Top Reasons to Go Into Advertising

Blow in her face and she'll follow you anywhere.

In February, I asked agency professionals what their top reasons were for going into advertising. I also asked whether they had any thoughts for college students with moon eyes for an ad career.

Read their responses (two pages' worth of insights!). But here's a taste of some really good stuff:

Don't get bogged down in what is and what isn't the "right" way to do things.

Once we solve the problem, we need the next one to move on to, if it isn't there, then we go in search of it. I don't think it's overly surprising that there are a lot of gypsies in this business.

It [struck] me that one probably actually gets paid for doing this advertising design thing - in other words not beerless - and maybe even bourbonful, which indeed it was (this was 1964, folks!). So I changed schools and majors. I liked the program, and I love the job that came out of it. Now I get to manage a small agency and some creatives who are just as easily upset by client changes as I was (I am over that now - jaded, I suppose), and I am having fun designing bourbon packages. Is that amazing or what?

The ad biz has taken me all over the world, from NYC to Jakarta Indonesia. Along the way, the friendly folks at JWT, BBDO and a few other agencies have been generous enough to pay me for creating ideas. It’s been a good gig.

Learn a foreign language. Preferably Chinese, Indonesian, or Spanish.

There is NO good reason to go into advertising.

I got tired of all the insipid ads on both TV and Radio. I wanted to provide a creative, (notice the word creative) instead of the simple repeats of someone elses idea for promotion.

For account service, an advertising degree is great, but really - if you have some great internships and experience your degree can be in basket weaving and it won't hurt you.

The opportunities on the interactive side of things are endless. There is a huge shortage of talent in a category that is growing daily. Programmers, designers...pretty much anything having to with the interactive side of things is marketable in many arenas.

As one of the previous posters stated, the most important thing is experience. Intern, intern, intern.

Why did I get into this? Like many others, I fell into it.