Advertising/Public Relations
Industry Overview
Advertising and public relations are like a microwave and a freezer: totally different, but they work together really well. In fact, many large advertising agencies offer PR services. Both industries deliver words and pictures, but what they really sell is intangibles, such as image and reputation. They are paid to persuade people to buy goods or services, to vote for a political cause or candidate, or to invest in a company.
In broad terms, an advertising agency is a marketing consultant. It helps the client with all aspects of its marketing efforts—everything from strategy to concept to execution. Full-service agencies also handle the placement of the ads in newspapers, magazines, radio, and so on—so that they reach their intended audience.
But that’s only a strict definition of what people in advertising do. In broader terms, the industry includes everything from PR agencies (which try to place news items about clients in the media) to direct marketers (who send out all that annoying junk mail) to Internet advertising and design firms (which create pop-up or banner ads or design websites for clients).
Career Overview
Ads seem to be everywhere: filling magazines, on billboards lining the road, and appearing at regular intervals on television. Their objective: to market and sell goods and services. Their effect: they play a significant role in shaping our culture.
An advertising agency is a marketing consultant. It helps a client—a manufacturer of consumer products such as Nike or a service-oriented company such as Charles Schwab & Co.—with its marketing efforts, from strategy to concept to execution.
Strategy involves helping a client make high-level business decisions, such as how to brand a new line of suntan lotions. The agency takes a client's strategy and turns it into a specific concept for advertisements—such as a series of ads featuring extreme athletes for a soft-drink maker with a strategy of making inroads in the teen market.
Execution is where an agency turns a concept into reality with the production of actual ads: the print layout, the Web design, the film shoot, or the audiotaping. Execution also involves placing the ads—buying space in newspapers, on television, or in subway stations. InternZoo provides listings of positions with a number of advertising agencies, including PR firms such as Los Angeles based LCO Online.