I don’t know about you guys but my parents have no idea about the advertising industry, especially the creative department, and can’t quite get their head around a few things. That’s why I’ve created The Parents Guide to Advertising. (Please feel free to copy, paste and then print this off and give to your parents).
1) The Creative Team – Advertising creatives work in teams of two, a Copywriter and an Art Director. Your son/daughter will be working with someone else for most of his or her career. They need this person to get a job. They work together, they interview together (more later) and they sleep together…ok they don’t but may as well do. Creative teams traditionally spend more time with each other than they do with their respective partners. And at the beginning of their careers they’re going to be working a lot. In fact at the end of their careers they’ll probably be working a lot too.
2) University – Were you, or are you, worried your son/daughter isn’t doing a real degree? Well you shouldn’t be worried, you’re right; it’s not a real degree. There aren’t any exams and hardly any essays. Essentially they’re on a course where the more interesting ideas they have, the better. The work is totally subjective and to be honest the grade your son/daughter receives means absolutely nothing in the advertising world. The reason they’re doing it is to produce their portfolio. This is their key to getting a job; this is what you should nag them to do. Gone are the days of revision, it’s all about re-working your book! (Note – if you have to nag them to do it, then they probably won’t get a job).
3) Interviews – These are known as “book crits” although a book crit isn’t really an interview. Let me explain. For a normal company, a position will become available and people will apply for that position. The company will select people to interview and someone will be hired. Simple. Advertising is a little more complex. There is never a vacancy in the creative department; this business is far too competitive for jobs to be going around. Normally a team will choose an agency/agencies they admire and want to work for and will approach them with their portfolio of work. The people they see will advise them on what they like and don’t like and will arrange for another “interview” some time in the future to see improvements. The team will see many agencies and will start to know which ones feel best for them. Once they’ve been to a few “interviews” they should be offered a placement (only if the work is good enough), which leads me onto point 4.
4) Placements – These are similar to placements in other industries. The difference comes in the time frame and the salary. Placements start around 2 weeks and can go as long as 8 months. Your son/daughter will be paid virtually nothing, relatively speaking. If they’re lucky they’ll get around £250 per week max! They’ll more than likely, however, be paid just for expenses. So they’re going to be working day and night for months for in effect no money (so you’ll have to look after them just that bit longer). How do they go from placement to full-time? Hard work and impressive work. They’ll probably have a few placements before being offered a job. The main objective on placement is to work so hard that they have no choice but to offer you an extension. On average it takes 18 months for a graduate to get a job as a junior creative at an ad agency.
5) Future – Now all this may seem quite negative, so I think I should end on all the positives. When they finally get a job, they’ll be paid handsomely to make adverts that will actually be on TV, and on bus stops etc so you can be a proud parent almost every day. They’ll work in cool offices, surrounded by intelligent and funny people and will be able to get you discount on some products they advertise. They can change the way people think about pretty much anything and they won’t be anywhere near as boring as the accountant you once wanted them to become.
I hope this clarifies a few things for your parents. I’ve yet to show mine. In reality this probably won’t help whatsoever but even if it helps one person explain the struggle of getting a job in advertising to their parents then it was worth it.
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