Helping you find a career in advertising, marketing & pr
Advertising, marketing and PR is one of the most rapidly growing and changing industries. At the heart of it is the promotion and public reception of a brand, person or product. It is highly influential in our society and your role would make a real difference to a company.
Of the three, marketing is the umbrella term. Marketing can involve elements of advertising and PR, but also extends to cover market research, strategizing and bringing the customer perspective into a company.
PR is primarily concerned with the media. You'll be writing press releases, monitoring media mentions and forming relationships with other media publications - all to manage the public perception of a brand/product.
Advertising is everywhere - on a day-to-day basis you'll see adverts on websites, billboards, TV, social and public transport. There a range of roles within advertising and usually the bigger the company the more specific the role will be. Advertising campaigns typically involve a team coming up with a concept for a campaign, which then must be planned and executed.
Typically, you usually work in-house or for an agency. In-house teams simply work for the business and its goals/objectives whereas in an agency you will be balancing a selection of clients and working on multiple campaigns simultaneously. Agency work can be more stressful and involve long hours to ensure that deadlines are met and there is a lot of pressure to keep the client happy (ie - get the results) so that they will come back to the agency.
Whilst in-house work can also be stressful and you'll have to keep to strict deadlines, it allows you to become fully immersed in the brand and you'll be focused on one primary goal.
A number of large companies now also offer graduate schemes or placements within advertising, marketing and PR. Some even offer the chance to work towards a professional qualification throughout the course of the schemes.
Whilst a creative flair is certainly helpful in this field many roles also require you to be logical and analytical. A lot of marketing and advertising involves strategy and organisation skills, alongside the ability to analyse customer data and make decisions based on it.
The beauty of this industry having so many different roles is that you can have a rewarding and varied career. It is quite common for people to move across these industries as the core skillset is quite similar, so you'll have a huge range of job roles that are potentially available to you!
