Brighter opportunity in Career Options in Advertising
Vijay Garg
Advertising & Marketing Communications
There is perhaps, no other business that so greatly influences our daily lives. Advertising dictates our choices regarding cars we drive, our drinking preferences, or our clothes; it is a great influence on our daily lives.
Work
Advertising offers a unique blend of opportunities as a career. Rare in other industries will you find a more eclectic group of individuals under one roof! The major areas of operation are client servicing, media planning, creative and research.
Client Servicing
The face of the agency, Client servicing, represents the agency to the client and the client within the agency. On receipt of a detailed brief from the client, the Account Executive and Account Planner chalk out a strategy based on the brand’s positioning, its USP and its communication peg.
While the more renowned agencies require an MBA, some others will be satisfied with a Degree/Diploma in marketing or mass communication.
Media Planning
They guide advertising agencies to select the best outlet or medium to reach the customer they want. Media planners 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 also involve conducting some targeted research to assess recall and viewership/ readership of a campaign. Media planners should ideally have a background in Maths and Statistics, an MBA.
Accounts Planning
The servicing department which strategize and help evolve the budget, selecting the right media and drawing up the communication message after exchanging views with the client and with its own creative team, the media planning department and on occasions, the market research agency.
Copy Department
Copywriter’s task is to send across the message in words – headline, followed by the body copy in the case of a press ad, a dialogue or jingle for a radio spot, or a detailed story board in the case of a TV commercial.
A good copywriter’s must come out with unique and out of the box ideas and co-relate masses of data and research findings so as to present the conclusions in language that is lucid and convincing. He/She also needs patience to craft words into a definite and successful sales pitch. The paramount requirement is creativity and versatility.
Creative Department
The creative department’s job is to identify the correct words, the most appropriate visuals – to catch the attention. The creative team can be further divided into two sections: Copy and Creative.
The Art Department
The look of a campaign accommodating the different components i.e. headline, visual, picture, text, logo, etc. in a given space. Selecting the size and type of the font, the visual treatment and the overall treatment is the purview of the visualisers and art directors.
A high level of originality and creative talent form the pillar, a degree in applied art or graphic design with knowledge of computer graphics/multimedia is required.
Market Research
The Research department tries to measure the effectiveness of the ad campaign. It Is research that provides the media planner and creatives 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 modelling, sampling techniques and psychographics.
Remuneration
In this industry rewards are directly commensurate with the initiative you display, the effort you put in and the results you achieve. If you are ambitious and hard working, you can quickly move up the ladder. Starting with Rs.6000 or thereabouts as a fresh wet-behind-the-ears trainee, you can easily gross ten times as much five years down the line if you’ve got what it takes.
Institutes/Colleges
Though few colleges offer specialisation in advertising at the bachelor’s level. But elements of advertising such as media planning and client servicing are covered in Mass Communication courses offered at both the under-graduate and post-graduate level
(The author is a Retired Principal Government Girls Senior Secondary school MHR Malout Punjab)
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