What are the different jobs in advertising?

Advertising people create ads, which help sell an idea or product. Broadly speaking, an ad agency has two main work streams of which you can choose the one that interests you. The creative section, has people who visualize and conceptualize an ad, including the copywriters, art directors. And the client servicing section, has people who interact with the industry and are an interface between them and the agency. Let us look at each part so that you will have an overview of what each department of advertising is involved in to create a communication.

There are four aspects to advertising:
Copy
Art
Client Servicing
Media Buying.

Copy writing:
This is the world where art is sold through the magic of words. If advertisement is the heart of marketing,then copywriters are its soul. It is an art through which the consumer psyche is translated into words. Technically speaking; the copywriter is the person who crafts the wording of the advertisement whether it is a print ad (what you see in a news paper or magazine) or a radio or TV commercial. She/he comes up with the head line that grabs your attention and the text that tells you more about the product being advertised. Remember the commercial for Cadbury’s ‘Temptations’? It’s supposed to be so good that you don’t want to
share it with anyone, even someone you love. That was the idea. The words and pictures were crafted later. Nike’s ‘Just do it’ and, ‘There are some things in life which money can’t buy. For everything else there’s Master Card,’ are not only brain children of copywriters but are also words that reflect the go-getter personality. Copy writers are on perpetual deadlines-which are always ‘yesterday’. Most copy writers complain that it is an extremely pains taking task to come out with catchy lines on a regular basis, especially, if they are suffering from a ‘writer’s block’. So, when Aishwarya winks and declares to the world how cool it is to drink Coca- Cola,don’t go thinking it’s her conviction, although she makes it seem so,it’s the copy writer talking.

Ad Filmmaker:
He makes the commercials that we see on TV. The ad film maker examines the script written by the copy writer and the art director and also contributes suggestions. The Coke, Hutch, Pepsi, ads are made by ad film makers.

Commercial Photographers and Illustrators:
They are the people who take snaps and pictures or illustrate graphically the products or elements used for print advertising. They work with the art director to give the ad its look and personality and to make it look appealing.

Art Direction:
The art director (known as the visualizer at junior levels) works with the copywriter to come up with the big idea. Then she/he takes the words written by the copywriter and decides on how to present it to the buyer. This involves not just the way the ad looks (colors, photographs, drawings), but also the font the text is printed in (which should be eye-catching and easy to read). The art director is also wholly involved with the ad; she/he must follow it through right from the stage when the layout begins,to the stage when it is ready to be distributed to news papers and magazines for printing. For a commercial, the art director works with the copy writer’s script and supervises its filming and final production.

Client Servicing:
The client servicing people generally have a marketing background. These are the people who, together with the client (the company that wants to advertise a product), come up with a plan for how to present the product to the buyer. Once the client servicing person’s strategy for advertising is accepted by the client, she/he will brief the creative team of copywriter and art director on the product. The creative team will be told about the product (for instance, Cadbury’s ‘Temptations’), its pricing, its target audience (the set of people the company wants to sell ‘Temptations’ to), and the aspects of it that the client wants to emphasize. After the creative team comes up with the idea(s) and put together a rough layout,the client servicing person takes the idea to the client for his approval. His job now is to sell the idea to the client and therefore make money for the ad agency. Once the idea is approved, he returns to the creative team and gives them the go ahead and then follows the ad through production till it is ready for publication and broadcasting, and then present the client with a bill!

Media Buyers
These are the people who buy space (half a page, a quarter page, two inches of a column) in newspapers/magazines or buy airtime (30 seconds in which to show the commercial, or 60seconds) on television channels or radio channels for the ad agency’s clients. They are also responsible for part of the advertising strategy, because they have a clear idea how to reach out to the ad’s target audience. If we look at Cadbury’s ‘Temptations’, we’ve seen it’s a chocolate meant for people who are into fine living. This kind of person will read a certain kind of magazine, watch a certain kind of television channel, listen to a certain kind of music. So, to get the ad across to this kind of person, the ad must be placed where the target audience can see it and hear it.

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