August 25, 2003
A: FROM MENTOR BRENDA WOLFE IN CO
I am a chemical engineer by degree and have spent almost my entire career working in various marketing groups as an Applications Engineer. For our business, we use outside salesman in different states. Therefore, we use application engineers as technical back-up for our sales force. I can tell you that customers will believe what an engineer says, rather than the sales guys - because typically, a technical eng. knows a lot about one product and a sales guy knows a little about a lot of products.

As for direct advertising, I think a technical background is still necessary - as all advertisements are generated by electronic graphics and 60% of advertising occurs on the Internet. I would imagine one needs to know about generating web-sites, etc.

So,.. I think your Mom is right.... but you don't have to tell her I said so. :)

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August 25, 2003
A: FROM MENTOR DENISE HARBERT IN IL
No, your mom is definitely not trying to trick you. In fact, in order to
be really successful at advertising, you will probably need to know a lot
about statistics (data analysis), which requires solid foundations in math
and using computer software. Advertising is not just about creative
slogans and catchy jingles (short songs). It involves understanding your
product (what you're trying to sell), the people you are trying to sell the
product to (target audience), and how those people will be impacted by
various selling techniques. Launching an advertising campaign nationwide
can be extremely expensive. Companies do not just invest that kind of
money unless they can be reassured in some way that a specific advertising
approach will work for the people they are trying to sell their product
to. That means an advertising agency needs to be able to select samples of
people from a specific target audience, ask the people to examine the
advertising and/or the product, and ask the people to answer some interview
questions or fill out a survey. Then someone needs to summarize what the
people said and use the summaries to create or adjust an advertising
campaign. The goal is to select advertising that makes the target audience
respond positively and buy more product. Doing that usually involves some
data analysis and data interpretation.

Check out the 2001 PG-13 Miramax movie called "Kate & Leopold" for a
Hollywood example of this. Leopold (played by Hugh Jackman) has traveled
forward in time from about 100 years ago to the present. Kate (played by
Meg Ryan) is a cut-throat advertising agent who is fighting hard for a big
promotion at work. She gets assigned the terrible job of selling a
fat-free, sugar-free, diet butter substitute called "Farmer's Bounty" that
"tastes like pond scum". Her target audience: women age 25-55 who are at
least somewhat overweight and are feeling very unhappy about
themselves. After an unrelated, near-fire incident with a toaster, Leopold
launches into a mouth-watering speech about the importance of taste and
Kate gets the brilliant idea to drag him into the studio for a test
commercial to sell the "pond scum". After her male client tells her that
Leopold looks like the Quaker Oats guy, Kate says, "Well, Phil, it's really
not about what you think, it's about what they think." Kate motions to the
smiling women in the video test audience and she continues, "They've been
in a coma all day and now look at them. To them, this guy is a
dream. He's handsome, honest, courteous, stands when you walk in a room,
brings you brioche in bed. If you eat his margarine, maybe your hips will
shrink and he'll come to your door." She is talking about the importance
of knowing who your target audience is and understanding what they really
want the most.

Later, Kate is sitting in a board room with a folder full of statistics,
tables, and graphs that resulted from the test group of women who evaluated
Leopold's commercial. She is asked to give a report and states, "We found
our spokesperson. The response room finals show a 96 in the top two
boxes. His key female descriptors were 'handsome', 'romantic', with
several write-ins of 'what a hunk'." In other words, 96% of the women
surveyed checked the two best boxes on the survey (they really liked the
commercial with Leopold). When asked what they thought of Leopold, most
women checked the boxes that said "handsome" or "romantic", but several
women checked the box that said "Other" and handwrote the phrase "what a
hunk". These numbers are the interpretations from a survey that was
designed to test whether or not the butter would sell well with Leopold's
commercial. Kate's data told her that Leopold would sell a ton of the
"pond scum" and it really didn't matter how bad it tasted. (Of course,
real life women customers might buy the product once or twice because of
the commercial, but if it tasted that bad, they probably wouldn't buy it
again. But this is Hollywood.)

The main point is that YES, you do need technical skills to be good at
advertising. So don't quit taking those classes!

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August 22, 2003
A: FROM MENTOR CHRISTINE KUTE IN MA
No, your mother is not trying to trick you. She is presenting you with her interpretation of the world, with which I happen to agree. It is actually quite difficult these days to find a career in which a strong understanding of technology is not useful. Advertising is no exception to this. While there are jobs in advertising that one can do without a technology background, there are many advertising jobs that require it. For example, there is a lot of technology that goes into making commercials. Presentation media, such as the web, have exploded in recent years. There is a lot of technology that lies behind it. I have written some patents for it. So don't use advertising to get away from technology -- use technology to give you an edge in advertising.
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August 19, 2003
A: FROM MENTOR NANCY WHITE IN WA
In any field of communications (including advertising) electronic communications is an integral part, so understanding computer and Internet mediated communications would be an essential, regardless of a college requirement. If you understand the underpinnings of how electronic communications work, you can use that tool better.

I'd like to add one little anecdote. I'm currently assisting an organization to collaborate online. One of their leaders, a brilliant, successful woman, shared that she was scared of the technology because she had no experience with it. We mused a bit together how this is something I hear more commonly from women than men. Having comfort and experience with technology will not only help you do your job, but it will also make sure you don't get left behind when someone else in the advertising field does! So it is also a competitive, success related factor. (Plus, it's fun!)