manager, Finance manager, media researcher and etc.

SPECIALITY AGENCIES

In this case, agency is working particular for either one industry or particular function.
For Example for Industry:

• Education
• Banking sector
• Retail sector
• Pharma sector

For example for Function:

• Public Relation
• Sales Promotion
• Internet marketing
• Media research
• Social Marketing

Some agencies also clarify their specialization in terms of location such as SS+K is a U.S. Agency. Some agencies are considered as global agencies such as JWT, TBWA, Greyworld wide, and Saatchi & Saatchi and so on.

CREATIVE SERVICES

This kind of agency provides services which is the creation and execution of advertisement to give or make an ad creative. Full service agencies often hire services through subcontracting such kind of agency when they do not want full time staff member o r they are busy.

MEDIA BUYING SERVICES

This kind of agency provides services to other ad agency to buy a space on media especially on Radio and Television time. Purchasing media time has become very complex in current scenario. This kind of agency has specialized by niche in purchasing media time and space and also can save time and money of their client by negotiatiating with the company. Because this kind of agency especially working in the area of media buying. They purchase space in quantity and can get discount on that.

IN-HOUSE AGENCY

Some companies are having their own ad department who produces an ad of the company exclusively. To reduce cost and maintain control over work is an added advantage of this kind of agency. Mainly Large organization always have in-house agency and if necessary they may go out for “freshness” or “unique idea” for their campaign and advertisement.

Advertising industry is very complex, and many different types of skilled people are required to create a successful campaign. Career possibilities abound for people who are artistic by nature, good at writing, creative, imaginative and more so over analytical.

Author: Ms. Puja Vora
M.B.A. (Marketing), Faculty