Advertising Agencies

In broad terms, an advertising agency is a marketing consultant. It helps the client (a manufacturer of consumer products like Nike, perhaps, or a serviceoriented company like Charles Schwab & Co.) with all aspects of its marketing efforts everything 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 where 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 where 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 also handle the placement of the ads in newspapers, magazines, radio, and so on so that they reach their intended audience. Sometimes the agency works in conjunction with the client’s marketing department; other times when the client doesn’t have a marketing department the agency takes on that role.

Unlike advertising, a PR agency communicates a company’s message to the press, rather than directly to the target market. The objective in PR is to use the press to reach the target market because, when mediated by a supposedly objective third party, the message becomes more powerful. The goal in PR is to make your client (or your company, if you work in-house in a corporate communications or marketing communications position) look great. To do this, PR professionals primarily work with the members of the press to get stories .that reflect positively on their clients’ products or images in newspapers and magazines, on the radio, or on TV. PR professionals might also speak on behalf of client organizations; arrange for clients’ presence at appropriate industry events; help mitigate harmful publicity when, for instance, the federal government sues a client for, say, antitrust violations; or help clients come up with an overall marketing strategy for, say, a new product launch. PR professionals work for everyone from big companies to government agencies to charitable organizations to famous individuals anyone with a public image (or an important message or saleable products) that can benefit from PR expertise.

The advertising and PR industries have taken a big hit due to the decline of the dot coms, the tech downturn, and the overall recession. Remember all those expensive dot-com Super Bowl ads from a few years back? A lot of those companies are no longer in business and, like their more traditional bricksand-mortar Corporate America cousins, those that are are much less willing to plunk down millions of dollars on advertising or PR. According to Advertising Age, 2002 U. S. advertising industry revenue was up just 0.6 percent in 2001, a year which had seen the industry’s worst performance since 1987 and ad-only revenue (fees agencies get for creating and executing advertising campaigns) was down slightly. The situation in PR has been similar. Indeed, over the past couple of years, many advertising and PR agencies have been forced to lay off employees, close offices, and cut or freeze salaries or, worse, go out of business. As a result, you’ll face stiffer competition than ever if you want a career in advertising or PR. Still, these remain attractive industries to many job seekers. In advertising, many writers and artists are drawn to agencies’ creative and production departments because the salaries are much higher in the ad game than in the starving artist game. For business types advertising offers an exciting proximity to the creative process, if not an actual role in that process. PR offers liberal arts types jobs that can be steady and fairly lucrative while still being creative. Pros in both industries often enjoy perks like dinners, plays, and ballgames with clients. And everyone in these industries gets to spend their days with the hippest, most culturally aware coworkers around, and play a role in shaping the stories and advertisements that shape our culture.