Advertising – a creative career option

By S. Ganesh;

S. Ganesh – Guest Faculty – Journalism & communication

Advertising is glamorous and it’s got many avenues to venture into in today’s media saturated world. Be it a government organization or private, it’s got to use advertising in many ways for today and tomorrow.  You got to sell your ware and you can count on advertising to do it.   And all you have to do is to advertise in your way, by your means and in your town for your product or service. You can use advertising for overseas business can get the attention of your audience. Today, Indian advertising industry is worth more than Rs 60,000 crores and has more men employed directly and indirectly.  Mumbai is the Indian capital of advertising like Madison Avenue for America or New York advertising is famed for.

Advertising careers

One can get into client serving or accounts planning and management if you have required qualification and been to a mass communication or management college.He would be negotiating with a client and his own agency finding client’s requirements and briefing to agency and getting it done.  One would be a go between to do work or execute work especially for a client’s wish.

If creativity is one’s forte, he can be a copywriter with little fluency in English with creative bent of mind and flair for crispy writing would also help.  Qualifications are ability to play with words, good language and a degree which are some of requirements to get in to copy writing.  An experienced one will go to become a creative director who looks in to copy and art as well.   Those who can draw a bit can become artist or do art direction and visualization.

If you are a media school graduate and know a bit of theory, you can fit into a media executive position where you would be buying and scheduling media space.  Media planning is complex and that requires little more than media knowledge and you would require statistics and computer programming knowledge a bit.

MBAS from leading institutes as IIMs are preferred for advertising jobs also and big agencies go to campuses to recruit graduates.  Many client servicing jobs go to IIM graduates as they can do executive and analytical works more easily and areas as accounts planning require such skills

Whatever it may, advertising is an exciting field to get into and opportunities are many for qualified ones especially. It’s glamorous and exciting and the pay is good for performers as advertising demands qualified practitioners more and more.

In big agencies, one gets to do his or specialization as client servicing or copy writing but small and medium agencies one gets to do many things.  It is multi tasking for all in small and medium agencies generally.

There is a research section in some agencies, but market research gets done in an agency mostly a part of advertising agency or a division as such.  With cable TV booming, research becomes yet another activity of an advertising agency today mostly

Education

Many courses in Visual Communication and Mass Communication have advertising as a subject and there is nothing as specialization in advertising is offered in Madras University or other universities of Tamil Nadu.  There are MBA colleges offering marketing specialization and advertising is included in some of these courses. One gets to go to IIM for specialized study on marketing and it’s through an entrance test as one has to take CAT exam and opt for MBA in an institute of his or her choice.  Private colleges offer communication and media courses just like Madras University,Vels University and others. It’s that nearly 20 colleges in and around Chennai offer BSc Visual communication and this has advertising as a subject of study and other universities as Bharathiar, Bharadhidasan and Madurai Kamaraj too offer Visual communication and electronic media courses broadly covering advertising.   One has to go to Arts and Crafts College for drawing and sketch work but BSC visual communication curricula covers that also.  The fees are nominal in universities and reasonable in others for this sort of study.

So why not join in a media course to know and excel in advertising today as opportunity invites you to plunge in to advertising.  Come and join advertising to create and sell dreams as products to everyone around you. Many opportunities await qualified and experienced advertising professionals in a changing media saturated society as ours.